"What's this going to be like? What's the impact going to be like on our neighborhood?” “The fear and the unknown of what was coming was certainly difficult for me and other people in the neighborhood to comprehend,” he said. Reached by phone, the leader of the tram’s opposition, lawyer Larry Beck, still feels sore from the battle. Speed is extremely important to OHSU’s busy researchers who are saving patients, conducting science and hauling in millions of dollars in grants.īut homeowners in the Lair Hill neighborhood below OHSU's campus on the hill felt that their privacy - and their rights - were being stolen. But the tram was the simplest - and fastest. As OSHU’s expansion plans incubated quietly, all kinds of shuttles and conveyances were explored. Way back in the late 1970s, a city planner - and eventual planning director - Michael Harrison first hatched the idea of an aerial tram, but going between OHSU and PSU.
PORTLAND AERIAL TRAM HOW TO
The only question was how to connect Pill Hill and South Waterfront. Meantime, 130 acres of largely empty, polluted industrial land sat-as the crow flies-1000 meters away in what we now call South Waterfront, but then was “North Macadam.” Clean-up and infrastructure would be a big lift, but the right actors stepped up, including the Schnitzer Steel family, who agreed to donate the land to OHSU, and developer Homer Williams.
A new hotel, Ronald McDonald House, and, courtesy of the $1 billion gift spearheaded by Phil and Penny Knight, two new OHSU buildings are under construction, transforming the university into a major international hub of cancer research. Since plans for the tram got solidified, OHSU has built a million square feet of new facilities, beginning with the Center for Health and Healing (pictured).
The fear - and one OHSU heartily stoked - was that Portland’s largest employer would become like University of Colorado Denver's Health Sciences school and slowly move, lock, stock and lab to land it owned in the suburbs. With all the surrounding land zoned residential, every new building was a major fight with the neighborhoods. One-hundred-and-twenty years and 5 million square feet later, OHSU was landlocked. In 1880, Oregon Railway and Navigation bought 360-acres from a simple survey map, not realizing it was atop a 500-foot hill and unsuitable for the desired train-switching station.Ī University of Oregon doctor who worked part-time for the railroad got the railroad to donate the land for a medical school. The campus is essentially a historic accident. The tram grew out of OHSU's need to grow. The tram’s elegant towers and cars came courtesy of the city’s first international design competition since the early ‘80s and have since grown into a glittering landmark, making it easy to forget that when it was being conceived it was the center of a brutal political fight. Millions of rides later, Portland’s aerial tram can now be seen as one of the city’s most transformational projects ever, leading to the dramatic waterfront expansion of OHSU and the creation of a new neighborhood, and paving the way to the successful $500 million Knight Challenge that is positioning the university as a global center for cancer research. Ten years ago, two silvery orbs began floating 3,000 feet between Marquam Hill and South Waterfront over the roofs and backyards of one of Portland’s oldest neighborhoods. Portland's aerial tram connects Oregon Health and Science's campus with the South Waterfront.
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