Landscape architecture firm Kurisu International is proceeding forward in its vision as a firm dedicated to creating therapeutic gardens by moving into new digs on North Portland's Mississippi Avenue.
Earlier this summer, the firm closed on six tax lots on the northeast corner of Mississippi Avenue and Shaver Street, which encompasses a 5,000-square-foot, two-story brick building that holds the historic Mississippi Ballroom, a house built in the 1930s, a play area and garden for the Native American Youth Association, and two empty lots.
Kuniko Kurisu, the company's nursery and property manager, oversaw the sale of the firm's property in Southwest Portland - they are now in a rented space on Capitol Highway - and the purchase of the new space on Mississippi Avenue in North Portland. She said the firm plans to build an owner-occupied office building for medical, dental and other health professionals, which is to be certified in the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program standard. Kurisu also plans a therapeutic garden designed and planted on two lots for use by staff and patients and a renovation of the Mississippi Ballroom to house lectures and events that focus on environmental health.
In the residential landscaping business for 30-plus years, Kurisu International has been scaling down its business of late, focusing on therapeutic gardens in hospital and medical settings. As the firm consciously began to contract the business and narrow its scope, the Southwest Portland office it inhabited for more than 10 years outgrew the business itself. Located between Barbur Boulevard and Interstate 5, the location also no longer suited its interests.
At a company meeting last November, said Chief Operating Officer Koichi Kurisu, as firm members discussed their increased commitment to therapeutic spaces, one employee asked, "Why don't we have a garden for ourselves?"
"We all looked at each other, but nobody had a good answer," he said. Almost immediately, the firm started to look for new property, inquiring as far away from Portland as Newberg and Sherwood. The company also considered building a healing garden and office space on the property of one of a number of hospitals being built in the area, but the timing was off on each of the projects the company looked into.
With its North Portland property, instead of bringing a therapeutic garden to a medical setting, Kurisu International proposes to bring healing professionals to the garden. The firm intends to use the garden to conduct research on the effects of therapeutic gardens to supply potential clients with evidence for building such spaces.
Kurisu said the firm was not looking specifically to move to the inner city, but the once downtrodden Mississippi Avenue area spoke to other motivations. "We had no business reasons for moving into the city. It doesn't make sense for a landscape company to be there," said Koichi Kurisu. "But we have internal business reasons that drive us toward community development."
The firm was founded by Koichi and Kuniko's father Hoichi Kurisu, the developer and curator of Portland's Japanese Garden when it first opened. Before Hoichi moved to Portland from Japan, he spent some time in California where he witnessed first hand the urban sprawl the U.S. would become known for. "He saw a vast America, and he thought there was something he could do to help reverse that and bring things back to scale," said Koichi Kurisu.
Koichi Kurisu, his father and other firm members see the Mississippi Avenue area, with its pockets of neighborhood-supported businesses, operating on a small scale within a community that has been historically depressed and ethnically diverse. The neighborhood also parallels the firm's interest in healing places, as it is quickly on the mend itself after years of empty storefronts and low property values. "This neighborhood is coming back to heal itself; it made sense to us from a spiritual standpoint," said Hoichi Kurisu.
Kuniko Kurisu is in the process of choosing an architect and green industry consultants for the new spaces and the renovation of the Mississippi Ballroom. She said designing as "green" as possible fits in with the company's commitment to healthy spaces, and it is working with the Energy Trust of Oregon and the U.S. Green Building Council to find grants to make the building as energy efficient as possible.
"We are thinking about the highest energy design and architecture for health and well-being," she said. "This is something we still need to fine tune with the architect or the design firm."
Koichi Kurisu hopes that a green office building will attract tenants devoted to environmental health. "We are thinking about creating a center for human and environmental health design center with possibly a book store and an organic (food) service or restaurant," he said. "We hope to attract those kinds of tenants."
The firm expects to move into the new space within two years.
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