91视频

Developer Mark Edlen is looking to support the next generation of sustainability entrepreneurs as he transitions out of a day-to-day role at Gerding Edlen, the Portland development and management firm he co-founded with the late Bob Gerding more than 20 years ago.

Edlen, 64, will remain chairman of the company, which has its headquarters in the Pearl District. He recently joined the board of the Bullitt Foundation, a Seattle green-building nonprofit organization, and continues to serve the Portland Development Commission and Ecotrust. Edlen and his wife, Ann, have long been active in local philanthropy.

Edlen grew up in Portland and completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Oregon before returning. He was a commercial broker at Cushman & Wakefield when he met Gerding and began working with him on build-to-suit projects. In 1996, they formed Gerding Edlen.

As Edlen steps back, longtime Gerding Edlen executives Molly Bordonaro and Kelly Saito have stepped in as co-managing partners.

Edlen spoke on a range of topics during a 30-minute interview, which has been condensed and edited for clarity.

91视频: Can you tell me a little bit about how things are going to change at Gerding Edlen? What’s going to be your role?

Mark Edlen: My role’s going to be less. In terms of our business plan and how we do business and where we do business, I really don’t see any changes coming out of it. You know, Kelly’s been here forever, and of course Molly’s been here eight years now.

We’ve always had a really strong senior management team that went beyond Bob and I, and went beyond me. It’s been in process now for a couple of years. So I don’t see a lot of changes, other than I’ll be here less than I have been in the past.

91视频: How did Gerding Edlen get started?

Edlen: Well, I actually met Bob’s wife (Diana) before I met Bob. They were both in the brokerage business. When we met each other, at the time I was representing Bank of America, and Bob had bought the redemption rights on ADP Plaza. In those days, you had redemption rights on a building that went into foreclosure. He didn’t go into foreclosure; the prior owner did. It had a big hole in it, and I put ADP in it in 1984. And I just picked up the phone and called him, said this is what I’ve got, I’ve got a client that needs space and you’ve got the space, and that’s the first project we ever did together. And we did four or five like that. And then we just said, this is crazy; let’s go set up a business and see what we can do.

91视频: So do you have any particular projects when you look back that’s kind of (your) legacy?

Edlen: I don’t really think about my legacy so much, and we’ve never been very good about celebrating successes or looking backwards. I guess I would say I’m very proud of the body of work that we’ve done. I’m very proud of how we’ve done it. I’m very proud of what we did from an environmental perspective with our projects.

It’s not just Gerding Edlen, necessarily. It’s a body, a group of people that enabled us to do so much together.

Being from Portland really was very beneficial because we’ve had a government over the years that was fairly innovative, in my opinion, and looking for different ways to do things.

91视频: Gerding Edlen has been known as a leader in green building. I was listening to a TED Talk you gave a few years ago, and you said LEED is kind of a yawner at this point and people are excited about net zero. So what’s next for green building?

Edlen: I think the Living Building Challenge is a great example of what can be next. One of the reasons I joined the Bullitt Foundation is what they did with their building in Seattle, which is just astounding to me.

From the perspective of LEED, we have over 70 LEED-certified projects, most of which are platinum and gold, and we still use LEED and we will continue to support it. It is the best-known methodology out there. So it’s definitely worthy of continuing.

However, how do we get to net-zero energy, water and sewage? It’s still a big challenge to do so, and the Bullitt Center in Seattle is probably the best example 鈥� perhaps in the world 鈥� of what can be done.

It’s like when we did the Oregon Health and Science University building down in the South Waterfront. We were net zero on sewage in the building. Very, very cool, but how could we make that common practice everywhere, in every building? We have a very, very long way to go, in my opinion, to get there.

The built environment has a tremendous opportunity to have a positive impact in getting to perhaps someday a regenerative state, where we have buildings that actually contribute to the environment.

91视频: So what are you guys working on now?

Edlen: We’ve got a very large project in Boston at Fenway. It will be fascinating. Kelly’s really led that from beginning to end. It is on the scale of the Brewery Blocks, so a very, very large project. We’ve got multiple projects in Chicago right now. We have a new high-rise going down in Oakland that we just broke ground on.

Here locally, we’re finishing up what’s called 8L 鈥� which is very cool for me, because the University of Oregon is moving in there. It will be their business school in Portland. Given where I started, that’s coming full circle. I’m very, very proud of that.

I had an opportunity to work with Ankrom Moisan, which did a fantastic job on the building, in my opinion.

We have three affordable housing projects going right now. One’s under construction and two are in preconstruction right now. We like doing those as well.

91视频: What’s the one that’s under construction?

Edlen: It’s up at (Southwest) First (Avenue) and Arthur (Street). It’s targeted at people that have mental illness. The other two are really targeted more at just homelessness.

91视频: So those are in predevelopment. Where are they going?

Edlen: Well, one’s the Grant Warehouse and one’s out at Gateway. Jill Sherman really runs that end of the business for us, and has done a fantastic job over the years. I think under her leadership, we’ve done three drug and alcohol clinics, which is not really our primary business, but it’s definitely a way for us to give back to the community. I’m as proud of that work as I am of the sparkly high-rises.

91视频: I’m sure it was a big change for your business and you personally when Bob Gerding passed away. How did you pick up and move on from that?

Edlen: You’ve just got to move forward. You can’t just stop. We kind of lost Bob twice 鈥� once when he got sick, and then when he passed, of course, we lost him again. The most fun I’ve ever had in my career was when we were partners.

I told Molly and Kelly I hope that they have as much fun as Bob and I had. It’s about all you can wish for, I think.

91视频: What was his portfolio with the firm?

Edlen: I’d have projects I’d work on, and he’d have projects he’d work on. And then we’d come back together at night. Have you ever seen the Steven Spielberg cartoon 鈥淧inky and the Brain?鈥� Well, at night, we’d come together, we’d have dinner once a week and solve all of the world’s problems.

We knew everything about each other’s kids and wives and families and all that kind of stuff. There wasn’t anything that the two of us didn’t know about each other. Invariably, one of us would come to the other one. We’d have a problem, and we’d have an opportunity, and invariably we’d come out with a different solution once we sat down and put our heads together.

Bob was probably the most creative person I’ve ever met, and certainly the most optimistic.

He was a PhD biochemist, which I like to joke is a straight-line path into commercial real estate. Bob was absolutely the best big thinker I’ve ever met.

91视频: The recession hit you guys hard, as it did anyone. How did you get through that time, and do you have any recommendations for the next downturn?

Edlen: Avoid it!

Our business has changed dramatically now. We’re much more of an asset management firm than we are a development firm. So we have a much more diversified base underneath us than we did as a development firm.

So hopefully when the next one comes, we’ll be in a much better position to see our way through it. How do we survive it? Integrity and transparency. We’ve always been transparent. We saw what was coming. When you’ve got a big high-rise up in the air, there’s not much you can do to stop that high-rise. So we went to our investors and lenders early, and told them what we saw coming. I think we did the right thing sticking through it, and today we’re still doing business with those people, thank God. But it was very, very difficult.

91视频: Over your career, Portland has changed so much. What parts of town do you think are promising?

Edlen: There’s so much that’s promising. Portland’s in such a good spot. We do have challenges, but based on our experience in other cities, our opportunities far outweigh our challenges.

We have a very vibrant entrepreneurial community. A lot of people joke that Portland is the place where young people go to retire. I don’t think that’s the case. A lot of people are working a day job and starting a business in the garage on the side. Not all of them are going to be successful, but I think a lot of them will be.

So I think anything close-in to the Central Business District, whether it be on the east side or the west side, I think the opportunities are huge.

91视频: I did want to ask about inclusionary zoning. The Feb. 1 deadline has come and gone. Do you have an opinion about inclusionary zoning? Do you think it will work?

Edlen: We’re going to see how it works. We’re in it now. It’ll be interesting to see.

I myself, and our firm, was a big supporter of the (affordable housing) bond measure. I personally felt that that was the best tool that we put in place. The affordability issue, I think it’s very much like infrastructure of the city 鈥� whether that be schools, streets, water. I think it’s something that needs to be addressed. I think the bond measure was the best tool.

I hope those on the private side as well as those on the public side will be willing to be educated on the pluses and minuses (of inclusionary zoning). The thing we’ve got to recognize is capital is fungible, and capital will move to where capital can be rewarded. To the extent that capital sees better opportunities elsewhere, we will see it leave Portland.

91视频: Gerding Edlen has done quite a bit of affordable housing. There are some developers who just don’t. What is the private sector’s obligation there?

Edlen: Well, I can’t speak for the broader private sector. For us, it wasn’t a business strategy as much as it was an opportunity to give back to the community. So like the sustainability efforts we’ve undertaken, we view that as being a responsible citizen.

91视频: You’ve done some developments on your own outside of Gerding Edlen. Has that been a rewarding part of your career?

Edlen: Oh, just family stuff. We did a passive house building, which was very cool. We’d never done one before.

Developers and real estate people, they never really retire. They just slow down until they can’t walk anymore. And then they may retire, maybe. Once you get it in your system, you keep doing it, I guess.

91视频: So what’s the passive-house building?

Edlen: It’s called the Kiln, over in North Portland on Williams (Avenue). The energy results were amazing.

A lot of our projects got very, very sophisticated to the point where you almost had to be an engineer to operate them. It strikes me that that’s not the right approach. So I’ve been intrigued by how can you use passive systems to obtain our energy objectives. In that particular building, our bills were down to about $20 a month. So it was very, very cool in terms of the results.

I would love nothing more than to spend the rest of my life trying to come up with ideas and solutions.

I think we’ve had a small impact as a company with the sustainability movement. We’ve done over 70 projects across the country that I’m told are LEED certified. I think we helped others understand how to do it, the benefits. I think some small projects to get us closer to net zero may be where we’re going to find those innovations. If we work on those today 鈥� 20 years from now, are net-zero buildings going to be the standard? I hope they will, and I would love nothing more than to have done some early ones 鈥� no matter what size they are 鈥� because that’s how we learn.

I’m a big fan of (Urban Development + Partners) here in town. And I think Eric (Cress) and Avi (Ben-Zaken) are doing great work, and I love what they’re doing. You’ve got other people that are doing interesting things like Alando Simpson (of City of Roses Disposal and Recycling) and the recycling and deconstruction stuff he’s doing. Young people out there doing things 鈥� I’d love to be their biggest cheerleaders, because they’re doing really, really good work.