Portland Water Bureau plans to build pump station in Willamette Park

Portland Water Bureau officials are working to tuck a 9,600-square-foot concrete pump station into Willamette Park. 

Not surprisingly, they're having a tough time. 

Neighbors are understandably concerned about the proposed 28-foot-tall behemoth in their park, which fronts the Willamette River in Southwest Portland's Johns Landing area. 

The station will be the first facility of its size built in a Portland park. It will replace the 100-year-old Fulton Pump Station a few blocks away and deliver drinking water to most of Southwest Portland. Construction is expected to run from about August 2013 to early 2015. 

The Water Bureau is paying close attention to the $10 million project's aesthetics and footprint, in the park's southwest corner. Neighborhood residents and business owners on an advisory committee want the building to blend in as much as possible. 

Why put the project in a park in the first place? There were no other feasible options, said Mike Dowd, a committee member and Portland architect who lives about 100 yards from the project site.

A main city waterline runs under the park, making it easy to connect the building to existing infrastructure. Renovating the Fulton Pump Station would have required destroying homes. Other spots near the waterline, including the Oregon Public Broadcasting parking lot along Southwest Macadam Avenue, weren't for sale or would have required condemnation.

"There were some pretty compelling reasons why it made sense to put it there," said Dowd, who will be able to see the building from his home office window. "But I think people will be upset when they see it because of its sheer size." 

The Water Bureau will mitigate the loss of park space by providing $520,500 for park improvements. The Parks Bureau and a new advisory committee will decide on those. The pump station will also include a larger public restroom and a storage area for park equipment. 

MWA Architects, the Portland firm designing the project, is still fine-tuning the exterior, Water Bureau spokesman Tim Hall said. Once that's set, they'll finish the inside. 

Among MWA's challenges: making sure pumps are above a possible flood; Willamette Park lies in a flood plain. Original plans called for a 40-foot-tall building, but community resistance helped cut it to 28 feet. 

Hall said the advisory committee and Water Bureau have worked together to make sure the building is big enough to house six electric pumps but remain as unobtrusive as possible. "We believe, with the work of the architect, that we have accomplished that," Hall said. 

Dowd is less sure. But he said MWA Architects and the bureau did their best to accommodate the committee's push to make every square foot count. 

-- Chase G. Hall

Related topics: portland water bureau, pump station, willamette park