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For the first time, the big red “A” will fly over the Bay Area.

Andersen Construction is about three months into heavy work on a 302,000-square-foot mixed-use residential project in the downtown area of Oakland, California. Within days, a tower crane bearing the company’s distinctive “A” logo will be raised, according to senior project manager Steve Kleinheinz.

The Alta Waverly is a $60-million market-rate project with five floors of wood framing over a post-tension concrete platform. It will have 212 parking spaces. There will be 31,500 square feet of commercial retail space on the ground floor. The designer is Oakland studio Pyatok.

Andersen, Portland’s second largest builder, was invited to participate by developer Wood Partners. The two firms worked successfully on the Dimension tower in Seattle and Block 17 in Portland’s Pearl district, Kleinheinz said. Acting as construction manager-general contractor, Andersen has a team of about seven staff members now in Oakland.

“Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose are very busy, so costs are rising, and there’s an extreme labor shortage,” Kleinheinz said. “We’ve had to meet with a lot people, lot of companies. But we’re getting it done.”

Shoring and excavation have been completed and the first level of structural concrete is being poured.

Challenges for the team have so far included navigating California’s stricter CALGreen building codes, and the overworked Oakland permitting office. Building in Oakland has only recently picked up, Kleinheinz said, so staffing still reflects an earlier, slower era. San Francisco, however, has been booming for years, fueled by a housing shortage and rapidly rising rents and home prices.

One thing that’s no different in the Bay Area is the labor shortage. To help deal with the dearth of skilled craft workers, Kleinheinz said Andersen had to spend ample time in its four-month pre-construction period meeting with local subcontractors. It even brought trusted subs from the Portland area, notably Wood Framing.