The Round bounces back

For three years, The Round at Beaverton, Oregon, was a high-profile poster child for the failure of a transit-oriented development (TOD). When opponents of transit wanted to show that the market rejects TOD, they showed pictures of The Round, where partly constructed, vacant buildings overshadowed thousands of Portland light rail commuters every day. Now the project is back, largely built, and achieving strong sales and lease rates, officials say. The 8.5-acre development no longer looks like a failure, and it is adding to the Tri-Met ridership. The Round was a prominent tour site at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, sponsored by the Smart Growth Network, in Portland in January. The original plan called for 100 units of housing, 50,000 sq. ft. of retail, 200,000 sq. ft. of office, a small hotel, a 12-screen movie theater, an amphitheater, and 810 parking spaces. The developer could not secure financing, started the construction with his own money, and went bankrupt. Meanwhile, the city invested $6 million in infrastructure to get the site, formerly a sewage treatment plant, ready for high-density urban development. This investment was recouped in 2001 when the city bought the site out of bankruptcy court and sold it to another developer. The new Round has more office, retail, and housing (483,000 sq. ft. of commercial, 164 residential units), but no hotel or movie theater. newly opened At the time of the Smart Growth conference, The Round offices were newly opened and thriving, a health club was opening, and condos were selling briskly. The sense of relief on the part of Beaverton’s economic development manager, Janet Young, was palpable. “It was a dismal-looking thing in the center of the city,” she says. “This was the centerpiece of our downtown.” Yet after investing so much in the project, city officials were reluctant to sell to a developer accustomed to auto-oriented projects. “We toiled long and hard to create a fantastic project. It has a soiled reputation and it is coming back from that.” The office building is filled with software companies whose employees enjoy the proximity to transit. The condos are selling for $170,000 to $300,000, which is half the price of similar units in downtown Portland, 15 minutes away by rail, says Young. The city’s historic downtown is half a mile from the Round. City officials plan to connect the two with pedestrian improvements and urban development. The developer is Dorn Platz.