Crews have begun demolishing the old El Presidente Mexican restaurant building on the Providence Academy campus, signaling the start of a new phase in the long-term plan to renew and transform the historic downtown Vancouver site.
The removal is expected to take approximately three weeks. Crews from Laneco Inc. will deconstruct the building while workers from Portland’s Rebuilding Center clean and salvage bricks for future use. Some interior items such as sinks are being donated to Habitat for Humanity.
The former El Presidente building is south of the main Academy building and was originally built by Ron Oslow for a restaurant called Ron’s Century House. It later became the longtime home of El Presidente, but the building has been vacant for the past three years. The city of Vancouver and the Clark County Historic Preservation Commission approved its removal last year.
The Academy dates to the 1870s, but the restaurant building was built about a century later and is not considered historic. Even so, an archeologist will be on-site to monitor the foundation removal, according to a press release from the Trust, the local nonprofit that owns the campus.
“The Historic Trust has taken careful steps to ensure we continue to be stewards of the historic properties in Vancouver,” Historic Trust board chair Stacey Graham said in a press release. “We are continuing our partnership with the city of Vancouver, its residents and the parties involved with the renewal plan to preserve the integrity of the Providence Academy and contribute to the revitalization of downtown Vancouver in a thoughtful manner. We are working hard to define our community as a region that is rich in history with great promise.”
Renovation and Redevelopment
The Trust purchased the Providence Academy building and seven-acre campus in 2015 with the intention of renovating the building so that it can continue to serve as a core feature of downtown Vancouver.
The purchase cost $5 million and the final price tag for the decadelong renovation is expected to be as much as $15 million, plus $8 million for surrounding site upgrades. The first few rounds of upgrades have focused on repairs to the Academy’s roof, heating and cooling, as well as its electrical system along with restoration of its chapel and ballroom, according to Trust marketing and communications director Jennifer Harmon.
To cover those costs, the Trust embarked on a plan to sell 3.85 acres of parking lot space along the site’s western edge for redevelopment. In January 2018, the Trust announced that it had reached a deal with Wilsonville, Ore.-based Marathon Acquisition and Development, which has developed more than two dozen apartment projects in the Portland area.
Marathon’s proposed development is called the Aegis and includes a pair of mixed-use apartment buildings along C Street. The project is slated to include 134 apartments, with a 4,000-square-foot rooftop terrace, a 2,000-square-foot community lounge and a 1,500-square-foot fitness center, according to the company’s website.
Marathon is also serving as the demolition contractor for the El Presidente building, although the building and its section of the campus are owned by the Trust.
Architectural renderings of the proposed Aegis buildings depict the former El Presidente space as a public plaza adjacent to a second plaza on Marathon’s portion of the campus, with a parking lot entrance from Evergreen Boulevard dividing the two.
The designs for the Aegis buildings and both plazas all make heavy use of red brick masonry to complement the design of the Academy, and Harmon said the salvaged bricks from the El Presidente building will be reused in those developments.
“We’re trying to integrate all those properties so there’s some continuity,” she said.
The Aegis project went through multiple redesigns in the first half of 2018 in response to public feedback and input from the Clark County Historic Preservation Commission, including the addition of the red brickwork.
Another change saw the northern building grow from five stories to six, which allowed the project to maintain the same number of overall units while shrinking the footprint of the southern building in order to free up more space for the public plaza.
The most recent Aegis renderings came out in May, and the project has largely gone quiet since then. The only major news came in September, when the Vancouver City Council approved Marathon’s request for a multifamily tax exemption for the project, which will allow the developer to avoid paying property taxes for eight years due to the inclusion of the plaza and other public benefits.
According to city of Vancouver community and economic development director Chad Eiken, Marathon has not yet submitted its application for building permits, and the company recently told the city’s planning department that it was focusing on finishing some other projects first.
Eiken said he thought Marathon might provide more information later in the spring. Marathon officials could not be reached for comment.
When the sale to Marathon was announced, Trust officials said the first phase of development for the apartment project would break ground in early 2019, but Marathon vice president Aaron Wigod said in May that the company hoped work would get underway during this summer.
Harmon said the Trust expects work on its half of the plaza to begin early next year, although the exact timing will need to be coordinated with Marathon’s construction plans in order to minimize disruption to the Academy’s business tenants.
“They don’t want to impact parking or the street,” she said.
