For decades, Carleton Hart Architecture has produced work suggesting that form should indeed follow function, and that its designs exist to serve people entirely and not just their eyes. As the firm celebrates its 25th anniversary, it is not only honoring its past, but also looking at how it can build upon that legacy.

This year, that has involved a leadership change. The firm announced recently that Michelle Black is now a principal, along with co-founders Brian Carleton and Bill Hart. Also, Hart has sold his shares of the company to Carleton, but will stay involved in some capacity.

“It’s been 25 years of being a firm with a very intentional sense of mission – really wanting to do good work in our communities,” Carleton said. “We got to develop a lot of deep relationships, and a lot of meaningful relationships that have lasted a number of years.”

Carleton Hart Architecture has made a name for itself primarily in the realm of affordable housing. The firm has sought to serve Portland’s marginalized and underrepresented communities and neighborhoods.

“For me personally, I’ve been trying to work more and more with communities of color,” said Hart, estimating that he is one of fewer than 10 black architects in the Portland-metro area.

Both co-founders worked for a number of firms in Portland and elsewhere before venturing out to create their own. The two shared office space before merging their practices in 1994, united in the desire to break away from corporate projects.

“I think we both shared a drive to work more with communities,” Carleton said. “It really, I think, has defined our firm and defined our sense of mission.”

To succeed in that mission, Carleton Hart Architecture primarily took on public work and affordable housing projects. Few firms were involved in any kind of affordable housing work when Carleton Hart began taking it on in the mid-1990s, Carleton said. The firm dominated that work in the Portland-metro area, he added, until the Great Recession.

Yet diversification has helped the firm navigate challenging times, Hart said. Work began to include community centers, churches and historic buildings – and even a project at Portland International Airport.

“My goal was to have a diverse portfolio of work,” Hart said. “The flexibility in being able to do all of that is a real strength when the economy changes.”

Hart will continue to diversify his own portfolio. He plans to continue providing architectural services to the community, but also become more involved with real estate development.

Black landed at Carleton Hart Architecture after arriving in Portland from New York in 2015.

“I was really attracted to Carleton Hart because of the portfolio of nonprofit work,” she said. “They’re willing to do things differently and willing to look at things in unique ways.”

While the firm’s legacy of community engagement is inspiring, Black said, she wants to make sure Carleton Hart Architecture doesn’t rest on its history. It’s important, she added, for the firm to keep pace with industry changes.

Carleton and Hart added that more leadership changes will drive the firm into the future. Black’s promotion was inevitable, Carleton said.

“From the first time Bill and I interviewed her, we knew where this was probably headed,” he said. “We really do see her as the next generation of Carleton Hart.”

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Prominent Portland landscape architect and urban planner Robert (“Bob”) Perron died Aug. 28 from heart and lung disease. He was 83.

Perhaps Perron’s best-known project in Portland was the Salmon Street Springs Fountain, and surrounding benches, near Tom McCall Waterfront Park. The water feature opened in 1988. However, he worked on many other projects in the city, such as the Brewery Blocks streetscape and Terry Schrunk Plaza.

Outside of Portland, Perron was responsible for Spokane’s Riverfront Park, which developed out of his master plan for the 1974 World’s Fair. In Central Oregon, he designed the Black Butte Ranch master plan and later phases of Sunriver Resort.

“He developed his practice at a critical time, when landscape architecture was gaining a lot of influence in the ’60s and ’70s,” said Mike Faha, founding principal at landscape design firm GreenWorks. “He had a real strong relationship amongst the industry as a whole.”

Perron made numerous professional connections, including with late Portland designers Bing Sheldon and Doug Macy – co-founders of SERA Architects and Walker Macy, respectively.

Mentorship was perhaps even more important to Perron than his own career achievements. At least 20 firms, by his estimation, sprouted from his guidance. Faha was never employed by Perron, but worked with him on several projects.

“He was more than a professional colleague,” Faha said. “I thought of him as a mentor.”

Perron was born in Oregon City. After attending Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland, he graduated from the University of Oregon in 1959 and from Harvard with a master’s degree in landscape architecture in 1961. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark, and spent 1963 working as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley.

A year later, Perron returned to Portland to open his practice. He co-founded Design Collaborative in 1968 and Perron Collaborative some years later.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Perron took leadership roles with nonprofits like the Creative Initiative Foundation and Beyond War. He also put his carpentry skills to use by helping build five Habitat for Humanity homes in South Africa.

Perron’s designs made an impact by giving abundantly, close friend and geologist Roger Smith said.

“They were not minimalist at all; I would describe them as the opposite of minimalist,” he said. “I would say his style is a very generous style.”

Smith explained that Perron went so far as to design benches that were more comfortable than any other. He later patented the design.

Through 40 years of friendship, Perron was always optimistic, Smith said.

“I don’t think I ever saw Bob in a bad mood,” he said. “He had a very positive attitude, even when I sometimes didn’t.”

A celebration of Perron’s life will take place on Oct. 12 at Meridian United Church of Christ in Wilsonville. Friends and professional associates are invited to attend.

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A new boarding and day care facility for dogs is set to open in Hillsboro this winter. It will be the first Portland-metro location for Camp Bow Wow, the largest company of its kind in the country. Nearly 200 Camp Bow Wow facilities are in operation.

Camp Bow Wow has offered daytime and overnight boarding for dogs since 2000, and each facility is individually owned. The company’s Hillsboro location will be owned by local resident James Nash. Interplan LLC, an Orlando-based architecture firm, is designing the project; the rest of the project team will be announced later.

The 10,000-square-foot facility will hold 88 cabins and three luxury suites to lodge visiting pups, along with eight suites reserved for teacup dogs, which are smaller and weigh around 5 pounds each. There will be three general outdoor and indoor play spaces as well as another indoor and outdoor area for teacup dogs.

The amenities will include two grooming stations, a dog swimming pool and play equipment, all in a climate-controlled atmosphere that is monitored 24 hours a day.

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It’s indisputable that women and people of color are underrepresented in the architecture, construction and engineering industries. However, regional government agency Metro is engaged in efforts to help change that by bringing on a number of minority-owned firms in important projects.

One notable example is the current to modernize the 30-year-old building’s public areas and establish a better visitor experience. A in 2017 to Colas Construction to serve as construction manager-general contractor; it was the largest public contract in Oregon ever earned by a minority-owned firm.

“We competed against some of the biggest teams in town,” Colas Construction CEO and President Andrew Colas said in reference to Hoffman Construction and Walsh Construction. “That in itself was an exciting win.”

Colas Construction is a family affair. The firm was founded in 1997 by Andrew’s father, Hermann Colas Jr., who moved to the United States from Haiti in 1969. Andrew’s sister Aneshka Colas-Dickson serves as vice president and chief financial officer, and their brother Alex Colas is a project manager.

Another minority-owned firm, Raimore Construction, is also involved in the Oregon Convention Center project. It’s primarily working on the exterior.

“We’ve been able to start breaking that glass ceiling,” Andrew Colas said. “There’s no reason there can’t be 100, 200 other firms like us.”

Two others are serving Metro. When Portland’5 Centers for the Arts sought a roof replacement for Hatfield Hall, a building that contains several theatre venues, general contractor Pacificmark Construction and roofing/waterproofing company Sterling-Pacific, both minority-owned businesses, earned the contracts.

Nancy Strening, a Portland’5 project manager, said the organization has been trying to find ways to get more minority-owned firms involved in its projects, and has recently been working with the National Association of Minority Contractors (NAMC) in this regard. Historically, one of the hiring challenges, she said, has been that Portland’5 has had to abide by government regulations to accept the lowest bidder.

Strening said there was an argument to be made that using minority-owned firms is still in the public interest, because having diverse perspectives on a project is always beneficial. The hiring process was very competitive, and the two firms that earned the contracts were the best choice, she said.

“Price and value aren’t always the same thing,” she said. “I think we are getting better results; I don’t think we are sacrificing anything.”

One of the main barriers to entry for minority-owned contractors, Strening said, is that many of the older, larger and more established firms (mostly white-owned), have entire teams of administrators able to secure subcontractors and bid on many projects. Nascent minority-owned firms might not have staff dedicated to outreach, and might not even know about some of the projects available.

Nevertheless, Metro’s efforts have been noticed by at least some members of Portland’s building industries.

“I would put them kind of at the top,” Andrew Colas said. “It’s been really important for us to have a strong partnership.”

Ray Leary, commissioner of the Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission (MERC), a division of Metro, said the agency does perhaps more than any other government entity in Oregon to increase opportunities. MERC’s job is to protect investment in the Expo Center, the Oregon Convention Center, and Portland’5, which he said is especially important right now.

With more conventions scheduled than ever before, Metro’s venues are a welcome mat to the rest of the world, Leary said, and there is a responsibility to utilize Portland’s diverse workforce when improving these spaces.

“Historically, the city of Portland does not have an enviable record in terms of opportunities,” he said. “I believe (Metro) will ultimately be the leadership in integrating people of color into the economic opportunities that our government manages and facilitates.”

Nate McCoy, executive director of NAMC-Oregon, said Metro has been making huge strides in the past few years. While he would like to see greater diversity in the agency’s leadership, he said the kind of projects they’ve been contracting for are what take minority-owned firms to the next level in terms of business and size.

NAMC-Oregon has partnered with Metro on many of its biggest contracts, and McCoy echoed Strening when commenting on the difficulty smaller firms have in marketing themselves to subcontractors. NAMC’s partnership with Metro has alleviated some of that, because NAMC-Oregon can brings its members directly into contact with the agency.

McCoy said the partnership with Metro has been strong, and the fruits of their labor have already begun to show.

“They’re willing to take risks and be bold about these concerns,” he said. “They’ve taken those steps to show that they’re listening and responding.”

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The Portland Design Commission on Thursday declined to hold a vote on a land-use permit for the Pepsi Blocks development’s first phase because of unresolved issues with the Portland Bureau of Transportation. From a design perspective, commissioners favored plans; however, staff advised them to push back a vote until PBOT approves a loading zone and woonerf – a shared street designed primarily for pedestrians.

Located at 2505 N.E. Pacific St., near the Sandy Boulevard corridor, the development would arise on land that previously was long occupied by a Pepsi bottling plant. While most of the existing facilities will be destroyed, an iconic bow-truss structure at the entrance will be preserved; it is to become one or two restaurants.

A Seattle-based team has been working on the Pepsi Blocks for some time now, with owner Security Properties bringing in Mithun to design the 230,000-square-foot expanse of mixed-use buildings and KPFF Consulting Engineers handling the civil engineering duties. The project received its first design advice hearing in May, when it was met with mostly positive reception from the commission.

The first phase of the project involves construction of an eight-story, 87-foot-tall building with 219 residential units and 15,000 square feet of retail space. The first phase also includes two levels of below-grade parking, a landscaped public plaza with art and the woonerf.

Two problems are primarily keeping the project from moving forward. First, the applicants requested an adjustment to loading zone requirements. A main loading zone is required on-site, but the owners requested to place it off-site on an adjacent right-of-way.

Another issue is the woonerf. The city of Portland has only a few examples of precedent for the feature, which is a somewhat new trend adopted from Europe. Since many of the city’s codes predate the woonerf’s use in Portland, the designation is currently for a public street, which makes it liable for several other strict codes.

The applicants are trying to change its designation to an “on-site vehicle area.” That more accurately represents the woonerf’s purpose because it is designed primarily for pedestrians, but there must be vehicle access in case of an emergency.

PBOT has not yet approved these adjustments, and because of that, the Design Commission cannot vote unless it issues a denial, which would greatly delay construction. For this reason, commissioners opted not to vote, and instead rescheduled a future land use review. Then they used the time allotted to talk more about the actual design guidelines.

The Pepsi Blocks’ design was universally lauded. Special praise was given to the project’s integration within the neighborhood, as commissioners said it would create a lively and pedestrian-friendly environment that Sandy Boulevard hasn’t seen in a long time – perhaps ever.

“Public realm is where this thing is quite exceptional,” Commissioner Don Vallaster said. “It gives more back to the city than any project we’ve seen in a really long time.”

Commissioner Brian McCarter said the project sets a very high bar for the potential future of Sandy Boulevard, and Commissioner Jessica Molinar said she wished the project was built already. A few minor criticisms were directed at project aspects such as window tint and certain colors, but commissioners said they would not hesitate to approve the project following resolution of its more pressing issues.

“This is a great thing for the city of Portland,” Design Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “This is going to be a really great addition to the neighborhood.”

Pepsi Blocks plans will return before the Portland Design Commission for a land-use review on Sept. 19.

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The Portland Design Commission on Thursday provided another set of opinions on the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry‘s , and mostly approved of – though while citing some concerns with massing and access throughout the property. The project received its first , when commissioners took issue with some of the same aspects.

The 18.5-acre site is being tackled by a team including ZGF Architects, landscape architect Mayer/Reed and on behalf of OMSI. Seven podium-style buildings are planned, with total heights of 250 feet, and podium heights of 50 feet.

The buildings would be shaped and arranged in unique ways to allow movement throughout the space. Two of the buildings would have above-grade parking, while two others would have below-grade parking. Detailed renderings of the buildings have not been released yet, but rather only diagrams depicting the general massing structure.

Several public plazas will serve as event venues, and officials plan to integrate the Innovation Quadrant, where institutions like the museum and local universities can meet with startups and established businesses to drive innovation within the city.

Commissioner Zari Santner found the plazas to be geared too much toward children and events, and not enough for local residents, especially those living and working in the Innovation Quadrant.

“There is going to be a community here,” she said. “What are their needs?”

Other commissioners said the proposed podium height would be too high. Commissioner Jessica Molinar suggested the site be broken up to let more light in, as she said it currently looks more like a wall blocking the east side. Molinar and Commissioner Chandra Robinson similarly critiqued the public spaces, saying they wouldn’t be good for rainy-day activity.

But Molinar did say is headed in a good direction. Since the project is still in the design advice phase, architects can make changes before pursuing a review hearing.

The OMSI master plan team members said Thursday they will discuss whether to pursue another design advice hearing or one for land use review.

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A downtown Portland landmark is finally receiving a new use: Japanese bookstore chain Kinokuniya has taken up residence in the former Guild Theatre space. The store, which opened last month at 829 S.W. Ninth Ave., is the result of a vast renovation in which the space was stripped to its bare bones and then transformed into a blend of modern and historic elements.

Kinokuniya recruited LRS Architects to reimagine the iconic venue as a retail experience, and not just a smattering of shelves and merchandise. Russell Construction served as the general contractor and WDY Inc. was the structural engineer.

“It was just a big, empty void,” LRS interior designer Jena Sinclair said. “You had to try to fill it enough, but not too crazy, like it was forced.”

Kinokuniya and the Guild Theatre both opened for business in 1927. The theater eventually closed in 2006 and remained unused until Kinokuniya moved in.

The downtown Portland location is Kinokuniya’s 13th in the United States, and 32nd outside of Japan, where it has more than 50 stores. Apart from a shop within an Uwajimaya grocery store in Beaverton, the nearest Kinokuniya stores are in San Francisco and Seattle.

Kinokuniya America is dedicated to operating stores that blend with their surroundings. For the downtown Portland store, LRS associate Ingrid Hoffman said the company wanted to create a space with hints of Japanese aesthetics, but also appeal to a wide American audience.

“One of the big priorities we had was to create a bookstore that felt like a Portland bookstore,” Hoffman said. “Portlanders don’t like chains; they like to buy local.”

The store’s aesthetics reflect the design mission. Shelves, counters and displays of clean lines and wood are contrasted by the gritty, industrial texture of the walls and exposed ceiling – the last remnants of original construction.

The building is attached to an adjacent one, with stricter fire codes usually reserved for high-rises. The team didn’t want to build a ceiling, so fireproofing material had to be applied to beams at the top of the room. This strategy was more difficult, but Hoffman said it was important to keep the skylights and overhead windows intact.

“Part of the charm of the space is that it’s such an interesting volume,” Hoffman said. “We needed to figure out a way of actually using the whole volume.”

One of the building’s few remaining structural elements was a concrete staircase that leads to an exit door. That path now leads to a mezzanine, which was built to provide space for restrooms and offices. It’s also a nook for the first-story café, which serves Japanese tea and snacks.

The fire codes required the mezzanine be built as a freestanding structure, totally separate from and unsupported by the former theater’s concrete walls. While gaps are hidden by a seamless wooden cover that skirts along the walls, the mezzanine is separated by six inches.

Despite the challenges that come with such an old structure, the design team found opportunities within, as seen in the supporting columns that connect the floor and roof. Instead of letting these pillars interfere with the space, designers hung pegboards on them so they now serve as merchandise displays.

Also, rather than merely set up some shelves with products and call it good, Sinclair said the intention was always to take customers on a sort of journey that leads them through the aisles. The path follows the floor in a counterclockwise motion, based on the angles and placement of the cash wrap and walls, with hope that visitors will then see more sections of products.

At the top of the mezzanine upstairs, manga and comics sit in the open space uninhabited by offices and restrooms. With merchandise catered more to children, it is the one part of the store that is more playful.

And alongside that concrete staircase, the project team built a large, terraced set of wooden step seating, decorated with cushions and plants. There, visitors can relax, look out at the floor and take in the work that went into reviving a downtown landmark.

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Concordia University is ramping up to become a bigger player in the ultra-competitive health care education field. A renovation of an existing building, at the university’s Columbia River campus in Northeast Portland, is under way in order to add space and technology for the nursing program.

The 41,000-square-foot structure, at first a Best Buy store and later an office building, is being converted into a new Nursing Innovation Center. Mackenzie is designing the project, which is being built by general contractor Union Corner Construction of Vancouver, Washington. Interface Engineering is taking care of mechanical and electrical needs.

Work began recently, and completion is scheduled for January 2020. The project’s design has already made an impact.

“I’m really impressed,” said Shawn Daley, Concordia’s chief business development officer. “They’re putting into place things that will help educators do research.”

The center represents a renewed push into nursing for Concordia, which has the largest enrollment of a private nonprofit university in Oregon. The school in 2017 opened the 12,000-square-foot Nursing Skills Center, and is planning to soon expand its offering of nursing degrees.

To accommodate new programs and students, the building is gaining a variety of technological and educational improvements, including six simulation rooms that will replicate surgery, OB-GYN and other medical scenarios. There will also be community health rooms that look like apartments, to simulate in-home visits.

“We kind of have to set this up like a mini-hospital,” Mackenzie design director Monty Hill said. “When the nursing students come in, they feel like they’re really in that situation.”

Walls will be built to separate the rooms, and they will be topped off with ceilings as well. Daley said the original plan was to leave them open up top for observation, but the simulations create so much noise that each room needs to be somewhat isolated.

Simulations will involve professional actors performing various scenarios a nurse might encounter in a workplace, and so a studio will be built in which actors will be able to rehearse. The desire to make simulations as realistic as possible inspired the design team to incorporate working toilets in each room, and Daley said the plumbing for that might present a challenge.

Taking realism even further, a separate corridor will be built for the actors to enter simulation and changing rooms, so they don’t interact with students outside of their characters. Hill said he’s toured every nursing school in Oregon and has never seen such a corridor.

Concordia started its nursing program 10 years ago, and has since received both state and national accreditation. Daley said the school early on was graduating about 40 nursing students each year. That number has since increased to around 200 per year, but Daley said more are needed.

“Adding just another 10 students is not going to make much of a dent,” he said.

Supplying the world with more nurses naturally requires more education, and Daley said the Columbia River campus, located slightly east of Interstate 205, was the best choice – primarily because of the availability of space.

Though completion of the Nursing Innovation Center is still several months away, Daley said even before then classes will take place inside the building in some capacity.

While Hill has worked on many health care facilities in his career, he said he only recently joined Mackenzie, and Concordia is one of the firm’s first clients with such a project.

“I think they’re going to be one of the most advanced nursing schools in the state,” he said. “We’re excited to be a part of it.”

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A plan to develop four blocks along the Willamette River drew an outcry of opposition Thursday during a design advice hearing before the Portland Design Commission.

Area residents expressed concerns about how the project might affect life in the neighborhood, with further criticism pointed at the architecture itself.

The Willamette Blocks would include 1,200 residential units, as well as retail space and parking. Two high-rises would sit along the river, with two mid-rise buildings inward. The property is bordered to the east by the river, to the north by Southwest Lane Street, to the west by Southwest Bond Avenue and to the south by Southwest Lowell Street.

The project team, led by Dallas-based developer Alamo Manhattan, is made up of firms drawn mostly from the same city. The riverside high-rises (blocks 41 and 44) are being designed by WDG Architecture, while inner blocks 42 and 45 are being designed by HLR Architects. Linda Tycher and Associates is taking care of landscape architecture, and the one local firm on board, Otak, is handling civil engineering duties.

Plans call for the mid-rise buildings to ascend to 75 feet, and the high-rises to tower over the river at 249 feet. The riverside blocks will be built podium-style, with four stories making up the base and the others sitting back in the middle of the structure. Inclusionary housing units would be included in the western blocks.

A number of Portlanders aired their grievances, which centered mostly on the impact the development would have on neighboring residents’ views, and how traffic would be affected.

“The main issue really is transportation, coming from the south as well as going north,” said Len Michon, president of the South Portland Neighborhood Association.

Michon said he was concerned that in an emergency such as an earthquake, congestion would be too severe in the area for people to escape in time.

South Waterfront resident Ken Fransen said putting the high-rises next to the water would cause the views for other residents to be “obliterated.” He suggested that the mid-rises be placed riverside, with the towers inward.

“The river is obviously the single most scenic attribute of the city of Portland,” Fransen said. “This makes no sense; it should be reversed.”

Commissioners were split on certain issues and united on others. A common critique was that the mid-rise structures would be too bulky and unappealing for residential use, but there was some division on where the high-rises fit into the equation.

Commissioner Jessica Molinar said the waterfront has a bit of an eclectic context, and the two towers would be too similar to one another. In an area with a number of unique projects, the riverside blocks should look as though they were built by different teams, she said.

“They’re both varying from the context, and they’re right next to each other,” she said. “Some variety needs to happen in there.”

Commissioner Samuel Rodriguez, conversely, had no issue with the towers, saying they were consistent with the area. He said he was pleased to find the proposal actually more consistent than some prior plans.

Commissioners said the inner blocks need some revision, likening the bulky residential massing to federal buildings.

Particular attention was also paid to the inclusionary housing units, which would be detached from the main residential complexes. Commissioner Zari Santner said the inclusionary housing feels segregated, and would not be holistic with its neighbors. Commissioner Don Vallaster agreed, and added that the building was unattractive.

“That kind of reminds me of a 1970s office building,” he said. “It looks like the afterthought of the building.”

Thursday’s design advice hearing was the second for the project, following one in February. Commissioners said the project team ought to return with a finalized proposal for its next appearance in front of the group.

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A new Jaguar Land Rover dealership is on track to open this fall in Tigard, and it will have an amenity possibly unlike any other.

General contractor Perlo Construction is building the facility for Don Rasmussen Co. on land wedged between the Washington Square shopping center and Oregon Route 217. Tigard-based Mildren Design Group designed the project, TM Rippey is the civil and structural engineer, and WHPacific is in charge of landscape architecture.

The massive facility’s first floor alone will have 65,988 square feet. That space will be dedicated to an array of amenities, including a sales floor, a large service area, an automated car wash and a covered area for potential customers to step into cars for test drives.

A slope on the site allows the service area to be virtually subterranean, and be topped by two levels of garage parking for customers.

In addition to accounting for that slope, the project team faced a number of challenges. Mildren Design Group senior architect Curt Trolan said one was the city’s requirement that 50 percent of the frontage be along the street. That led to inclusion of a 1,800-square-foot pavilion along Southwest Greenburg Road. The glass-sided pavilion will hold two vehicles on display inside, adding a much-improved pedestrian experience outside the L-shaped building.

“This is the first facility we know of in the world where we’ve got a pavilion like this,” Trolan said. “We’re going to end up with just a stunning facility that we’re going to be quite proud of.”

The rest of the frontage faces Route 217. A strategic decision was made to cloak the dealership’s service area from the highway, so only the most pristine elements are visible from all angles of passing traffic.

“We’re trying to capitalize on all these exposures from different perspectives,” dealership manager Dan Muggli said.

Aside from the massive panes of glass for transparency, the building will be adorned with metal panels of champagne silver and sunshine grey – the company’s custom paint colors.

Besides the pavilion, there will be room for two more display vehicles, plus 14 on the showroom floor. On site there will be parking for 100 additional new vehicles.

The 39,000-square-foot service area will have 31 service bays and five more dedicated to vehicle alignment and detailing services. A mezzanine will afford the foreman a full panoramic view of the facilities.

The Tigard dealership fits within Jaguar Land Rover’s global initiative. Its “Arch” concept, which began in 2016, requires that all dealerships carry both brands. Company guidelines ensure each dealership looks and operates the same.

A single welcome kiosk will direct customers to either the Jaguar space or Land Rover space, which will be separate. There will be no individual desks for salespeople, because they will be able to process all transactions on tablets.

In the service department, a large tool bay will contain a wide variety of technology to aid mechanics. There will also be a queue area where necessary tools can be set out before each day’s work begins.

The service area will feature three lanes able to accommodate vehicles either entering or exiting. Two of the three lanes will allow for either incoming or outgoing traffic, depending on time of day.

Muggli said demand for the Jaguar Land Rover brand has far outgrown the existing dealership in Northeast Portland. Besides that one, the nearest dealerships are in Seattle; Boise, Idaho; and Sacramento, California. The new facility will be the premier one in the region, he said.

Don Rasmussen Co. is looking to break the typical car dealership mold, Muggli said, and noted there would be no parking lot full of stickered cars or inflatable gorillas.

“We’re building it to serve not just the Portland/Vancouver (Washington) area, but all of Oregon for that matter,” he said.

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