If you walk past the lot just north of Portland’s Lan Su Chinese Garden, you won’t see anything memorable. There are some surface parking spaces, chain-link fencing, a storage shed and a tented, make-do greenhouse for delicate plants the garden is trying to keep alive through the winter.

But Block 24 — as it’s officially called — soon might be impossible to overlook.

The iconic, 25-year-old Chinese garden in Old Town is planning to remake the lot into an expansive development dedicated to Chinese culture, with an art gallery, a performance venue, a cafe, a permanent tourist-friendly greenhouse, and more.

The Lan Su Chinese Garden already has selected architects to prepare a conceptual plan for the ambitious project, said Elizabeth Nye, the garden’s executive director. The team includes Gene Sandoval of ZGF, who masterminded the acclaimed, recently completed redesign of Portland International Airport.

The garden isn’t ready to apply for a development permit, Nye said, but she made clear the nonprofit organization’s determination to see the expansion happen. It’s in the process of preparing an economic-impact analysis, as well as a capital campaign to raise funds for the project.

The tentative cost estimate for the development: $34 million. Nye said they hope to have the expansion completed by 2030.

But it’s still very early days. For now, Block 24 is owned by Prosper Portland, formerly known as the Portland Development Commission.

“Prosper Portland has not yet made a decision on selling the lot (to Lan Su Chinese Garden),” Prosper Portland spokesperson Shawn Uhlman said in an email. “The agency needs to see more clarity on project details as well as Lan Su’s commitment and ability to acquire and redevelop the property.”

The project might be brand-new and still getting on its feet, but Nye pointed out that the idea behind it has been gestating since even before the garden opened to great fanfare in 2000.

“One of the original proposals for Lan Su included in its title that it was going to be a classical Chinese garden and a cultural center,” Nye said. “There were all of these ideas for cultural programming and what that would look like.”

But many of those ideas turned out to be difficult to accomplish in the relatively small walled garden bounded by Northwest 2nd and 3rd avenues, and Flanders and Everett streets. After all, almost half of the garden, dedicated to maintaining a peaceful oasis in the heart of the city, is taken up by koi-filled water.

And so the leaders of Portland’s “garden of awakening orchids” looked across Flanders Street.

“When we think about our mission around inspiring, engaging and educating about Chinese culture, our ability to do that (in the current space) is severely hindered,” Nye said, adding that the garden currently partners with more than 200 individuals and organizations for cultural programming. “We have incredible resources to bring to the community (but) we don’t have the space.”

An expansion across the street will change that, allowing the garden to host larger, more varied and more frequent performances and events than it does now.

The planned expansion’s purpose is to celebrate and promote Chinese culture – the garden was born from Portland’s sister-city connection with the 2,500-year-old Chinese city of Suzhou. But another undeniably crucial goal is to bring in revenue.

The carefully crafted classical garden, Nye pointed out, is expensive to maintain, with a current operating budget of $3.2 million to keep the garden pristine in the face of Portland’s sometimes harsh weather. Nye said that according to the organization’s “initial projections,” revenue from the completed Block 24 expansion would cover the expenses of both itself and the current garden – plus an annual profit.

The expansion as envisioned would accommodate large private events, meaning, for example, Lan Su Chinese Garden would book weddings where the ceremony would take place within the garden and then the reception would be held in the expansion across the street.

The expansion’s planned gallery space would exhibit international artists, and possibly make some of the works available for sale. And the planned multipurpose spaces could help the garden hold workshops and expand its school tours, all of which would contribute to additional revenue.

Nye argued that the expansion’s value will be much greater than its hoped-for additions to the garden’s programming and bottom line. Old Town has struggled for decades – it used to be known as the city’s Skid Row – with intermittent upswings, such as when Bill and Sam Naito began a redevelopment push in the 1970s and later when Lan Su Chinese Garden opened.

Despite the successes, backsliding always has been tough to prevent. With the pandemic and the homeless crisis, the neighborhood’s fortunes have worsened in the past few years.

Nye believes Old Town will benefit from the Chinese garden having a larger footprint and greater ambition, bringing more people to the neighborhood and more customers to its various businesses.

“We really see this expansion, you know, as an opportunity to have a tremendous economic impact on Old Town,” she said. “Our best estimates are that it would at minimum double the amount of visitors that we’re able to serve.”

— Tatum Todd is a breaking news reporter who covers public safety, crime and community news. Reach them at ttodd@oregonian.com or 503-221-4313.

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