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A gas leak at a downtown construction project site early Thursday led to full or partial evacuation of five heavily-used office buildings.

A crew with NW Natural was able to locate the source of the leak and stanch the spread of natural gas without incident, said Lt. Rich Chatman of Portland Fire and Rescue. The 911 call went out at 7 a.m. and the situation was deemed 鈥渟afe鈥� at 9:40 a.m. Southwest Alder and Washington streets were closed from Broadway to Southwest 10th Avenue.

The leak occurred in the Woodlark Building at 819 S.W. Alder St., according to Lt. Rich Tyler of PF&R. The adaptive reuse project will connect the 104-year-old Woodlark with the 108-year-old Cornelius Building next door. Contractor LCG Pence will convert the two buildings into a boutique hotel with 150 rooms.

But LCG Pence principal Paul Schulz said the leak was caused by a subcontractor hired by the developer, Arthur Mutal, though LCG Pence did have an employee on site performing preconstruction work. Philip Arthur, managing principal of Arthur Mutal, declined to comment.

Heavy work for the $14 million project is scheduled to begin shortly, according Schulz.

Chatman said that once the leak occurred, everyone involved followed proper protocols. The incident came around a month after a contractor-caused gas leak led to multiple blasts on Northwest 23rd Avenue. Multiple buildings were damaged and several people were injured.

鈥淲e moved with the same mindset of protecting life safety, as quickly as we could,鈥� Chatman said. 鈥淕ranted, that situation was very real in our minds because of what happened. We as humans are obviously going to remember something like that.鈥�