January 02, 2004
A Couple Of Tidbits On The Aerial Tram
Today's edition of the Portland Tribune has a profile of Sarah Graham, the architect responsible for the aerial tram between OHSU and South Waterfront:
The challenge is designing a tram tower connected to Oregon Health & Science University's patient care facility that can withstand movement, as well as squeezing a lower tram station between soon-to-be-built office buildings on Southwest Gibbs Street.
At a Dec. 21 meeting on the tram's design, Graham urged the use of steel to build the tower's base rather than the Northwest staple, wood, which had been one of the distinguishing features of her winning design. She held aloft balsa-wood models FedEx-ed from California to make her point.
The profile mentions Graham's recent statements that the initial cost estimates for the tram were "political" and not indicative of the project's realities, which now reside in the $20-30 million range:
Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood representative Jerry Ward called Graham "gutsy" for pointing out the disparity in the tram cost.
"When PATI first came to our neighborhood association, they gave us numbers of $8 million and $10 million, and now it's tripled," he said. "It's a misleading process that is harmful to neighbors. I'm not faulting her or her firm; I fault the city."
The tram project is also one of "stories to watch" rattled off in today's Oregonian, and is also mentioned in the paper's lead editorial on "risky" and "exciting" public projects. However, that editorial has apparently not made it through Advance Internet's klunky system for publishing newspaper content online.