Photo: Courtesy Beam Development
A landmark building on Portland’s central eastside is about to be significantly redeveloped, and the folks behind the project plan to make it very bike-friendly.
The B&O building on SE Stark and 2nd (between the Morrison and Burnside bridges) is being re-constructed by Portland-based Beam Development into creative office space for small businesses.
Photo: Courtesy Beam Development
Beam’s Keven Farrell got in touch to tell me that, along with their architects, they’re going to create a “super bike-friendly building.”
Here’s an excerpt of an email forwarded to me from an architect working on the project:
“… the B&O is aptly located on the main bicycle access to the district along Stark St. This street has recently been improved by PDOT to include bike lanes and minimize back in loading along the route.
We are also doing major improvements to Second Ave. along the property line to remove the abandoned tracks, replace the potholed street surface and provide sidewalk access. We have requested PDOT to allow short term bike parking on this sidewalk…we have also considered locating short term bike racks inside the north entry.
The basement affords a lot of space for secure long term bicycle parking. We have two areas for bike parking located close to the elevators on the north side and south sides of the building. The south bicycle parking will be on a floor mounted rack…The north bike parking area will be in a separate room on wall mounted racks.
This room is planned to be a future locker room build-out with showers an adjacent a work out facility. Since the building can accommodate so many bikers due to its location and facilities we have anticipated that there may be a need for more secure bicycle parking stalls and have identified flex space close to the south elevator, in the basement to accommodate that need. We hope to have to use it.”
It’s great to see bicycle access and convenience given such high priority in this major re-development.