Downtown Tigard's Universal Plaza

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Planned to open in 2022, Universal Plaza will be a place for everyone – a community gathering spot in the heart of downtown Tigard that celebrates our shared humanity and our one shared planet.

One day, Tigard’s Universal Plaza will be a cherished public space, with areas for everyone to gather, play, and make memories. While we wait for that day, the site can still help us engage our imaginations about public life and public space. Art can happen here, originating both from our local community and well beyond. Through light and sculpture installations, a large site-specific mural on the ground, and performances – all viewable online – we hope to draw the Tigard community to the project, to ideas and expressions of universality.

The Plaza design process is happening now, and we’d love your participation to help guide the design process. While the new normal for now requires us to be socially distant, that hasn’t stopped us from creating opportunities for you to join in on the fun, online engagement like the Universal Plaza Haiku Poem Contest and more. So, if you’re excited about Universal Plaza, this website is exactly where you need to be.

Get Involved!
Submit Your Haiku to Our Poem Contest
We invite you to join us in sharing what universality means to you by submitting haiku poems that reflect your experience here in Tigard. A rotating selection of these poems will be displayed in lights at the site of the future Universal Plaza. The poems could reflect how you’re feeling right now or the dreams you hold for the future; let your imagination take flight.

Submit below!

Become a Design Advisor!
We've started imagining many beautiful things that can happen here – and planning for a few of them! Over the next six months, three Design Advisories will be held where community members, like yourself, can engage with the design team and help create Universal Plaza. Your ongoing engagement can help us design the best possible plaza for all of Tigard.

Sign-up to become a Design Advisor below!


Share your thoughts!
Do you have other ideas, suggestions or comments as to what you'd like to see at the Universal Plaza?


Planned to open in 2022, Universal Plaza will be a place for everyone – a community gathering spot in the heart of downtown Tigard that celebrates our shared humanity and our one shared planet.

One day, Tigard’s Universal Plaza will be a cherished public space, with areas for everyone to gather, play, and make memories. While we wait for that day, the site can still help us engage our imaginations about public life and public space. Art can happen here, originating both from our local community and well beyond. Through light and sculpture installations, a large site-specific mural on the ground, and performances – all viewable online – we hope to draw the Tigard community to the project, to ideas and expressions of universality.

The Plaza design process is happening now, and we’d love your participation to help guide the design process. While the new normal for now requires us to be socially distant, that hasn’t stopped us from creating opportunities for you to join in on the fun, online engagement like the Universal Plaza Haiku Poem Contest and more. So, if you’re excited about Universal Plaza, this website is exactly where you need to be.

Get Involved!
Submit Your Haiku to Our Poem Contest
We invite you to join us in sharing what universality means to you by submitting haiku poems that reflect your experience here in Tigard. A rotating selection of these poems will be displayed in lights at the site of the future Universal Plaza. The poems could reflect how you’re feeling right now or the dreams you hold for the future; let your imagination take flight.

Submit below!

Become a Design Advisor!
We've started imagining many beautiful things that can happen here – and planning for a few of them! Over the next six months, three Design Advisories will be held where community members, like yourself, can engage with the design team and help create Universal Plaza. Your ongoing engagement can help us design the best possible plaza for all of Tigard.

Sign-up to become a Design Advisor below!


Share your thoughts!
Do you have other ideas, suggestions or comments as to what you'd like to see at the Universal Plaza?


  • CLOSED: This volunteer opportunity has concluded.

    Volunteer for the Public Space Public Life Survey

    We're partnering with urban design firm Gehl Studios, to conduct a Public Space/ Public Life Study of Downtown Tigard to help answer questions about how people get around and spend time in the area's public spaces. This information will help us plan and program the Universal Plaza.


    Take Survey
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