The station was designed by the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership architecture firm and built by Hoffman Construction Company, with engineering by Parsons Brinckerhoff. It opened in 1998 along with the rest of the westside MAX Line. Building Design & Construction named the station as its top public works project in 1999 in its Building Team Project of the Year competition. In 2018, TriMet completed a $2.1 million renovation of the station's platform level. The agency partnered with ZGF for the renovation, which included mounting energy-efficient LED lighting and installing patterned tiles along the platform-side and elevator lobby walls. Artists from Mayer/Reed painted large-scale murals over the walls across the tracks from the platform.
Station details
Surface
The surface portion includes a public plaza named in honor of Les AuCoin, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives who supported the project. The entrance to the zoo is located just across a parking-lot road from the station plaza, having been moved north from its previous location the weekend after the station opened. Two high-speed elevators are located at either end of the underground station; visitors to the Oregon Zoo are directed to the east elevators while people going to the World Forestry Center are pointed to the west.
Underground
The Robertson Tunnel consists of two single-track tubes, one for each direction of travel. The station platform is between the rails, accessed from the left side of trains. A geological timeline—created from a drilling core sample—runs along the platform walls. The eastbound platform is marked by yellow roof girders, symbolizing the sunrise; the westbound platform has orange roof girders, symbolizing the sunset. The platforms were nicknamed Sunrise and Sunset, respectively, by TriMet. Trains entering the tunnel more than a mile away can be heard from the platforms. They move at up to and push a stream of constant-temperature air into the station. This, coupled with the surrounding rock, keeps the platform at a natural average temperature of year round. A memorial to the only worker killed during the construction of the Robertson Tunnel is located on the wall next to the tunnel portal at the east end of the "Sunset" platform.
Elevators
The elevators stop at only two levels, surface and platform level, with no intermediate stops. As a part of the station's geological theme, the signs inside the elevators refer to these two levels not by conventional floor numbers but by "the present" and "16 million years ago"—for the surface level and platform level, respectively. During ascent and descent, a moving indicator display inside each elevator shows the current position expressed as elevation above sea level in feet. The elevators allow selecting two floors, "S" and "T", for "surface" and "tunnel". The 26-story equivalent ride takes about 25 seconds. Due to the hillside surface slope, the west elevators are taller than the east elevators.
Bus line connections
This underground MAX station is served by the following bus lines:
