Perkins Architectural - Exchange - Recognition - John Perkins, Hollywood Architect

Perkins’ care in designing those projects, along with his participation in business groups and community organizations in the
Hollywood neighborhood, have earned him a celebrity status with a local flair. Some in the Hollywood district call him “Mr.
Hollywood.” To others, he’s known as “The Hollywood Architect.” They’re monikers Perkins is proud to claim as his own. “At
community events, people come up to me and say, ‘I really like that building.’ It’s very satisfying to be practicing in an area of
town you care about,” he says.

Sole survivor:
If John Perkins was the kind of man who frustrates easily, he might well have ended up in a profession other than architecture. A
graduate of the University of Oregon, Perkins secured his first position with a Portland-area architecture firm just as the economy
began to droop in the 1980s. “Firms were collapsing left and right,” Perkins recalls. “My number came up, and I was out the
door.” He next landed a job with a firm in San Francisco. Six months went by and he survived a layoff that cut the firm’s
employees from 16 to 8. Eventually, however, his job with the San Francisco firm was also eliminated due to the rough economy,
but not before Perkins had a chance to add to his project portfolio by working on a range of projects that included a 12-story
urban jail in Riverside County.

Home again, home again:
Returning to Oregon, Perkins decided to try a different tact. He secured a job with an asbestos consulting firm. “I was looking for
something more stable than architecture,” he says. But he eventually realized asbestos work wasn’t really where “his heart was.”
He returned to building design, securing a job with a large architecture and engineering company called IDC, where he worked
on facilities for clients in the semiconductor industry.

Destiny calls:
Sometimes something as simple as the ringing of a phone can change the direction of your life. For Perkins, the phone call came
from a longtime friend for whom he had once designed a beach house. The friend’s family business location had burned down
and needed to be rebuilt. Did Perkins want to take on the design aspects of the project? At the time, Perkins had
been with IDC for seven years but had been flirting with the “what if” aspects of starting his own firm. “I decided
if ever I was going to make the leap, this was the opportunity,” he says.

Jumping in with both feet:
It really was dark and stormy the night John Perkins took “the leap.” He’d just left the warmth of a good-bye-and-good-luck party
his former colleagues at IDC had thrown for him. Ahead of him lay his car and a future filled with the uncertainty that comes
with starting your own business, in Perkins’ case a small architecture firm in the area ofmPortland known as the Hollywood
District. “It was cold, it was dark, and it was raining,” Perkins recalls. “And I
thought, ‘Here I am. Alone. I’m all alone.’” New guy on the block: When he first settled into his office in the Hollywood District
to drum up project work, Perkins called into play the marketing and public speaking skills he had honed while working in
asbestos consulting. He joined local business groups and community organizations in the Hollywood neighborhood and became a
fabric of daily life in the area. The networking began paying off, not in leaps and bounds and large lump sums, but with small
local projects here and there – including some work on the Hollywood Theatre building – that helped Perkins get to know
people in the community while they also got to know him, both personally and professionally.

The big break:
To most passersby, the building was little more than “a tiny fast food restaurant in a sea of asphalt,” Perkins says. But the couple
who had purchased the building that once housed a fast food restaurant called Arctic Circle saw more, an untapped potential of
a ground-floor sandwich shop topped off by eight upscale townhouses. Sitting with the couple in their sandwich shop, chatting
with them about the building, Perkins saw the same potential. “I’d go and listen to their
hopes and plans,” he says. “Then I’d go back to them with sketches.” The project – the Hancock 4 Building – turned out to be
what Perkins calls a “big break” – a visible project that helped stir the local buzz about the architect who called the Hollywood
District home.

That’s the way they like it:
Development in the Hollywood District isn’t without its challenges, Perkins admits. Longtime residents tend to be “clannish” in
their dedication to preserving what they consider the unique flavor of the neighborhood. They still mourn the now defunct Alien
Museum that once called the district home. They still call the building across from the Hollywood Theatre “the Old Fred Meyer,”
even though that retailer vacated the site years ago and a new retailer, Rite Aid, now serves as the anchor tenant. Andm the “old
library building” is still called as such, although it now hosts a daycare center and a nonprofit music program. That isn’t to say
that Hollywood residents aren’t open to change, however, Perkins is quick to point out. There’s a new bakery moving in and a
new 24-Hour Fitness building rising, and Perkins says there’s a possible “big project” on the boards, although he’s staying mum
about definite details. For developers and architects planning to work in the Hollywood area, Perkins offers a bit of advice:
Gaining acceptance and support is all in the approach. “They’re very supportive of new development,” Perkins says, as long as
it’s careful to maintain the scale of the Hollywood District in a way that new buildings or renovations of existing structures “add
to the flavor … and maintain its character as a truly unique neighborhood.”

In-filling the future:
Although he’d like his firm to grow a little bit more, from himself and one employee to maybe a total staff of five, Perkins is
content to keep his offices right where they are – on the second floor of the Hollywood Building, a pie-slice-shaped building on
Northeast Sandy Boulevard. And while he’ll keep working on projects throughout the general Portland area, he also wants to
continue playing an active role in how the Hollywood District grows. There are still plenty of opportunities in the neighborhood,
what Perkins considers “hidden treasures.” “A lot of the opportunities are taking underutilized sites and redeveloping them,” he
says. “I think you’ll see more and more of those.”