Settling in Portland’s Central Eastside, a vibrant and emerging district full of entrepreneurial spirit, tenants of The Redd on Salmon Street is among the district’s 1,200+ businesses that employ 17,000 people in diverse occupations, from traditional manufacturing and automotive repair to distilleries and design firms. The Redd on Salmon Street is comprised of a two-block, 45,000-square-foot food production and distribution campus including two buildings: Redd West, a former distribution hub and sales center now with 3 production kitchens, a warehouse, and offices for food-related businesses; and Redd East (completed in 2018), a 1918 steel foundry that has been restored to provide space to support food-related education and events
Redd East includes 16,000 square feet of food production and event space, including a commercial demonstration kitchen and a micro production kitchen for minority and women food and beverage entrepreneurs. To restore the existing 16,000-square-foot building, Ecotrust partnered with WALSH and Urban Patterns. The project utilized local and reclaimed materials, minimal energy use, and featured a 101.5 kW roof-top PV array.
The Redd on Salmon Street also provides the infrastructure to enable the mutually reinforcing web of farm to table that creates jobs and restores land, water, and habitat, while mitigating climate change — a web connecting the soil, water, forests, and farms to the innovation emerging from dynamic, growing, and evolving businesses.
The Redd on Salmon Street is not Ecotrust’s first redevelopment project focused on repurposing a building to drive economic development. Ecotrust’s headquarters, also built by WALSH, is in a building that spent a century as a hub for the goods of the industrial economy. Now it has become a focal point for a new economy in which “natural capital” — the flow of goods and services from nature — is our measure of prosperity and resilience. From the native timber Ecotrust used and preserved to the daily business and events that keep the building humming, the Natural Capital Center is an evolving expression of our commitment to the long-term well-being of people and nature.
Renderings courtesy of Urban Patterns.
