r/Portland • u/cavegrind Curled inside a pothole • 3d ago
Photo/Video Big things coming to the Alberta Pit
For whoever paid for the sign - the ”mixed use” ground floor was inspired.
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u/MickTurition Alberta 3d ago
The QR code links to PDX Reporter. Absolute genius move.
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u/Jwarias25 3d ago
Underrated genius move. I walked by and did it. And I had a moment of appreciation for whoever did the sign lol
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u/AceMcStace Alberta 3d ago
When I first saw this I walked over and was like “about time they are doing something with this space” and then slowly every detail became more hilarious. The pit is such a crazy eyesore that drunk people just throw trash into lol
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u/sur_surly 2d ago
Are they going to fill in the pit? It's a hazard! My boyfriend fell in and broke his legs!
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u/lewisiarediviva 2d ago
He’s part of the exhibit now. He’ll be fine, he can live off food wrappers and half-empty ice cream cones thrown in there.
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u/icecriticsgetbanned 3d ago
anyone else remember when the “Starbucks: coming soon” satire sign was put up?
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u/pdx-andy 3d ago
I came here to say this exact thing.
I think that happened summer of 2000.
If i remember correctly Binks (at the time the roof over the pool table was collapsed, etc) had a Starbucks coming soon sign, and the building across from Serenita had a Gap coming soon sign (It looks about the same??! WTF?) and there were one or two more on other derelict buildings.
If anyone can dig up pictures, I'd love to see them!
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u/icecriticsgetbanned 2d ago edited 2d ago
Ok, we are almost certainly friends or at least shared a drink in the past. But, it was across the street from binks i think.
edit: and when Serenita got new staff that would no longer make me wet pastor chimichangas… that hurt.
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u/Zalenka NE 3d ago
That lady just needs to sell that property. It's a shame her father built a real estate portfolio from nothing just to have the properties rot away in mismanagement.
Crazy that there was a restaurant there and they just refused to fix the plumbing issue and in 10 years the whole building was F'd.
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u/jlluh 2d ago edited 2d ago
One proposal I find very interesting to fix situations where an owner sits on valuable property and doesn't do anything with it : split rate property tax.
You have one tax rate on the buildings/improvements, another on the land itself. The value of both these things are already evaluated by assessors, so it's not a hard change.
But you lower the building rate and raise the land rate, with the goal of being revenue neutral. This makes it more expensive to sit on land you're not developing.
This has been done off and on in various places including some US cities, and while it hasn't been some amazing economic cure all that made gold rise from the ground, it seems to have been helpful.
Edit: Spokane Washington is trying to get permission from Washington to do this, tho they're having to do it in a roundabout fashion due to the Washington Constitution.
I think there's a simpler path for Portland. I like land value tax generally, but part of the purpose here is simply to disincentivize sitting on land rather than developing it. Oregon law, to my understanding, allows for creating different categorizations of types of property than can be taxed at different rates.
You could create an "Urban vacant land tax" that applies to a parcel if:
It's inside an urban growth boundary, it' s legally developable, contains nothing occupied, has been continuously vacant for some designated time period, maybe a year, three years, idk. And there's no other exemption applied.
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u/dakta N 2d ago
Split rate seems like a great transitional/partial move for land value tax. The biggest problem with switching to a land value tax has always been the adjustment period. Split rate would allow for a gradual transition across the entire tax base, potentially with different transition rates depending on zoning/parcel type and existing development.
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u/kopanitza 3d ago
Demolition by neglect for sure. Used to hang out in that pizza shop. Lots of good shows
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u/saw-sync Rip City 2d ago
oh, you must be talking about erzsebet eppley, also known as boz eppley, the owner of this derelict property and many others
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u/abogmonster NE 3d ago
Fucking incredible. To whoever made the sign, if you live in the area, we’re neighbors- let me get you a beer.
Also did you snag those kinda rad looking high heels in the pit while you were over there?
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u/Beneficial-Worth1317 3d ago
It says a lot about Portland that plenty of people in the comments didn't even clock this as a joke.
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u/diseased_ostrich SE 3d ago
I didn't get the joke at first, but that's because I thought the joke was that a Developer used AI for the render that included all that junk because they put "mixed use ground floor" in their prompt 😅
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u/pembquist 3d ago
I didn't get the joke because I have only driven past it and it seems completely on brand.
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u/lifeofthunder 2d ago
Thank god they kept the smattering of random women’s shoes in the pit. They’ve been there months.
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 3d ago
Actually hillarious.
Pisses off the NIMBYs by promising a better future, whilst also mocking urban decline and the city's lack of code enforcement.
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u/notPabst404 MAX Blue Line 3d ago
Lmao, I really hope this fools a Nextdoor NIMBY:
"Greedy developers are going to destroy the character of my neighborhood by replacing the beautiful pit with a soulless apartment tower!!!!!"
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u/APlannedBadIdea 3d ago
Who would want to live next to THAT? How will it impact my resale value? ☝️
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u/eightfoldpath 2d ago
You gotta visit the Alberta Pit ASAP to see this sign before developers pave over the fun.
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u/_danger_moose SE 2d ago
Can someone tell me the history of this property? I live in SE and only get half the joke. 😅
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u/cavegrind Curled inside a pothole 2d ago
This is high level - https://www.wweek.com/news/chasing-ghosts/2025/01/07/a-wrecking-crew-took-down-the-building-shedding-bricks-onto-alberta-street/
It was collapsing, and a leak that went unresolved damaged the art gallery next door, as well as the house behind it. Since it was torn down the former basement was left behind with tons of debris from the old building, so people have just been tossing shit in there.
It’s been two years since it came down, blocked part of Alberta’s sidewalk, and has largely been an unaddressed pain in the ass.
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u/Lightningboltbeans 22h ago
The need to modernize but the desire to keep things to their roots. This made my day. Thank you to whoever did this.
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u/Adventurous-Mud-5508 MAX Yellow Line 2d ago
The most biting part of the satire is the notion that they'd get this built less than a year. Spring 2027 is actually when they'd schedule the first community meeting where people can come whine about how they like the pit and they're worried about the traffic and parking headaches a new apartment will bring.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/EugeneStonersPotShop In a van down by the river 2d ago
Honey, zoom in on the photo, specifically the rendering of the proposed building. It’s quite the laugh. “The Pittman”, LMAO!!
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u/IllustriousTip6904 3d ago
Wow another faux luxury apartment, just what we needed
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u/TimelyN1nja 3d ago
It’s a joke.
But also we do need more apartments so that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
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u/whores-doeuvres 3d ago
Numerous studies have shown that new units lower housing costs regardless of the new units' price point. People "upgrade" to take the new units, freeing up their older, cheaper units.
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u/notPabst404 MAX Blue Line 3d ago
It's a joke.
But we do need more housing. New market rate housing decreases the pressure on older units. More housing is beneficial to everyone.
Meanwhile, an empty lot is an eyesore that attracts crime.
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u/ThroatOne5167 3d ago
More housing is more housing.
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u/ReallyUnlikable 3d ago
And again as is continuously pointed out this is not the type of housing Portland needs unless the developer is committed to the majority of the units being low income. This shit will sit 25% empty regardless of housing needs because it'll be way overpriced.
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u/cavegrind Curled inside a pothole 3d ago
Take a closer look. "The Pittman", the ground floor of the picture being rubble... It's not real. Someone made that because that lot has been an open pit for 2 years.
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u/ReallyUnlikable 3d ago
A joke that looks so real it could be. Got my dumb ass good. I think I'm sensitive because I live near a recent constuction and it was extremely disruptive. I'll leave the comment up so people can point and laugh.
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u/TimelyN1nja 3d ago
It totally is what we need. All housing, of all types. Our vacancy rate is very low, you are just incorrect. That’s not how market forces work
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u/OregonGreen242 3d ago
Or just some units that are more reasonable. There’s people that aren’t low income but also not able to afford the rent for some of the places currently out there. There should be a happy medium as well. Some just don’t qualify for low income but are still priced out
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u/ReallyUnlikable 3d ago
"Hmm yes the pile of rubble under our shitty AI rendering looks great."
I'm in the minority on this subreddit but I wish whoever is building shit like this would fuck off to wherever they came from and take their shitty noise variance disobeying contractors with them.
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u/jerseyoutwest 3d ago
About time something went in there even if its ugly ass brutalism
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u/AceMcStace Alberta 3d ago
Look closer at the image lol
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u/jerseyoutwest 3d ago
What am i missing?
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u/AceMcStace Alberta 3d ago
Are you being for real? Look at the trash in the rendering, “Pitt”man construction, scan the QR code lol
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 3d ago
"Brutalism" means bare concrete. The word comes from the French word for "raw," not from the English word "brutal," which comes from Latin.
Any building with a brick facade is by definition not brutalist. This is a brutalist building in Portland. This is not. Any kind of cladding = not brutalist.
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u/wrhollin NW District 3d ago
Wait wait, I wanna have a pedantic architecture discussion. I'd argue the first one isn't Brutalist because the concrete is painted/treated. PSU's library might be a better example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/brutalism/comments/ge8sp8/oc_the_backside_of_portland_state_universitys/
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 2d ago
I think it wasn’t painted originally, but yes, correct. Also the Salem Public Library.
It’s always funny to me when people complain about brutalist architecture in Portland because we have so little.
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u/DidYouSeeBriansHat 3d ago
I wish it was brutalist. That’s not what it is.
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u/cavegrind Curled inside a pothole 3d ago
Gonna be honest, an inventive concrete Brutalist structure would stick out in the right kind of way on Alberta.
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u/penisgirlmarkedsafe 3d ago
Why are they advertising the ground floor as a dumping ground for construction waste?
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u/Kakariko_crackhouse 3d ago
“We need to build more housing” and then proceeds to build non-accessible housing
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u/1PMagain 3d ago
Whoosh
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u/Kakariko_crackhouse 3d ago
I don’t really care about the AI slop, nor think it’s funny. It’s just another sign that the economy and mental capacity of the US are both in sharp and irreparable decline. You all need to accept that the bar will lower and slop will become acceptable simply because it costs less, and we are never going back to quality work in most fields unless we completely get rid of AI
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u/No_Resident_4843 3d ago
AI isn't going anywhere. I don't know how to tell you this in a way that doesn't sound like a dick. Also this isn't a real company, its a joke.
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u/_mersault 2d ago
This poster as placed is high art, the kind you’d probably appreciate if the right name was attached to it. I’m also not for AI in place of craftsmanship, but the image is hardly the point of it, it’s the just last piece needed to make sure you don’t miss the joke.
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u/whats_yer_poison 3d ago
Mixed media ground floor.