Finding a Home for Food Carts

 

Ankeny Block

After decades of planning babble and urban renewal projects, nothing has added as much vitality to downtown Portland as the dozens of food carts that popped up in recent years on surface parking lots.

 For less than the price of a restaurant meal, workers, residents and visitors could find an array of international aromas and food choices packed within easy walking distances. Entrepreneurs found entrances to the food business at less than brick-and-mortar prices.  Parking lot owners no doubt enjoyed the steady monthly rentals.

Two years ago, construction on a high-rise luxury hotel forced eviction of 55 food carts from a block at S.W. 10th and Alder.  The city government pledged to find a new home for at least some of them, and hit upon a half-block site at W. Burnside that happened to be the southern terminus of the North Park Blocks.

 Sometime in the 1920s, the block had been adorned with two public restrooms designed in the Georgian style, most likely by architect Jamieson Parker. The brick restrooms flanked an elegant water feature that included a lion’s head emptying water into a reflecting basin.

Historic image from Ankeny Street (Date unknown)

 Parker ranked as one of Portland’s highly-skilled architects at the time, having worked in the offices of A.E. Doyle and then Folger Johnson before opening his own practice in 1921.  He designed dozens of Portland houses and the carefully-crafted First Unitarian Church, in the Georgian style, completed in 1924.  Alas, his architectural career like many others was sadly derailed by the Great Depression.

 The Ankeny Block (as it came to be known) at the southern tip of the North Park Blocks fell into hard times.  The restrooms ultimately were locked shut and substantially abused by graffiti.  The water feature’s reflecting pool was covered over.

 The city approved $269,000 to prepare the site for about 20 food carts on three sides.  While the carts are now open for business, the rest of the park is a work in progress.  Fortunately, the graffiti has been cleaned up, and the restrooms might be returned to use someday. 

"We had to snake all the drains as they were backing up and we pulled all sorts of stuff out," said Keith M. Jones, director of Friends of Green Loop supervising the project.  "All of this work is very expensive and we are tackling it in stages. Our plans are to reopen the bathrooms to the public, but we will need to have a lot of work done first."

On a less appealing side, the remaining portion of the historic water feature was removed.  As seen below, big electrical boxes were added to one restroom, detracting from its architecture.

Pictures of the old water feature are rare. A request is pending with the city archives (now closed by the pandemic) to look for an image showing the "front" side of the demolished fountain.

A former member of the Portland Parks Foundation advises, “The original photo showed a partially brick (with cast stone elements) garden wall, with balustraded railings at both sides. The fountain's water supply appears to be a lion's head, which spilled into a decorative basin.  The basin was covered up when a partial stage was constructed over it some years ago. In all, (the demolition) demonstrates Portland Parks and Recreation’s current attitude toward history and architectural features within our Portland Parks.”

The center of the block is now barren gravel.  Jones said, "We also want to bring back the stage that was in the center of the park and start programming the space." 

 Success of the city’s efforts to relocate food carts at Ankeny Block is not guaranteed.  The carts are farther away from the downtown employment core, and the employee population might continue to be reduced by the pandemic and long-range effects of more people working from home.  Indeed, the project is considered by the city to be a three-year experiment.

If successful, the block again could become an attractive element of the historic North Park Blocks. Who knows, maybe some day someone will be interested in restoring the historic water feature.   

 ------Fred Leeson

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