Sockeye plans big development for Portland's little Chinatown

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Mar 11, 2008 by Tyler Graf

Portland's Chinatown has its share of restaurants and revitalized historic buildings, all leading outward from its looming, dragon- headed gate. But it also has its share of empty lots waiting to be filled by some sort of business-oriented development.

Uwajimaya, a Seattle-based Asian market chain that currently has a single Oregon location in Beaverton, has its eye on filling the now empty lot between Northwest Fourth Avenue and Couch Street. With the help of the Portland Development Commission, Uwajimaya wants to expand its presence in the Portland metro area with a new 30,000 square-foot store. The store would anchor a mixed-use development intended to bring retail and workforce housing to an area with little of either.

But with more than a year before construction on the project would start, the success of the development currently hinges on how the national economy weathers its current slowdown and the availability of public financing, say those involved in the pending project.

"If this happens, we want this to be a smooth-going process," said Don Sakai, general manager for Uwajimaya's presence in Oregon. "We want to profit from this, but we also want to make sure we fit in with everything that's going on with that area."

The PDC has given the project's developers, Sockeye Development, $100,000 to cover part of the project's feasibility study, which will continue until the summer. Doug Obletz, lead developer for Sockeye, says the project's location and scope require ample lead time in order to pursue all of the development's options.

However, developers say, the project's future is more dependent on whether the city commissioners will give PDC approval to earmark $10 million in public bonds for the project, which would be located in the downtown waterfront urban renewal area. If the bonds are not forthcoming, and there is no additional source of financing, then the project may not get off the ground, Obletz said.

"The costs of developing this project are going to be rather challenging without some public investment involved," he said, citing the neighborhood's need for underground parking as an important, and pricey, element to the development.

And as an ambitious groceries-and-housing development, it mirrors another recent mixed-use project in Portland.

Developers at Sockeye are using Museum Place - a mixed-use development anchored by a Safeway store on Southwest Jefferson Street - as a template for the Uwajimaya project, Obletz said. He developed Museum Place, and his tentative plans for the Chinatown Uwajimaya project are much the same: a floor-level grocery store sandwiched between housing above and parking below.

For the PDC, the project's primary goal is to supply the neighborhood with retail and housing options.

"In Old Town/Chinatown, there is an extremely high priority placed on creating work-force housing," said Pete Englander, a project manager for the PDC.

In recent weeks, business leaders and members of the Old Town China Town Neighborhood Association have criticized the PDC for what they view as the committee's overemphasis on developing low-income housing and day centers for the homeless in the neighborhood.

Although Obletz says he supports the social services that exist in Old Town/Chinatown, they won't create economic revitalization for the neighborhood the way a catalytic development will.

"There are still some doubts (about issuing new bonds) for the project," Obletz said. "I think one of the points we're trying to make is that a lot of work has been done to deal with social service needs in Old Town/Chinatown, but there needs to be a counterbalancing with other projects, like workforce housing."