Opinion pieces on Oregon Sustainability Center use fuzzy math: Portland City Hall roundup

Late last year, the Portland Development Commission inked a $22,000 contract with a public relations consultant to promote the Oregon Sustainability Center in Salem.

The $62 million project -- an ultra-efficient office building mixed with classroom space -- faced an uncertain path in the 2012 Legislature. Last year, House Republicans balked when project backers sought $37 million in state funding for the center, a joint endeavor of the city of Portland and the Oregon University System. Construction costs put the building at the top of Portland's office market.

In its contract with former Oregonian columnist David Reinhard, PDC said further PR work was necessary in advance of the February session "to ensure decision makers and the public are well informed about the project goals, costs and outcomes, including statewide opportunities and economic development return."

But a few opinion pieces and letters-to-the-editor that resulted from the PR contract used figures that offered an unclear picture of the project's total cost and how it compared to other projects.

A key argument of those pieces was that the Oregon Sustainability Center would cost about the same as Oregon Health & Science University's new Collaborative Life Sciences Building.

To make that point, a Dec. 28 letter-to-the-editor and Jan. 20 op-ed in The Oregonian cited the sustainability center's $434 per-square-foot construction cost. By comparison, the life sciences building is said to cost $475 per-square-foot in those two pieces.

With land and financing, however, the price of the sustainability center shoots to $474 per-square-foot, according to project supporters at Portland State University and the Oregon University System.

That's still in line with the life sciences building, no?

The cost of the life sciences building requires a footnote.

PDC calculated the $475-per-square-foot price of the life sciences building by including the cost of land at South Waterfront, the project's location. However, that land was free, because it was donated by the Schnitzer family in 2004.

Without that extra bump from the estimated value of the land, the cost of the life sciences building drops to $464 per-square-foot, PDC confirms.

Later editorials acknowledge this difference.

"The $434-per-square-foot cost — $474 with land — seems high to some," J. Clayton Hering, a Portland real-estate expert, wrote in an op-ed Feb. 8 in The Bend Bulletin. "The more comparable Collaborative Life Science Building now being built at the Oregon Health & Science University will average about $464 per square foot."

On Jan. 20, Hering wrote differently of the two projects in an op-ed submitted to The Oregonian using facts from PDC.

"Critics talk of the building's $434 cost per-square-foot," Hering wrote last month. "The best comparison would be the Collaborative Life Sciences Building now under construction in Portland. It is 400,000 square feet and will cost about $190 million. That's $475 per square foot for a building that, like the Oregon Sustainability Center, will tap into our state strength and generate jobs and economic growth across the state."

One final note: The original PR contract states that key messages on the sustainability center would be developed "with involvement by the Portland mayor’s office, PDC, Portland State University and the Oregon University System."

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Opinion pieces on Oregon Sustainability Center use fuzzy math: Portland City Hall roundup