Visitors find Portland's older buildings integrate sustainability

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Sep 29, 2005 by Alison Ryan

New attitudes toward old buildings were in the spotlight Wednesday as a crowd that included architects, preservationists, archaeologists, students and planners hit the sidewalk to learn about Portland's green historic buildings.

The LEEDing Historic Preservation walking tour, led by local architects, planners and developers, let 30 attendees of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2005 National Preservation Conference get a glimpse of Portland's successes in integrating sustainability and preservation.

It's becoming part of what makes Portland so green, this trying to save historic buildings and getting historic buildings to be sustainable, said Ross Plambeck, the Portland Development Commission project manager who led the tour.

Themed Sustain America - Vision, Economics, and Preservation, the six-day conference began Monday at the downtown Hilton. More than 2,000 preservationists, community leaders, educators, students and building professionals are expected to turn out for the event. Preservation's relationship to development, affordable housing, smart growth and cultural landscapes are among the connections being explored through educational sessions and statewide field trips.

Wednesday's tour wound through the Pearl District, visiting the Jeanne Vollum Natural Capital Center, the Portland Armory and the Brewery Blocks, and then hit the Telegram Building at Southwest 11th Avenue and Washington Street before wrapping up at downtown's Meier and Frank Building.

Tour participant Jere Gibber, executive director of the Virginia- based National Preservation Institute, said she's been pushing a Green Strategies for Historic Buildings workshop the institute offers. Sustainability is one of her pet projects, she said, and she hopes to put some of what she learns in Portland before even more eyes.

It's about getting people to hear about these things, and maybe they'll do something, she said.

The first two stops - the Jeanne Vollum Natural Capital Center and the Portland Armory - are both LEED heavyweights. The Vollum center is the country's first historic renovation certified gold through the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system, and the Armory is aiming to be the first historic building to earn a LEED platinum tag.

Bettina von Hagen, vice president of Vollum center owner Ecotrust, pointed to the use of reclaimed and renewable materials, attention to natural light and fresh air and energy and water efficiency as part of the building's green restoration.

Part of our redevelopment goals were not to change it significantly but to enhance it, she said.

The bustling building offers a glimpse of an old space made active again. The space holds offices and retail stores, but it's also a magnet for tours of all types.

There's something about it that just pulls people here, von Hagen said. There are people in this building all the time.

Wednesday's route held entirely new experiences for Janine Glaeser of Bender and Associates, a Key West, Fla., firm. The architect got her first look at an ecoroof as well as a host of ideas for historic greening. I'm very excited to be in a city that's paving the way for green building, she said.

Glaeser also said that historic buildings provide a great starting point for green renovations, especially in terms of using existing materials.

Historic buildings are green buildings, she said.