KOIN Center

KOIN Center
Location within Portland, Oregon
Alternative names	KOIN Tower King Kong Building
General information
Type	Commercial offices Residential condominium
Location	222 SW Columbia Street Portland, Oregon
Coordinates	45°30′48″N 122°40′40″W / 45.5132°N 122.6779°W / 45.5132; -122.6779Coordinates: 45°30′48″N 122°40′40″W / 45.5132°N 122.6779°W / 45.5132; -122.6779
Completed	1984
Cost	US$48 million
Owner	ScanlanKemperBard
Height
Roof	155.15 m (509.0 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	35
Lifts/elevators	9
Design and construction
Architect	Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
References

KOIN Center is a 155.15 m (509.0 ft), 35-story, skyscraper in Portland, Oregon, USA. The building, the third tallest in the city, was designed by the firm of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership and opened in 1984 at a cost of US$48 million.

The building was originally named Fountain Plaza, but it quickly came to be known as the KOIN Center, or KOIN Tower, reflecting the name of its highest-profile occupant, KOIN television, the CBS affiliate in Portland. The building was controversial while being constructed because its location blocked the view of Mount Hood that had long been seen by drivers emerging from the Vista Ridge Tunnel under Portland's West Hills going eastbound on U.S. Route 26.

The KOIN Center was the first building completed in a projected three-block development sponsored by the Portland Development Commission (PDC) that also included the city blocks immediately to the north and east. The latter was the long-time location of the KOIN broadcast studios and offices, which relocated to the KOIN Center upon its completion. Of the additional projected buildings, only the Essex House apartments, occupying half of the northern block facing SW Third Avenue were completed, in 1992. A 15-story office building on the eastern block, 100 Columbia, was proposed but construction never commenced. This building has now been cancelled.

The PDC had a number of goals in sponsoring the Fountain Plaza project. One was to provide a link between the government and central business core of downtown and the nearly completed South Auditorium redevelopment district immediately to the south. This redevelopment project, initiated in 1960, had been the first for the PDC and, though controversial at the time, has been considered by some to be one of the nation's few successful such projects from that era. Reflecting that goal, the southwest entrance to the KOIN Center faces its own street-corner plaza diagonally across the intersection from the Ira C. Keller Fountain, making a visual and pedestrian connection that important public space. The Keller Fountain, built in 1970 and originally named the Forecourt Fountain in reference to the adjacent Municipal (now Keller) Auditorium, was described by New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable as maybe "one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance." It is this fountain that gave the name to the KOIN Center project. A second goal of the PDC in proposing this mixed-use building was to promote the type of condominium apartment living common in the central business districts of large cities such as New York City and Chicago but not in Portland at the time.