Portland Opera is finalizing its move out of its home of more than 20 years on the east bank of the Willamette River just south of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, heading instead to downtown Portland.
The company will move its operations to the World Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St., in late summer. Its current space, known as the Hampton Opera Center, has been sold to the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, which is using the building at 211 S.E. Caruthers St. as an administrative center and a gathering space for the Native American community.
The move to the World Trade Center “right-sizes the Opera to fit our hybrid work environment and will also further connect us to the growing arts district downtown,” Sue Dixon, the opera company’s general director, said in a statement released Tuesday morning.
The World Trade Center site solves several problems for the opera, releasing it from oversight of what proved to be a too-large building that a major tenant, All Classical Radio, also moved out of in late 2024 in favor of new studios in downtown Portland’s KOIN Tower.
The opera’s new home includes a pair of performance spaces for small shows: a comfortable 200-seat theater that had been home to the late Portland Repertory Theatre, and the trade center’s expansive outdoor plaza. The Hampton Center had a small but much-used performance space, and moving into new office space without a small theater would have been a loss. The company’s new headquarters also will puts its offices closer to its downtown performing spaces at Keller Auditorium and the Newmark Theatre.
Portland Opera will lease the downtown space from Portland General Electric, continuing a long partnership with PGE and its philanthropic foundation, which in the words of Tuesday’s announcement, “supports Portland Opera’s education program, Portland Opera to Go. Through the program, Portland Opera visits schools throughout the region, exposing students to the performing arts.”
The company’s remaining shows this season are the Paul Morovec/Mark Campbell operatic adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining, March 15-23 at the Newmark; and Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, May 10-18 at the Keller.
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Nice article. Clear and informative. Thank you for your good work. —Steve Kenney
PS. The Hampton Opera Center is south of OMSI, not north.
Steve, you’re absolutely right: south, not north. Went into the story to correct it and found a couple of typos to fix, too. I wrote three stories that day — obviously, I was moving too fast!