Strengthening Portland's Culture Future

Portland’s opportunity is bigger than any single venue. Let’s build an entire arts ecosystem where artists, students, audiences and cultural organizations can thrive together. The below op-ed was published in Oregon ArtsWatch on July 16, 2026.

Culture is not a luxury layered onto urban life. It is the force that transforms a collection of buildings into a city people are proud to call home.

Arts and culture are central to Portland’s identity, filling our city with an original and authentic energy recognized around the world. They are also an economic engine, supporting artists, stage workers, restaurateurs and small businesses while drawing visitors who come for experiences they can find nowhere else. Economists call this the “experience economy.” Portlanders might simply say it’s why they love living here.

We must move forward with the multi-use Performing Arts + Culture Center proposed by Portland State University in partnership with the city of Portland because it leans into all those strengths, while building an entire arts ecosystem. It’s needed now more than ever, as artists, cultural organizations and arts workers face post-pandemic pressures that threaten their livelihood. We must meet this challenge with a civic response equal to the scale of the opportunity before us.

That is why PSU is offering the largest developable land parcel in downtown Portland – a 4.25-acre site owned by the university and made available to the city through a proposed $1-a-year ground lease – for the Performing Arts + Culture Center complex. We believe Portland’s future should not be an either-or proposition. It should be both-and. Broadway and community arts. Students and working artists. Cultural vitality and downtown renewal. The opportunity before us is not to pick winners, but to build the civic infrastructure that creativity, community and commerce all require.

This vision extends beyond any single building. As one of Keller Auditorium’s closest neighbors, Portland State is naturally invested in its future. Alongside many civic leaders, we see an opportunity to connect a new Performing Arts + Culture Center, a reimagined Keller and PSU through one of Portland’s hidden treasures, the Halprin Sequence of urban fountains and plazas – helping to create a destination district greater than the sum of its parts.

But a destination district requires strong anchors – and for that, square footage matters. The large site PSU has offered provides room for a Broadway theater purpose-built for today’s audiences and tomorrow’s productions, with the public spaces, accessibility and patron amenities needed to welcome large audiences comfortably. Its size also allows for the loading facilities, technical infrastructure, rehearsal rooms, staging areas and backstage spaces that modern touring productions require. Those advantages all improve conditions for the creative workforce while strengthening our ability to compete for the next generation of productions. If Portland wants the blockbuster shows that fill seats, create memories and support nearby businesses, it will need a Broadway venue equipped to attract them for decades to come.

A thriving arts ecosystem is about more than the marquee on opening night. Alongside the city-owned Broadway theater, the Center will include classrooms, collaborative spaces, a professionally equipped academic/community theater and flexible studio-theaters for teaching, experimentation and performance. Crucially, the university will own and operate these additional spaces, guided not only by market forces but by a mission of education, access and public service. Shaped through years of conversation with artists, arts organizations and community partners, they will be designed not simply to present great art, but to cultivate it.

As Oregon’s urban-serving public university, PSU exists to prepare students for meaningful careers while serving the city. The Center will give students opportunities to learn and perform in professional-caliber venues, connect with working artists and gain hands-on experience in creative industries, while also creating pathways into stagecraft, production and hospitality. The Center will be a place to both experience the arts and build a life in them.

That mission is especially important at a moment when many of the artists and organizations that define Portland’s cultural identity continue to struggle. Smaller arts groups, culturally specific organizations and independent artists often lack affordable places to create, perform and grow. PSU will campaign to raise private support to help ensure equitable access to its spaces – an investment in the people who will shape our city’s cultural future.

Just as the theater brings people downtown, the Center’s hotel and conference center keeps them there, transforming a visit into a stay and a performance into a destination experience. The hotel is intentionally modest in size. The goal is not to capture all demand but to generate more of it, benefiting neighboring hotels, restaurants and businesses as part of a larger strategy to create year-round vibrancy.

Any discussion of a project of this scale inevitably turns to cost. It should. But the more compelling story may be the momentum already behind this exciting vision. Portland State has committed its land and secured more than $150 million in early funding through state bonds, tax increment financing and philanthropy. Portland-based Colas Development Group has entered into an exclusive negotiating relationship to develop the hotel and conference center, bringing the prospect of $70 million in additional private investment. Even in this earliest pre-development phase, public and private partners are stepping forward because they see the enormous potential of this nationally unique project.

It is worth remembering how Portland State joined this effort in the first place. The university did not seek out this role; the city of Portland asked PSU to help it solve a civic challenge. In response, PSU has brought no-cost land, capital development expertise, fundraising capacity and a track record of convening public and private partners. Over the past several years, the city’s numerous studies and independent advisory groups have all reached a consistent conclusion: The PSU site and PSU as a partner offer Portland its strongest opportunity to build a future-ready Broadway venue.

Their recommendations all highlight the clear advantage of building a new venue while Keller Auditorium remains open and operational. The city’s advisors have concluded there is no viable temporary Broadway location. A prolonged Keller closure without an alternative in place will mean no Broadway in Portland for many years, costing the city a projected $50 million a year in economic losses, and risking an exodus of artists, technicians and creative professionals for opportunities elsewhere. And once that talent leaves our city, it will be very difficult to get them back.

Portland has a choice to make. We can continue debating individual projects, or we can embrace a vision worthy of our city. We can invest in artists and students, Broadway and community arts, public spaces and private development, in downtown’s economic future and in its cultural soul.

The opportunity before us is not to choose between Keller and the Center, but to connect their futures. Let’s write Portland’s next chapter not in the language of scarcity, but in the language of possibility.

Sarah Schwarz, President, Portland State University Foundation
Julie Vigeland, Community Arts Leader