Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
3
PEARL DISTRICT: URBAN ART
PROJECT
BOUNDARIES:
NW Lovejoy St., NW Couch St., NW 15th Ave., NW Broadway
DISTANCE:
2 miles
DIFFICULTY:
Easy
PARKING:
On street
PUBLIC TRANSIT:
TriMet Bus 20 (W. Burnside and NW Park Ave.) or Portland Street-
car (NW 11th Ave. and Couch St., NW 11th Ave. and Glisan St.)
The Pearl District hasn't always been the urban-designer's dream zone it is today.
Until about 15 years or so ago, it wasn't really known as anything at all—sort of a
blank, vaguely forbidding area between downtown and NW 23rd Avenue, full of
empty warehouses and vacant lots. (At a recent live show with his band the Afghan
Whigs in Portland recently, musician Greg Dulli told the crowd, “I've been coming to
Portland since the '80s. There was
not
a Whole Foods in the Pearl in the '80s.”)
Gradually, a small vanguard of artists, drawn as ever by the cheap rent in out-of-the-
way loft spaces, started moving in. Around the same time (roughly, the late 1980s and
early 1990s), the Portland Development Commission noticed the area—the smart
money always follows the artists. By 2000 the Pearl District had officially become a
“project.” In October 2001 the City Council voted to adopt the “Pearl District Devel-
opment Plan: A Future Vision for a Neighborhood in Transition.”
And boy, did that ever work. These days the Pearl is the kind of neighborhood you
have to get dressed up for. Those empty warehouses are now sleekly renovated lofts
and condos, and the streets are lined with upscale galleries, home-decor shops, and
high-end restaurants. The Portland Streetcar carries people in from downtown (al-
though it's often faster just to walk). Once a month the district becomes a huge street
party during the First Thursday Art Walk, when galleries open their doors to premiere
new exhibits. (Some people do actually go to look at the art, though many are there to
check each other out—and for the free wine.) Some locals love to hate the Pearl—it's
too moneyed and too polished to be interesting, and rent is way beyond a struggling
artist's budget—but certainly from an urban-planning perspective, the transformation
is remarkable.
