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At the corner of Southwest 18th Avenue and Salmon Street, in the Goose Hollow neighborhood, a 27-year-old international real estate company is entering the Portland market.

General contractor Hoffman Construction is leading the effort to deliver an eight-story building with 182 apartments over 8,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and a single level of below-grade parking. SERA Architects‘ design for Charleston, S.C.-based Greystar was approved by the Portland Design Commission in September 2018.

鈥�18th and Salmon is ideally suited as Greystar’s first Portland project,鈥� said Doug Burges, a director of development with the firm. 鈥淚t leverages our core competency with extremely complex sites and experience in high-barrier-to-entry markets such as those in which we are very active along the West Coast.鈥�

The site at 1715 S.W. Salmon St. is a wedge-shaped, 0.49-acre parcel. MAX light-rail tracks constrain the site on the west, and a massive underground culvert (following the historic path of Tanner Creek) bisects the site some 40 feet below grade.

Early subgrade work required crews from James W. Fowler Co. to perform a complex retrofit of the century-old brick culvert that channels the creek, stormwater and wastewater through the city center, Burges said.

鈥淚t’s an old creek that ran through Portland and it’s actually underneath here,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here are a bunch of buildings it runs underneath, but we had to structurally upgrade or retrofit 40 feet below ground surface.鈥�

The work required personnel to don personal respirators and air monitors, Hoffman Construction project superintendent Mark Rado said. Also, a rescue team was on standby on the surface.

鈥淭hey coated the galvanized steel plates and then went down there, bolted them up with five or six guys down below,鈥� Rado said. 鈥淎nd they just feed these panels through and they build them up all the way. The existing (culvert) was a brick line or clay or whatever it was, and they would have an angular space between the existing structure and the steel plates and they had to grout to fill that in. So you have this reinforced creek now that is basically a 60-inch culvert.鈥�

The culvert influenced the design of the building and limited the ability to excavate below grade. As a result, the project team settled on a single story of underground parking bolstered with car-stacking machinery. There will be an additional 278 bicycle parking spaces.

The building will feature a prominent 鈥渇latiron鈥� corner at the junction of 18th Avenue and Salmon Street. The 85-foot-tall structure will have four stories of post-tensioned concrete decks below four stories of wood framing.

Ground was broken on the project in July 2019.

鈥淩ight now we’re basically trying to come up out of the ground to get to slab on grade,鈥� Rado said. 鈥淲e just got our first wall pour off on Monday, so a really critical path for us coming up out of the ground is getting all the walls formed and poured so we can go to backfill. That’s really our biggest push right now.鈥�

Crews are finally enjoying decent weather conditions, Rado added.

鈥淲e had a really tough January underground with mud and muck and getting through that,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e survived because the water table is really low and we didn’t have to contend with too much water, but getting up enough to where we can get waterproofing done and get through the foundation 鈥� that was very difficult.鈥�

With Hoffman crews also beginning construction on the new Lincoln High School across Salmon Street, communication and coordination are now essential.

鈥淲e have been eager to sink our teeth into the planning and coordination on this project,鈥� Hoffman Construction Vice President Nima Darabi said. 鈥淚t’s a complex site, but we look forward to partnering with Greystar and SERA Architects to deliver this pedestrian-oriented housing project. It will create a vibrant neighborhood focal point.鈥�