The Cowboy's Dream

To the blare of bands and the fluttering of banners, 700 pigeons winged into the sky over Portland, Ore. last week to carry the good news to 29 Oregon and Washington cities. The news: the opening this week on the east bank of Portland's Willamette River of the sprawling (50-acre), $100 million Lloyd Center, the largest urban shopping center ever built in the U.S.

Only five minutes away from the traditional downtown "core" shopping area of Portland, Lloyd Center is a consumer's cornucopia. Its more than 100 retail stores are carefully clustered in competing groups (e.g., hardware, dresses) so that bargain hunters can save shoe leather. The sculpture and mobiles of Northwestern artists dot the landscape, and no flashy advertising or jutting store signs are permitted. Lloyd's has an ice-skating rink with live music, professional offices, seven restaurants, is dominated by the new 300-room Sheraton-Portland Hotel.

East v. West. Not everyone in Portland greeted Lloyd's grand opening with joy. Its nearness to downtown Portland threatens the livelihood of many of the city's oldest merchants. Last year they formed Downtown Portland, Inc. to attract customers by putting potted trees on downtown sidewalks, devising plans to give customers parking rebates. But many downtown merchants--including Meier & Frank, Portland's largest department store--covered their bets by opening branches in the center. Some 595,000 people in the Portland metropolitan area live within a 20-minute drive of Lloyd Center.

Lloyd Center would probably never have been built if the initiative had been left to Portlanders. It is a monument to the vision and tenacity of a wiry, blue-eyed cowboy named Ralph Bramel Lloyd, who died in 1953 when his dream was only on the drawing board. The son of a Missouri Confederate Army officer, Lloyd moved to California at eleven when his family bought several thousand acres of ranch land in Ventura. One day his father, out riding, came across a grass fire, spurred his horse to the bare ground of a knoll for safety. When the fire reached the knoll, the ground suddenly burst into shooting flame. Lloyd leaped off his horse, breaking his leg as he jumped to safety over an embankment (the horse burned to death). The story made a lasting impression on his son, and not merely because it was reminiscent of Moses and the burning bush. Young Lloyd, studying law at the University of California, took a chance geology course and concluded that the burning earth meant oil under the knoll. He was right. By 1925 he had made about $2,000,000 from oil-lease rights, decided to invest in property in Portland, where the family had once lived.

Portland's conservative bankers wanted no part of "foreigners." So Lloyd opened a bank of his own, bought up 800 lots that form most of the land on which Lloyd Center now stands. In 1929 he dug the foundation for a hotel, but decided not to finish it during the Depression. Then the war halted his plans, but he went on buying land in Portland. By the time he died at 78, he owned more than 100 city blocks and had laid out final plans for his huge shopping center.

A Place to Browse. The Lloyd oil millions, vastly expanded after the Ventura field came a gusher in 1939, went to his four daughters in the form of a family corporation and a $10 million Lloyd Foundation. A shy and soft-spoken lawyer named Richard Von Hagen, husband of the youngest daughter, became chief executive of Lloyd Corp. Ltd., went to work to finish Ralph Lloyd's dream. Architect John Graham was urged to design a different kind of shopping center: "A delightful spot for people to browse, even if they don't want to shop." Von Hagen has no patience for pessimists who fear that Lloyd Center will destroy downtown Portland. "Lloyd is going to be an asset to the downtown," he says, "though that may not be the immediate effect. We are downtown too. It's going to improve the city and bring new people to Portland."

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