Landmark will get new lease on life
Two companies bid to revamp 103-year-old U.S. Custom House

By Jeanie Senior

The government’s search for a developer to restore and reuse the U.S. Custom House seems likely to yield a bonus for the public — greatly increased access to the grand four-story brick and stone building on the North Park Blocks.

The General Services Administration, which owns the 103-year-old Italian Renaissance Revival building at 220 N.W. Eighth Ave., will recommend a developer for the “adaptive reuse” project in about a month.

Two finalists — Portland developer Venerable Group Inc., which specializes in restoring historic buildings, and the Pochter Group Ltd. of Northbrook, Ill. — will submit detailed rehabilitation proposals to the GSA by today’s deadline.

Both proposals carry multimillion-dollar price tags. Developers will be charged with making the unreinforced stone and brick structure safe during earthquakes, as well as removing hazardous materials, like lead paint or asbestos.

Venerable has letters of intent from four prospective tenants. The majority of the space would be occupied by the University of Oregon’s satellite architecture school, now located in Old Town, plus other UO advanced degree programs.

The other three tenants would be the Zimmerman Community Center, which serves both the Pearl and Old Town-Chinatown neighborhoods; the Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery; and a restaurant that would take advantage of the Custom House’s courtyard, which faces the park blocks.

Pochter, which has done a project in Salem, wants to remodel the building into an 82-room boutique hotel. Its partner in the effort is Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which would be the operator and manager.

Built originally to house the U.S. Customs Service, the building now is occupied by the offices of the Northwestern Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The present time schedule calls for some of the 150 corps employees working there to relocate to new headquarters in the Brewery Blocks development in December, but “I suspect it will be early January,” Homer Perkins, chief public affairs spokesman for the corps, said of the move.

Perkins said the northwestern division, which oversees districts in Portland, Seattle, Walla Walla, Wash., Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City, Mo., has had offices in the Custom House since the 1950s.
“There used to be other agencies here,” he said. “Over time there have been several, but they moved out long ago.”

Corps employees have mixed emotions about leaving the Custom House, he said. “It’s a historic building, complete with high ceilings and all those things that go with old buildings. There’s a lot of people that love this building — and lots of people looking forward to moving to new modern facilities.”

The move initially was scheduled for October, but “the process has been slowed for construction and other issues,” Perkins said.

General Services managers are offering a 60-year lease to the winning developer. It is one of four GSA-owned historic buildings nationwide to be involved in the same redevelopment effort.

“We understand this is going to be a long process,” said Keith Pochter, principal of the Pochter Group. “GSA hopefully will make a determination which one of the concepts they want to go with by Nov. 1 — then there’s the lease negotiation and a whole range of other things.”

He added, “This is not an easy thing to finance, because it’s a leasehold.” Leasehold means they will never hold ownership of the building.

Venerable’s offices are at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Flanders Street, just a few blocks from the Custom House. When GSA called for development bids, “Immediately we knew it was a perfect match for us, taking on stewardship of this landmark,” said Jessica Engeman, a historic preservationist with the firm.

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