Franz River Campus

The University of Portland completed its purchase of the Triangle Park property on the Willamette River waterfront in December 2008. Now known as the Franz River Campus, the property is comprised of 35 acres adjacent to the west and 135 feet below the main campus. The 2,250 linear feet of waterfront provides a host of opportunities for natural resources for the University's environmental science program, and expansion of our facilities. The University worked with its public partners including the City of Portland, the Department of Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of State Lands, Army Corps of Engineers and neighborhood and community leaders to discuss development plans. The culmination of these discussions and vision for the site was included in the University’s 2013 Conditional Use Master Plan.

Site-wide environmental remediation was completed between 2012-2014. A complete history of the cleanup can be found here.

Since completion of the environmental remediation, the University has successfully redeveloped this former industrial site with the following projects on Franz River Campus:

• 2015 - the University constructed a 113-stall north parking lot with pedestrian sidewalks, landscape areas, and a stormwater facility.
• 2018 - the University added two soccer fields (one synthetic turf and one natural grass) on the south end of Franz River Campus. The fields are designed for varsity soccer practice and student recreation.
• 2022 - Walter E. Nelson Facilities Services building opened, a new home for the Facilities Services team with shops and offices. Read more about this building here. 
• 2023 - Boathouse and E.L. Wiegand Environmental Lab opened to support the varsity women's crew team and growing environmental science programs. A new dock was installed for crew team access to the Willamette River. Read more about the state-of-the-art flume lab here.
• 2024 - Tom and Meg Names Sand Volleyball Courts installed for practice and competition
• 2024 - Complete rebuild of North Van Houten Place (public road), providing a lighted roadway, sidewalk and signalized railroad intersection to access Franz River Campus facilities. This project included 130 steel piles driven down 40' to stabilize the hillside, new native plants and stormwater infrastructure.
• 2024 - a segment of the public multi-use path North Portland Greenway Trail was completed. N. Van Houten Place will be the connection to this segment of the trail until neighboring property owners continue with development. As part of UP's environmental cleanup and restoration of the former industrial property over 7,000 native plants and trees were planted along the shoreline as part of the project.

Rendering of Franz River Campus