Pioneer Place

History

Pioneer Place I began construction in 1988 and opened in 1990. Buildings demolished to clear the site for the mall included the Corbett Building, an office building constructed in 1907.

The development was built in two phases, the names of which are reflected in the names of the two main mall buildings. Pioneer Place I, or The "Atrium Shops"/Zone A, opened in 1990 and was developed with assistance from the Portland Development Commission. Pioneer Place II, or The "Rotunda Shops"/Zone B, is located across Fourth Avenue to the east. Construction on Pioneer Place II began in 1998, and at the time was to add 150000 ft2 at a cost of around $60 million.

Saks Fifth Avenue closed its store at the mall in 2010, with H&M taking over the portion that had been Saks men's store later that year. The remaining parts of the Saks footprint was demolished in 2012 to make way for a new Apple Store and a Yard House restaurant.

In 2016, Pioneer Place started their renovations, and completed the renovation in 2018. Brookfield Properties acquired previous owner GGP Inc. (General Growth Properties) in 2018, thus giving them ownership of Pioneer Place.

In February 2017, shared workspaces provider WeWork signed a lease to take 30,000 sqft of space, one of their first leases in a mall.

In January 2026, Brookfield Properties rebranded its retail division back to GGP.

Amenities

The center has 356154 ft2 of space and 66 stores. Pioneer Place I and II contain five levels, one of which is a basement level. The top floor of Pioneer Place II houses a Regal Cinemas theater.

Cascades, the food court, is located underground below Pioneer Tower/Zone C, which also connects to a parking garage. That parking garage, located to the south, also contains retail space, home to Tiffany & Co. The northern lower above-ground levels of the block with Pioneer Tower housed Saks Fifth Avenue.

Public transit

Pioneer Place I faces the Fifth Avenue section of the Portland Transit Mall, served by several TriMet bus routes and MAX Light Rail. It is served by all five lines of the MAX system, with its Fifth Avenue side being across the street from the Pioneer Place/5th Avenue station (southbound service), and with the Pioneer Courthouse/6th Avenue station (northbound service) and "Pioneer Square" stations (eastbound and westbound service) being only one block away. Pioneer Place II is similarly only one block away from the Third Avenue station. Since its opening in 1990, building I had been flanked by directly adjacent MAX stations on Morrison and Yamhill Streets. The two stations were closed in 2020 in order to reduce travel time for MAX riders through downtown and to the close proximity of other stations on the same MAX lines.

References

References

1. "Pioneer Place".
2. "Pioneer Place".
3. [http://www.pioneerplace.com/directory Directory.] Pioneer Place. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
4. (October 29, 2014). "The 10 highest sales-generating malls in the U.S.". Fortune.
5. (1993). "Breakthroughs Re-creating the American City". Bruner Foundation, Inc..
6. Culverwell, Wendy. (January 19, 2012). "Changes afoot for Pioneer Place". [[American City Business Journals.
7. (May 28, 1997). "Portland Development Commission chief resigns". Portland Business Journal.
8. Miller, Brian K.. (May 17, 1998). "Pioneer Place addition's construction under way". Portland Business Journal.
9. Balas, Monique. (January 14, 2011). "H&M arrives, Movie Gallery sinks". Portland Business Journal.
10. Culverwell, Wendy. (August 30, 2012). "Ex-Saks store to give way to Yard House, Apple". Portland Business Journal.
11. (February 10, 2017). "Pioneer Place signs unusual new tenant: shared-office provider WeWork". The Oregonian.
12. Urbanski, Al. (January 6, 2026). "GGP lives again!".
13. . (March 27, 1990). "Arriving with a smash (photo and caption only)". *The Oregonian*.
14. Theen, Andrew. (February 25, 2020). "2 downtown MAX stations close permanently next week; changes coming to more than a dozen TriMet bus routes". [[The Oregonian]].