CAR MEMORIAL MUSEUM

[ View of the Rose Quarter from the proposed pedestrian bridge across the Willamette ]

Summary
In January 2010, GGLO responded to The Portland Develoment Commission's call for concepts for the Memorial Coliseum in Portland's Rose Quarter, with a proposal summarized as follows:

We propose to repurpose Memorial Coliseum in a way that will foster Portland’s evolution into a model sustainable city of the future. Our concept begins with the counterintuitive conversion of the Coliseum into a colossal robotic parking garage. And it ends mid-century with the launching of a museum that celebrates the bygone era of the automobile. 

Portland has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, which will require a two thirds reduction in driving. Over the same time period, the Portland area is projected to grow by 90 percent. Fortuitously, this growth can actually help Portland achieve its GHG goals by increasing density; and the positive impact is maximized if growth is targeted in areas that are already relatively dense, such as downtown Portland. However, under current trends, fitting parking in high-density development places a severe liability on the creation of livable communities. Parking is expensive, consumes vast area, degrades the pedestrian realm, and hamstrings design. 
 
Our interim solution is to provide parking in peripheral locations, thereby reducing the need for cars to enter the city core, and enabling the core to develop without the impediment of parking. The Rose Quarter is an ideal parking location to serve downtown Portland, as users would have several public transit options to reach their final destinations. We also propose a pedestrian bridge across the river.

The Coliseum building is well-suited to hold a modular robotic parking system, and could accommodate roughly 5200 cars. Ideally, it would be one of several such “Mobility Centers” that would ring downtown. Over time, as the city grows and reliance on cars declines, these facilities would be relocated to less urbanized areas. 

Eventually, when parking is no longer needed in the Coliseum, we propose convert it back to a civic use, namely the “Car Memorial Museum.” The robotic parking apparatus would then be repurposed to store museum "specimens," and to retrieve them on demand for close up display to museum patrons.

GGLO Team:
Dave Cutler, Dan Bertolet, Don Vehige, Erin Parker, Derek Reeves

Advisors:
Space Syntax, APT Parking Technologies, Glumac

Further Information:
Download a pdf copy of the concept proposal.

[ Perspective view of the robotic parking from the observation deck ]

Concept Details
The call for concept proposals asked for responses to the following questions:

Community Benefits
The overarching community benefit of our concept is to help Portland achieve its goals for creating a sustainable city that can thrive through the coming century.   The most promising strategy to meet the future challenges facing North American urban areas is to create compact, mixed-use communities where people have the option to walk, bicycle, or take transit to meet their daily needs. 

The requirement to accommodate cars is a major physical and financial obstacle to the development of high-density, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods that are also affordable.  In addition, driving is Portland’s single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), accounting for 38 percent of total emissions.  Our proposed concept addresses both of these challenges by providing a mechanism that offers a path to incrementally remove the need for cars to enter downtown Portland. 

Research has shown that as urban density rises, driving declines.  But the accommodation of parking makes it far more difficult to do density well.  It’s a chicken/egg dilemma.  Our concept solves this problem by providing an interim place to put cars on the periphery, so that the city center can develop without the hindrance of parking.  Over time the need for parking dissipates, the interim parking can be repurposed or relocated.

Aside from the broad community benefits our concept offers the City as a whole, it would also benefit the local neighborhood in which it is located.  The pedestrian traffic generated by the parking would catalyze street life and commercial uses, and eventually could lead to revitalization of the entire district.

The final phase of our concept proposes that when car dependence has been reduced to the point where there is no longer a need for parking in  the Coliseum, it would be converted to a car museum.  This civic use would benefit the local neighborhood, as well as the rest of the City and the entire metro region.

Sustainability
With our concept, significant energy would be saved because the building would not require heating or air-conditioning, and would need very little lighting.  Passive ventilation would be implemented to help cool the building during sunny summer weather.  By adding an exhaust vent on the roof above the proposed central atrium, along with input vents located at the base of the building (the garage entrances would serve this purpose) passive cooling could be achieved through the chimney effect.

The 3.1-acre roof could easily accommodate 1 MW of PV, which, assuming 12 W/sf would cover about two thirds of the roof.   The panels would generate about 1100 MWh of carbon free electricity per year.  Assuming Portland’s current electrical energy generation mix, that would save 450 metric tons of CO2 per year—equivalent to taking 83 typical American cars off the road.

As electric cars become more common, the Coliseum could be outfitted with charging stations.  The PV panels would be well-suited for charging car batteries.  Eventually, with enough electric cars the Coliseum could be integrated into a “smart grid,” where electrical energy could flow in or out of the car batteries as demand on the grid varied during the day.

It is possible to integrate PV and green roofs in the same roof area. Nearly three million gallons of rain water land on the Coliseum roof every year. A typical four inch thick green roof could be expected to reduce that volume of runoff about roughly three quarters.  This would reduce the demand on Portland’s stormwater infrastructure, saving money and helping to helping to preserve water quality.
 
There are also multiple opportunities for our concept to encourage a transition to more sustainable transportation.  Because the Portland area has so many “reverse” commuters, car-sharing based out of the Coliseum would have great potential.  A bike-sharing program could help many commuters with the “last mile.”

Flexibility
The Coliseum—essentially a very large hollow box—is inherently a highly flexible building in terms of the wide variety of uses that could be put inside it.  The building’s structural system, with just a single supporting column in each corner, leaves the 3-acre floor space almost completely unobstructed. This flexibility is a critical ingredient for our concept.

In urban areas, parking is a common “land banking” strategy. It typically has low up-front costs and overhead, but is also lucrative.  This allows landowners to wait until economic conditions are favorable for redevelopment to other uses. Our concept leverages the power of parking as land bank, but with an atypical motivation and end goal.  We are proposing robotic parking as a temporary use for the Coliseum, with the long-term plan of converting the building back to a civic use—a car museum. 

Robotic parking is modular, and could be assembled inside the Coliseum without disturbing the shell of the building.  Parking capacity could be phased, with stalls added stalls to meet demand until the building’s volume maximum is reached.  And at some point in the future when Portland’s car-dependence has been reduced to the point where demand for parking in the Rose Quarter has significantly dropped, any desired amount of robotic parking modules could be removed and reused elsewhere.

We are proposing that by 2050, parking at the Rose Quarter Mobility Center will no longer be needed, at which point the building would be converted a public museum that celebrates the history of the car.  We envision retaining most of the robotic parking as a means to store the museum “specimens,” and also to make them directly accessible to the public.  When a museum patron wanted to have a close look at a specific car, say a 1959 Cadillac convertible, they would push a button and the robotic system would deliver the car to an observation area, in the same way it was originally designed to deliver a car to its owner.

Connectivity
The Coliseum site is located at a transportation nexus that include interstate freeways, river bridges, high speed rail, commuter rail, streetcar, buses, and bike lanes.  This is precisely why it is an ideal location for enabling mode transfer from cars to other transportation modes. 

Our entire concept relies heavily on enhancing pedestrian, bike, and transit connections between the Rose Quarter and the rest of Portland:  Most people who leave their cars at the Coliseum would be continuing on to a final destination elsewhere in the City, downtown in particular.  And the most important connectivity challenge is to knit together the two halves of the City that are separated by a formidable barrier:  the Willamette River. 

The key pedestrian connectivity element in our concept is a new pedestrian bridge across the river.  A dedicated, attractively designed pedestrian bridge would go a long way towards encouraging pedestrian travel between the Rose Quarter and the Pearl. 

Our concept also calls for increased transit service from the Rose Quarter to points across the river, in order to make the last leg of trips fast and convenient. The existing streetcar line would be the focus of this service.  Assuming high speed rail will be built on the east side of the river, the Coliseum could also provide parking for regional rail trips. 

At the neighborhood level, the people leaving and returning to their parked cars in the Coliseum would generate a high volume of pedestrian traffic in the Rose Quarter, whether they were completing their journeys of foot, or walking to transit.  The mere presence of pedestrians would enhance the pedestrian environment, as any place becomes much more comfortable to walk in when there are other people around.  The new flow of pedestrians in the Rose Quarter would likely catalyze the development of street level commercial uses, which will in turn attract more pedestrians to the neighborhood.

Economic Impact
First of all, our concept would provide additional parking capacity for events at the Rose Garden Arena and Oregon Convention Center.  Though this runs counter to the philosophy of our overall goal to reduce car dependence, it would be a significant short term economic benefit. 

In the longer term, the activity generated by the Coliseum Mobility Center would be a catalyzing force for economic revitalization in the surrounding neighborhood.  First, pedestrians coming to and from the Coliseum parking would provide a customer base for street-related retail and services.  A demand for such uses would then open opportunities for mixed-use buildings, with housing above the commercial spaces.  The effect would snowball, benefitting existing as well as future neighborhood businesses.  The nearby Lloyd Center Mall presents a particularly promising opportunity to revitalize an east-west commercial corridor that would connect the Mall to the Rose Quarter. 

Second, our concept plan includes a pedestrian bridge across the river, along with an increased level of transit service to and from the Rose Quarter to handle the additional demand from Coliseum parking users. These transportation infrastructure improvements would enhance connections to the rest of the City, which would also help bring economic activity to the area.  The area around the Coliseum Mobility Center would likely become an attractive site for office, as there would be easy access to multiple modes of transportation—including cars—for traveling to other parts of the City or region. 

Lastly, the proposed concept, because of its massive scale and bold, forward-looking, but surprisingly counterintuitive vision, would bring a new buzz and identity to the Rose Quarter, which is in itself a key component of community revitalization.

Context
As noted above, our concept supports existing Rose Quarter facilities by providing additional parking, at least in the near term.   More importantly, the Coliseum Mobility Center would lead to significantly increased ridership on the surrounding public transit, the streetcar in particular.  We expect that the new demand driven by the Coliseum parking would lead to shorter headways and perhaps dedicated express service. 

We believe that the Coliseum Mobility Center would catalyze mixed-used, pedestrian-oriented redevelopment in the surrounding areas.  This would provide a level of urban livability almost totally lacking in the Rose Quarter area today.  The few fledgling developments that are currently in the area, such as the “Left Bank” project in the historic Dude Ranch building, would greatly benefit from the synergy created by more development nearby.

The overarching goal of our concept is that the Coliseum Mobility Center would help other parts of the City—particularly downtown—to grow in a manner that is not constrained by the requirement to accommodate the large numbers of cars typically found in today’s built environment.  One key benefit of this is that buildings become significantly less expensive to develop when they do not have to provide parking on site.  And this cost reduction can be passed on to the users in the form of reduced rent or purchase price.  In other words, our concept would help enable the creation of affordable housing and commercial space, which is a critical ingredient of livability in rapidly growing cities like Portland. 

Our concept proposes a final phase for the Coliseum in which it is converted to a car museum.  This civic use would contribute greatly to the livability of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Cultural Heritage
Given the nature of our concept, realistically there is little opportunity to significantly engage or incorporate the cultural heritage that the Rose Quarter is most known for—that being the 40s and 50s-era African American music and nightlife scene.  The positive effect that the Coliseum Mobility Center would have on the surrounding neighborhood could help bring back some of the Williams Avenue street life of the past, but there is no way our concept can ever honestly recreate it.  That said, there would be many small opportunities to give respectful nods to the past.  For example, the pedestrian bridge could be named Jumptown Bridge.

From the big picture perspective, our concept does, in a way, pay homage to the vibrant, pedestrian-oriented environment that was present in the Rose Quarter half a century ago.  Because it was the construction of the freeway that tore the heart out of the Rose Quarter, and a car-centric culture that has relegated it to its present underutilized state.  Our concept is grounded in the hope that we can reverse some of the damage done to our cities by our obsession with cars.  And by enabling a transition in downtown Portland towards development patterns that result in far less dependence on cars, we can help bring back what was best about the historic Rose Quarter to neighborhoods all over the City.

Architectural and Historical Significance
Our proposed concept will not significantly alter the look of the “International Style” Memorial Coliseum building.  Our plan calls for the addition of two vehicle entrances/exits on the northwest side of the building, where there is already an existing vehicular entrance for loading.  The entrances will be unobtrusively located in the concrete plinth level below the bottom of the glass curtain wall, and as such will not require any alteration of the glass façade.

The existing main entry to the building on the northeast side of the building would not be altered.  A second pedestrian entrance would be added on the southeast side of the building.  Our plan calls for a new plaza in front of this entrance, elevated above the existing grade to align with the concourse level of the Coliseum.  Adding doors would require slight modifications to the original glass façade, but to minimize the impact of that change on the style and look of the building, they would be designed to match the existing pedestrian doors on the northeast side of the building.

Our plan requires demolition and removal of the distinctive concrete grandstand bowl inside the Coliseum.  The bowl is an important feature of the building’s original design, and we propose to acknowledge that fact by manipulating the robotic parking structure, which would be visible through the glass façade.   A specific profile of individual parking stall cells that matched the cross section of the bowl would be extended out beyond the others to create a visible outline of the bowl.  In any case, the removal of the bowl would not change the defining character of the building, which is the signature exterior façade. 

We are not anticipating that any major renovations to the building façade would be required to carry out our proposed concept plan.  However, if such renovations became necessary, because the building is on the National Register of Historic Places, the project would be eligible 10% federal tax credit financing.

Veterans Memorial
The veterans war memorial in the sunken plaza on the northeast side of the building would not be altered.  Nothing about the parking use would compromise the existing sanctity of the war memorial.  And the pedestrian traffic created by the parking use would likely increase public exposure to the memorial site.  Furthermore, the enhanced transit and pedestrian connections to the site would offer more convenient access for those who wished to visit the memorial from other parts of the City.

One of the core goals of our concept—to reduce reliance on fossils fuels by catalyzing development that encourages alternatives to the car—also has a connection to war.  Because as fossil fuels become more scarce and valuable over time, it would not be unreasonable to expect an increase in armed conflict over access to energy.  By reducing our fossil fuel dependence, we can help reduce future loss of life to war, which is one the best ways to respect those who gave their lives in previous wars.   

Lastly, in the final phase of the proposed concept, when the City has evolved to the point where the number of cars has been vastly reduced, parking in the Coliseum would no longer be needed. Mobility Centers would be relocated further afield to lower density, more car-dependent peripheral areas.  

And at that point, the meaning of “memorial” as it applies to the Coliseum could be broadened to encompass the concept of a memorial to the “Age of Cars.”  In that spirit, we are proposing that the final incarnation of Memorial Coliseum would be a car museum.  The robotic parking system could be used to store and display museum exhibit cars on demand.  Sections of the robotic system could be removed make room for exhibit halls and other complimentary uses such as a restaurant.