School Coming-kids to follow?

Pearl resident Davis, founder of Central Portland Families, has been lobbying hard for amenities that would attract more families with children to the Pearl, and that would encourage young parents to stay in the neighborhood once their children become old enough for school.

The Fields, the Pearl’s open-space park, on the northeast edge of the district, is scheduled to open next year. And last month’s announcement that Portland Public Schools has agreed to put its first non-charter public school in the Pearl District will provide the neighborhood with the missing link of family attractions – a neighborhood school.

The small satellite school, scheduled to open in September 2011, will be part of a mixed-use development that introduces Portland to a new level of urbanism – an apartment building on top with a public school on the first floor.

The proposed building, at Northwest 13th Avenue and Raleigh Street, is the latest affordable housing apartment by developer Ed McNamara. McNamara says he recognizes the experimental nature of the project, with talk of large numbers of children living in the Pearl District more theoretical than real at this point.

McNamara and architects at Ankrom Moison Associated Architects are doing everything they can to encourage families with children to take up residence in the building, which also is scheduled to open in 2011.

“This building is going to have an enormous number of children if we do it right,” McNamara says.

Doing it right means designing a building that will attract families, and not young adults who meet income guidelines for affordable housing – who often dominate central city affordable housing projects.

The building, to be constructed on what now houses a small warehouse, will have 70 three-bedroom apartments, 60 two-bedroom apartments and eight one-bedroom apartments. The two- and three-bedroom units will have smaller bedrooms that might be considered “kid-sized,” according to architect Isaac Johnson.

McNamara says he knows he can’t legally discriminate against adults in leasing the units, but he will require that renters have at least one occupant per bedroom; so a couple could not rent a three-bedroom apartment. He says he’s hoping the building ends up with at least 130 children.

The subsidized housing building, which will be partially funded by Portland Development Commission money, will be priced well under market rate for the Pearl District. Twelve-hundred-square-foot, three-bedroom apartments will rent for somewhere around $975, and 900-square-foot, two-bedroom apartments will rent for about $825, if current rates for subsidized housing remain in place.

As an affordable housing building, tenants will need to meet income criteria that dictate they make no more than 60 percent of median family income. At current levels, a family of four could make no more than $40,700 to qualify for an apartment.

As for the first-floor school, the 12,000 square feet of space Portland Public Schools has agreed to lease should yield five or six classrooms with support space. The school likely will serve only kindergarten through second or third grade. An interior building courtyard will provide a playground for recess.

Not everybody is thrilled with the school board’s decision to commit nearly $300,000 a year for five years to lease the school space.

School board member Martin Gonzalez, who voted against the resolution, says the concept of a small school in the Pearl sounds appealing, but less so given the needs of other neighborhoods in a time of a constricting school budget.

Gonzalez says he is concerned about how the decision to fund a new school in the higher-income Pearl District appears to residents in lower-income neighborhoods, where some schools are in desperate need of repair, and some elementary schools have been closed because they were deemed too small.

“What is the message we’re sending to families who have children in buildings that we are not keeping up to par?” Gonzalez says.

Gonzalez also says he is not sure the Pearl’s experiment is going to turn out the way Davis and supporters hope.

“I’m not convinced it’s going to work out,” Gonzalez says. “It’s sort of like Field Of Dreams – build it and they will come. I’m not sure this will apply in the same way.”

But Davis is confident that McNamara’s building could signal major change for the Pearl District, with an influx of children.

“You could end up with a tipping point where the building becomes so obviously a family-friendly building that that will become its brand,” she says.

McNamara says he’d like nothing more. “Everybody is keeping an open mind to see how this works,” he says. “Maybe it changes the way other developers do their next project.”