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POWER LIST: GENERAL CONTRACTORS

Howard S. Wright just so happens to be building the largest commercial project to come out of Portland’s pre-pandemic economic expansion.

That project is Block 216, a 35-story tower that includes a 215-room Ritz-Carlton hotel and 138 residential condos, along with 158,000 square feet of office space, ground-floor retail space and below-ground parking.

That construction has endured despite the pandemic, record heat, winter storms and dizzying increases in steel costs is a testament to Howard S. Wright’s work on the project.

The client, developer BPM Real Estate, has been notably media-shy, but that doesn’t obscure the scale and ingenuity of the construction at hand in downtown Portland: When completed in 2023, the building will be the fourth-tallest structure in the city at 460 feet in height, boasting more than 840,000 square feet of interior space.

Howard S. Wright – now a division of London-based construction giant Balfour Beatty – is also the general contractor responsible for the Portland Building renovation that remade the Michael Graves-designed municipal structure. The $195 million project included seismic reinforcement, extensive façade repair and an update of office space that had been criticized as dark and claustrophobic.

Another major recent project for the contractor was the Moxy Hotel, a 12-story boutique hotel in the West End.