City tees up Portland State arts center, short-sheets Keller Auditorium
City Council committee to hold 2 p.m. public hearing on Tuesday
Plans to downgrade the Keller Auditorium while chasing Portland State University’s vision of a performing arts and cultural center dumbfound me.
Yet the PSU plans keeps checking off the boxes, as if by some invisible hand divorced from market forces.
The first clue that something strange was brewing was when a Chicago-based consulting firm, tasked with determining if the city could support two 3,000-seat auditoriums, went beyond its assignment and named PSU as the preferred option.
Two official advisory bodies piled on. The mayor’s ex officio table advised moving forward with the PSU complex and then later cutting down the Keller to half its size, even though maintaining its 3,000-seat capacity would not cost much more. What it would do is remove a potential competitor to PSU for Broadway productions.
This is a terrible time to expand the city’s performing arts venues. Two private arenas are being built on the near Eastside that will pull major music events from public auditoriums. This PSU move is akin to a family building a five-bedroom house just as the youngest children move on to college.
Among the many arguments against short-circuiting the Keller is the death spiral it would bring to the immediate neighborhood. The Ira Keller Fountain is a world-class attraction, but without the adjacent auditorium, it becomes isolated public space; hard to monitor, populate and keep safe. The parking structure next door would become another security headache.
The PSU plan is based on estimates, not detailed plans, as was the case with the Keller option. A commitment to the far more ambitious Portland State University could lead to another kind of death spiral of rising construction costs, unfunded operating costs and insufficient ticket sales.
The City Council City Life Committee will hold a 2 p.m. hearing on Tuesday, Aug. 11. For information, visit portland.gov/council-clerk/testimony-registration?doc_id=62790