“I see my buildings as pieces of cities, and in my designs, I try to make them into responsible and contributing citizens.” – César Pelli, Argentine-American architect (1926–2019).

About a century ago, a young man with a vision started buying parcels of land on Portland’s East side. His plan for a large commercial hub away from downtown was realized some 40 years later, when he had become a loaded southern Californian oil company executive with the means to hire the best architects of the day. Ralph B. Lloyd (1875–1953) did not live to see the opening of the mall that bears his name, in August 1960. By that time it was touted the largest mall in the U.S., designed by John Graham Jr, architect of Seattle’s famed Space Needle, as one of the first in a string of commercial centers his firm became known for.

Lloyd Center, with its open air plan, anchor stores and various attractions, including a famous ice rink, soon became a landmark of the city. Lloyd and his architects understood the lure of free and ample parking. Enough spots for 800 cars materialized. So did the customers. In the 1990s the mall was enclosed and provided with a food court. Even though that separated the complex from the previously open connection to the neighborhood, it remained more than just a place to shop. The entire complex served as a “contributing citizen” reminiscent of Pelli’s formulation. Walking groups of all ages used the space in rainy season. People found shelter from summer heat in the air-conditioned passages. Kids experienced their first taste of freedom when dropped off at the movies or the game rooms. Students hung out, and the ice rink provided endless opportunities to marvel or just people watch. Importantly, it was a community space that reflected economic and racial diversity, so sorely missed by many of us in other parts of the city.

Between the advent of E-commerce, the Covid epidemic, and changes in the overall economy, things went into a downward spiral eventually. Anchor stores left, gang-related crime and the number of houseless congregating around the neighborhood rose, and we are now at a point where the mall will be closed for good by the beginning of August.

The current owners of the center, Urban Renaissance Group and KKR Real Estate Finance Trust Inc., plan to demolish all of it and divide the 29.3 acres into 14 parcels to be sold for mixed-use redevelopment. ZGF architects offered an urban renewal proposal, and a Master plan was approved by city’s Design Commission on March 5th, 2026. Strong opposition by neighborhood groups, including the Save Lloyd Ice Coalition, and the Save Lloyd Campaign in partnership with the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, ignored by the Design Commission, have now led to appeals of this decision. The City Council is scheduled to hear arguments against efforts to replace the mall on Wednesday, June 24 at 9:45 a.m., deciding on approval, modification, or opposition to the proposal entirely.

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Impending loss of the familiar spurs melancholy for some, curiosity for others. The increasingly abandoned Lloyd Center drew photographer and public art and installation artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law for repeat visits. They turned into a months-long project of poignant documentation of a communal space under the threat of an uncertain fate. The photographic voyage is currently on exhibit at PLACE in NW Portland. Run, don’t walk, to catch this show before it closes on May 1,2026.

Tomes have been written about the lure of ruins and abandoned or decaying industrial and commercial space for photographers. Lucky for us, Law does not yield to the temptation to accentuate morbid aspects of decline. Instead, he provides a portrait of a place that still occasionally vibrates, still has moments of beauty, still conveys a sense of the original optimism of builders trying to integrate structural elegance and airiness into dens of commerce. Add to that choice of positive depiction a clever way to display his photographic harvest: the images on the wall are sequenced in various fashions that echo the feelings of walking through a Mall. There is no unifying style, color and black&white happily co-reside, sizes are all over the map, prints refuse to be rigidly aligned. Some walls are dedicated to architectural themes, others hint at subjective moments that roused emotions in the photographer. Busy views are counterbalanced by quiet glimpses. Law’s capture of the space mirrors both aspects that were emphasized by the original designs (as well as the plans for redevelopment), namely activation AND lingering.

The artist is surely familiar to ArtsWatch readers for his Urban Studies series, portraits of Portland’s neighborhoods taken with his iPhone on daily walks. These images are picked up by chance and a discerning eye, linked only by the fact that they were spotted during ambulation. Almost always interesting takes by our flaneur-in-residence. I had also reported on his curatorial prowess with works by contemporary Asian-American artists at the Portland China Town Museum, where he served as Artist Residency Director. (He will soon again curate a community assemblage, Portland as seen by photographers over age 65. The line-up of 40 participants is a veritable who’s who of the photographic community’s éminences grises, in this case more referring to hair color than actual hidden powers, I presume. Running for 6 weeks again at SPACE which generously donates its space, it promises to be a gang buster event starting at the beginning of May.)

This was the first time I saw an entire body of work exhibited by the artist, again with terrific moxie to break the rules. Simply pinned to walls, repeat motifs with slight, but important modulations. If he can continue to stay safely away from the cliff edge of vaulting into technicolor overdrive, the work could be meaningfully gathered into a book that many of us, I believe, would cherish as a memento of times coming to a close.

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“At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.” – Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter.

You’ve probably walked by this sculpture near Lloyd Center a hundred times. Larry Strickland’s 1991 stack of money on an ionic column in a fountain is titled Capitalism. If you ever read the inscriptions on some 25 of those coins, you likely agree that their outstanding feature is a competition for triteness. Samples:”Business without profit, is not business anymore than a pickle is a candy.” “Never invest in anything that eats or needs repairing.””That money talks, I’ll not deny, I heard it once. It said: “Goodbye”. I rest my case.

An alternative would have been to include some of Schumpeter’s wisdoms, his theory of creative destruction. It describes the process where new innovations replace outdated systems. Whatever you think about capitalism, insights on business cycles, entrepreneurship, and capitalist development need to be considered for modern economics. Or city planning, for that matter, if you want keep your foot in the world as is, rather than what we wished it to be.

I understand the nostalgia, the love for places that served a meaningful role in the community. I also believe we must look forwards, with the contemporary needs for affordable housing and more green spaces overwhelming. Infill of central spaces, linked to public transportation, is paramount in my opinion, IF we can guarantee that the needs of the populace are filled, and not neglected at its expense. Building housing and parks on former parking lots and store fronts sounds like the right move to me. The question is, of course, if the manifold promises and allusions to neighborhood improvement found in the development plan (downloadable here) approved by the Design Committee, are nothing but.

Are there fixed requirements of x units of this or that? Did I miss them, perusing the documents in front of City Council? Are there development laws I am not familiar with? In the plan outlines on policy for Housing Diversity (Policy 2.LD-4), at least, we read: “Encourage development of new housing, especially in Central Lloyd and on the Irvington and Sullivan’s Gulch edges to foster a sense of community and support efficient provision of residential amenities and services.” (My bolding.) A discussion of required features of any redevelopment of Lloyd Center should be paramount during the appeal process in front of Portland City Council.

Then again, we are not facing the erection of a data processing center, or a warehouse to be used as concentration camps on these 29 acres. I guess there’s always something that could be worse.

Or something to be grateful for: in this case that we have Horatio Law’s splendid documentation of a Portland landmark that can serve as a memento to mid-century architectural citizenship.