PORTLAND —

On a warm and sunny weekend afternoon, Jamison Square is a beehive of activity in the heart of a very modern urban neighborhood.

Children in swimwear or in shorts and T-shirts frolic in the waters of a fountain, water tumbling from a tier of rocky walls like a cascading river. Beyond a brick-paved splash zone, families spread their beach towels among birch trees on a grassy lawn, where they picnic and watch their kids from afar. Two sculptures accent the sandy ground behind the rock wall, and around the perimeter of the square, park benches beckon to passersby, many with baby strollers or leashed dogs, to rest for a few moments.

This is a day at the beach, Portland style.

Here in the Pearl District, north of Johnson Street between Northwest 10th and 11th avenues, Jamison Square represents the hub of city living. The park is surrounded on all sides by mixed-use apartment blocks of six to 12 stories, part of a neighborhood approaching the vision of planners and designers when they began changing the former warehouse district 25 years ago.

Colorful streetcars sweep past Jamison Square every few minutes, momentarily stopping nearby, beneath a neon light that encourages residents to “Go By Streetcar.” Silently powered by electricity, these transit vehicles charge a nominal fare as they whisk passengers to and from downtown Portland, passing chic restaurants and martini bars, home décor shops and beauty salons.

Two blocks south of the square — beyond Hoyt Street and extending to Burnside Street, which divides this neighborhood from the downtown quarter — the Pearl District is dominated by galleries and design studios, cafes and cocktail lounges, boutiques and nationally renowned Powell’s Books. For eight blocks east to west, from Northwest Broadway to Interstate 405, the retail frenzy reaches a crescendo once each month, when First Thursday welcomes more than 10,000 pedestrians to the district’s businesses, their doors open well into the night.

The northeastern corner of the Pearl is a transportation hub, home to Union Station (built in 1896), the Greyhound Bus Depot and an 8-square-block post-office headquarters at the foot of the Broadway Bridge over the Willamette River. The northwestern corner, between I-405 and the railroad tracks, retains a semblance of yesteryear, although light industry is even now giving way to studio lofts and fitness facilities.

It’s in the central wedge, however, that the Pearl District’s vibrant lifestyle reveals itself. Between 10th and 13th avenues, Hoyt and Northrup streets — marked on the northwest by the venerable BridgePort Brewery, on the northeast by the sparkling-new Residence Inn by Marriott — the Pearl is a mosaic of modern brownstone townhomes and steel-and-marble office buildings, of brick-faced high-rises and fully renovated, historic warehouses such as the Natural Capital Center, better known as the Ecotrust Building.

And the boundaries continue to expand, as a flurry of apartment construction is adding hundreds of units to once-industrial acreage north of Northrup Street.

Historic flavor

Portland’s Pearl District wasn’t always like this. It was once called the River District, and as recently as 1990, its upscale residential heart was known as the Hoyt Rail Yards, a precinct that had been largely vacated after the old Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway was merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1970.

Rail travel had been on the decline since the end of World War II, replaced by highways and airports as primary means of transportation. Abandoned freight warehouses began attracting artists, who were lured by cheap rents and a much less formal ambience than in adjacent downtown Portland, as well as start-up businesses — auto repair and parts shops, in particular. Studio lofts were complemented by blue-collar cafes.

But not all businesses here were small. For more than a century, Henry Weinhard’s City Brewery, on Burnside between 11th and 12th, had been a bastion of this industrial district. The brewing empire, launched in 1864, was producing 100,000 barrels of beer annually by 1890. In 1908, it expanded across a two-block site to serve a market that extended to China.

To help its recovery when Prohibition ended in 1933, Weinhard merged with the former Portland Brewing to become the Blitz-Weinhard Co. This later was merged with Pabst, Stroh and finally the Miller Brewing Co., which moved brewing operations to the Olympia Brewery in Tumwater, Washington, in 1999. Purchased by the development firm of Gerding Edlen, the Brewery Blocks are now a mixed-use complex of office, residential, retail and dining.

Adjacent is the old Portland Armory, now home to the Gerding Theater and Portland Center Stage production company.

Built in 1891 as a place to drill troops, later a public meeting space and beer storage facility, it is today a performing-arts center that has been honored by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program as one of the “greenest” buildings in America.

Powell’s Books opened next to Blitz-Weinhard in 1971 and soon became a Portland landmark. Offering more than 1 million new, used and out-of-print books, all of them sharing shelves in nine color-coded rooms, the store takes up a city block and claims to be the “world’s largest” seller of both new and used books.

Open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, it is one of the Pearl’s busiest locations: In this day of high technology, it is gratifying to see that so many people still like to read books.

The greater redevelopment of the Pearl District owes a great deal to collaboration between Portland’s public and private sectors. In the 1980s, the Portland Development Commission launched an urban design study that culminated in the River District Urban Renewal Plan. Adopted in 1998, it provided tax increment financing for improvements within the district. In 2000, a diverse 26-member steering committee met each month to discuss the future of the district, to re-evaluate current plans and policies, and to focus on development priorities. The 105-page “Pearl District Development Plan” that this committee produced was adopted in October 2001 by the City Council.

Chic and green

Even before the Brewery Blocks were sold in 1999, smart investors had been buying up old warehouses in the district, converting them into unique living spaces. More art galleries, such as Bullseye and Froelick, and restaurants followed.

But the bell cow for the north Pearl was the Natural Capital Center, located between Ninth and 10th avenues, Irving and Johnson streets. Built in Romanesque style of timber and brick in 1895, it once served as a building supplies warehouse and a transfer-and-storage company. Ecotrust, a nonprofit conservation organization, bought the massive, 70,000-square-foot structure in 1998, invested a $12.4 million private donation in its redevelopment, and reopened in 2001 — as the first LEED gold-certified building in the Pacific Northwest.

Today, the so-called Ecotrust Building is home to a variety of “green” tenants, including Laughing Planet, Patagonia, ShoreBank and the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development. Indeed, it is an icon of Portland’s leadership in sustainability, even though the initial decision — that conservationists should participate in urban renewal — was controversial.

It’s just a few steps from the Ecotrust Building to Jamison Square and its frolicking children.

On my visits to the Pearl District, I enjoy dining on the patio at Jamison, a two-story restaurant (with a contemporary Northwest menu) beneath the 12-story Park Place tower on the north side of the square. Or you may find me sipping a martini at Olive or Twist, an indoor-outdoor lounge kitty-corner from the park on 12th Avenue. Both are great places for people-watching.

Not that the park itself is a bad spot. To its west is the six-story Riverstone building, its ground floor occupied by a bank, an apparel store and an ice-cream shop. To its south is Tanner Place, another six-story block of homes with an eyewear shop, an audiovisual store and the classy Sinju Japanese restaurant nestled along Johnson Street. To its east, four-story Pearl Court completes the circle of residential towers facing Jamison Square.

There are scores of other shops and restaurants in the neighborhood, of course. Within three blocks of the square are sushi bars and pizza joints, coffee shops and bakeries, fitness studios and, not surprisingly, art galleries. And although rents are no longer inexpensive (many artists have fled for outlying neighborhoods) and many new condominium homes are purchased well before they are completed, the diversity of lifestyles and ethnicities in the Pearl still supports a sense of quirkiness that is in keeping with much of the rest of this city.

Tanner Springs

Tanner Springs Park is two blocks north of Jamison Square, and just one block from the iconic “Go By Streetcar” sign. Crimson cranes rise sharply to its north, their height suggesting soaring buildings soon to stand where muddy holes now fill space beside Overton Street.

But at Tanner Springs — so named for a tannery that once stood there — urban planners have created something very different. A stormwater catchment pavilion channels Portland’s famous rain into the park’s sandy soil, where it filters downhill through a grassy expanse into a wetland that attracts migratory birds.

Although the native habitat here is entirely re-created, it is true to the riparian fringe that once flanked the Willamette River, less than a half-mile away.

Elevated walkways meander through the little park, making it a popular place for area adults to congregate without the energy of Jamison Square’s children. But some citizens use it for other purposes, as well — such as the group of seven people whom I encountered one early evening.

They said they were celebrating the autumnal equinox. They dressed in pink and orange — “porange,” to use their word. One man, who wore a flower behind his ear, twirled a handlebar mustache. A Japanese umbrella shaded a Buddhist couple. A woman brought her middle school-aged son, who looked dapper in an orange leprechaun’s derby.

I accepted their invitation to sit and dine. We ate cheese and crackers, carrots and beets, saffron rice with orange slices. We drank Orangina. We toasted the beginning of autumn. “Orange you glad you joined us?” asked one of my hosts.

Sleep and eat

My accommodation, two blocks away, was at the new Residence Inn by Marriott-Pearl District. Remarkably, it is the first and only hotel in the 120-odd square blocks of this urban quadrant. Built at a cost of $49.5 million, it is a six-story, 233-room structure.

Other hotels are across Burnside Street in downtown Portland — the moderately priced Mark Spencer Hotel is a convenient choice — or across I-405 in northwest Portland, where the industrial-chic Inn at Northrup Station is located.

Restaurants, on the other hand, are here by the dozen. Established favorites in the south Pearl include Bluehour, Oba!, Park Kitchen and Jimmy Mak’s, Portland’s finest jazz club. The new Khao San Thai restaurant, espousing Bangkok street food, is newly attracting attention. In the north Pearl, Jamison and Sinju are good choices, as is The Daily Cafe for breakfast and lunch, Via Delizia for marvelous espresso and The Fields Bar & Grill as an upscale sports bar.

Central Oregon beer lovers will find three breweries in the Pearl District, although that number will soon be five. The BridgePort Brewing Co., which has been around since 1984, was a Portland pioneer. The others are out-of-towners: Rogue and Bend’s own Deschutes have very popular pub-restaurants, while the Ohio-based Fat Head’s and another Bend producer, 10 Barrel, plan to open Pearl pubs this year.

Before long, perhaps, Pearl District breweries will attract as much attention as the rushing waters of Jamison Square.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com