The Pearl Loft Review

So, there's a place in downtown NW Portland called "The Pearl District". I spend a lot of time there, since the studio I work in is there. It used to be filled with loads and loads of industrial-type crappy manufacturing buildings and whatnot. Over the last decade it has entirely transformed in to the fancy-ass loft-filled section of downtown, making it the place for young, childless upper class, uppity business execs, and Tyler Durden (pre-apartment exploding) IKEA furnished minimalists.

It happens in every city sooner or later and THAT neighborhood to live in changes every yuppie-age cycle. The industrial buildings get bought up to create loft spaces and mini community areas using the Greenwich Village model of old-world living in a "flat". I've got to admit, I love the idea of loft space living. It's appealing for a variety of reasons. There are an equal number of negatives too, but I suppose that could be said for just about anywhere you live.

This year, to generate some additional interest in the new loft spaces, they put on this Pearl City Spaces thing. It's basically one of those "street of dreams" open home shows, but done with lofts. Last week, my lovely wife Violet and I took this tour. We aren't in the market for a loft space, but we both like the idea of loft-like open living spaces and we thought we could get some ideas by attending.

The tour covered 7 lofts in 3 buildings, separated by about 10 city blocks. Each loft was decorated by local designers, having business in the Pearl. All of the furnishings and decor were provided by local suppliers and artisans. Also, each loft carried a lifestyle "theme" with it, which gave the space a unique feel, specific to the pretend person/people living in the space. Most of the lifestyle themes were forgettable, blending in to each other. A couple were very over-the-top and took away from the actual loft itself. Their point was to warm the loft space up, which historically has a clean, sterile feeling to it. We felt they tried a bit too hard. Don't most people who consider loft living want that loft-like feeling to their place? If I'm buying a cabin in the woods, I'm not going to try and make the inside look like a desert adobe. The same applies to a downtown city loft, dammit.

The lifestyle themes were like: The Empty Nest, The Bachelorette, Married with Child, and Young Love. There were only 2 spaces that we felt could even have the possibility of working for our family of 4. Not surprising, really. The average square footage was around 1200 and the average price was around $500K. That tells me I we would be much more comfortable in a $900K loft, but we should probably just stick to living in a house.

Overall, it was fun and I'm glad we did it. The lofts themselves had little-to-no personality. I'm not all that surprised, I guess. These were all new construction lofts, and I'm sure a tour of older loft buildings would have been much more interesting. After seeing the first loft in a building, you were just seeing the same thing over and over, with just a different floor plan and different city view. It was also interesting to see how much those people living down in that area are paying for their space. It sure would be nice to live downtown, but for the money I would rather live on a lake.