Robert Kahn lives in Portland.

In a small city environment like Portland (2.73 square miles on peninsula), with significant historic identity, it is important for new development to accept and respect the existing scale and character of this unique place. Consistency in built form and scale, which does not limit an architect’s creativity, is important to harmony, well-being and visual compatibility experienced
by residents and visitors, especially when walking about downtown.

This is currently well expressed in the architectural scale of buildings on the peninsula. The proposal for a 30-story building in the center of downtown would be a violent, nonconforming
intrusion to Portland’s civic identity. Also, it will not help solve the housing that is needed.

There are some who claim Portland needs a tower in order to gain recognition and significance; only a dominant building, rising high above all others, will elevate Portland’s urban status. This is as false a claim as the architect’s analogy used to justify its excessive height — a lighthouse. Visitors will not come to Portland to stare at and walk in the shadow of a new tall building no
matter what it’s referenced to.

Architects love analogies, but a lighthouse? I think the architect was grasping at straws to come up with that one. Will this tower be warning us from crashing on the rocks of local hubris or as a beacon to the wealthy as to the way home from a day of sailing on their yachts? Architects are very dependent on using metaphors to justify and sell their work and this is no exception.

Lighthouse must have quickly been assumed an appropriate symbol, but it was a lazy assumption. Funny though, Bug Light, Spring Point, Portland Head Light and other coastal lighthouses don’t have to be 30 stories to do their job. Wouldn’t a better analogy have been a gilded dagger in the heart of Portland’s civic environment?

The tower’s stated purpose is to accommodate a hotel, condominiums and a restaurant. Wow, and to think I was getting worried Portland was running low on those vital needs, which are so essential to so many of us living here.

Is a towering habitat for the uber wealthy something needed, wanted or necessary in Portland? Will it truly loosen up the demand for “worker housing” in order to satisfy the real need in housing for the majority of people who want to live and work here? Will we be joyful watching all the Mercedes and BMWs driving in and out of this monument to wealth day and night?

Portland has defined its values with past monuments: to culture (Longfellow), to sacrifice (Our Lady of Victories), to working tradition (Lobsterman). The proposed tower as “an object of desire” would be a monument to personal wealth.

The hard sell of reassuring voices will soon be heard to accept this proposed monument as important to Portland’s future. So when thinking of picking an analogy, Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” seems apt.

As in the trilogy, we will hear proponents of this overbearing proposed colossus using Saruman’s voice to render us under an enchanted spell to believe in the magic of its dominating presence. Focusing our vision on one dominant object, we will be assured, is needed for our sense of well-being, happiness and Portland’s elevation to urban stardom.

But the glow from the top of the dark tower casting its shadow across the land will not be a welcoming beacon to those of us below. It will be Sauron, the Eye, “watching us from the high
place within his privileged tower. One building to rule them all.”