91ÊÓƵ

Interface Engineering is relocating to new offices in downtown Portland.

Andy Frichtl, a principal at the firm, said the company will be relocating to the First and Main building at 100 S.W. Main St. sometime next year. Frichtl said he couldn’t discuss the terms of the lease, or even which floors the company will take in the 16-story office tower, but said the new space will be larger than 20,000 square feet.

Interface currently leases approximately 20,000 square feet in the Mohawk Building, at 733 S.W. 2nd Ave. In Nov. 2012, the company announced it was searching for new office space near downtown Portland to accommodate growth. City leaders had just canceled the Oregon Sustainability Center project, but Interface hoped to continue efforts toward constructing a highly efficient building (in line potentially with the requirements of the Living Building Challenge) on its own, and began searching for sites with Gerding Edlen as a consultant.

Frichtl said such a project still makes sense for the company, which specializes in the implementation of net zero energy and waste systems around the world, but the timing wasn’t right.

“We wanted to do our own building but the timing didn’t work out,” he said. “But the way this deal is working out for us, I wouldn’t take that off the table.”

Hoffman Construction broke ground on the First and Main building in September 2007. It was developed by Shorenstein Properties but American Assets Trust, a San Diego-based real estate investment trust, purchased the 346,500-square-foot office building in 2011 for approximately $129 million. Monica Jones, the company’s marketing director, said it was 100 percent occupied at the end of the third quarter of 2013. American Assets is the developer currently constructing the superblock project in the Lloyd District.

Frichtl said a minor remodel will precede Interface’s move, and that the new offices will give the company much-needed room to grow. He said the company is seeing increased business across the country and abroad – it just won a contract to work on a large resort in Lake Tahoe, and is working on upgrades to many of the United States’ embassies around the world.

“We’re really on a growth pattern, so this really sets us up to do that,” Frichtl said. “… I just think the economy is starting to change. We’re seeing a lot of the private side open up right now, and we have a lot of federal government work.”

Interface plans to be open for business in its new offices sometime in 2014, in time for its 45th anniversary.