Chuck Slothower//December 26, 2019//

The Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard must be helping Adidas sell a lot of basketball shoes.
The company’s North American headquarters is on an expansion kick in North Portland, and generated the construction permit with the single highest dollar amount in the city of Portland in 2019, according to the Bureau of Development Services.
Adidas’ building permit for two new office buildings at 5070 N. Greeley Ave., issued on Sept. 16, ascended above the rim with a $149 million valuation. The permit was for a five-story office building with five stories of underground parking, a second new building, additions to a third building and surrounding East Village site improvements, including required landscaping and screening.
The Adidas permit was by far the most valuable. The one with the second-highest value was $81 million for the Fourth and Montgomery building, a south downtown collaboration shared by Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University, Portland Community College and the city of Portland. The permit for the seven-story, three-quarter block project was issued on May 16.
Development in 2019 was “a little choppy,” said Sam Rodriguez, senior managing director of Mill Creek Residential Trust, a major multifamily developer. Mill Creek is developing Modera Glisan, which had a permit that ranked fourth on the list.
The economy recovered quickly after flashing recessionary signals in the fall.
“The good news is we’re not at the end of a cycle – at least it doesn’t feel like that,” Rodriguez said.
Rents have remained stable amid deliveries of thousands of new apartments. A slowdown in new proposals offers hope for future projects, Rodriguez said.
“It seems like we’re reaching equilibrium moving forward, which makes development possible,” he said.
The office market appears to be at a similar point as multifamily. Projects totaling more than 1.6 million square feet were under construction or renovation in November, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, but that number is expected to soon decline.
“While the elevated level of office development remains historically high for Portland, it is set to slow down considerably over the next year when all but Block 216, J.K. Gill and Arete will deliver,” a JLL office report stated.

No one type of project dominated the bureau’s list of most expensive projects. The top 10 includes three office buildings, four multifamily buildings, a middle school, a hospital expansion and a hotel. Multifamily buildings were seven of the next 10 most-valuable projects.
The permit data comes from the Bureau of Development Services, which collated the most valuable permits at the 91Ƶ’s request. It includes new construction permits issued between Jan. 1 and Dec. 19.
The list does not include some large projects, such as the 35-story Block 216 tower for Ritz-Carlton – it has received excavation permits, but not building permits. Other major construction projects under way, such as the Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center, were working based on permits from prior years.
The data is also necessarily limited to city boundaries – leaving out major projects in, for example, unincorporated Washington County, where Adidas’ largest competitor resides.
Here are the top-dollar building permits in Portland during 2019: