Talk about a passion project: University of Washington graduate research assistant Kristina Tsvetanova has logged more than 100 hours a week at the UW’s Structural Research Lab working on one project – one for which she will receive no academic credit (her thesis was about a totally different project).

“She’s put a phenomenal amount of work into this, and I have never told her, ‘You have to be here at this time, doing this,” said her adviser, civil engineering professor John Stanton.

It’s likely because she’ll get something more valuable out of the experience.

“She’s completely engaged, and it’s because she’s excited about being a part of a real-world project that is going to be built,” Stanton said.

Several of the bright minds working to take – a world first – aren’t earning a dime for their trouble. Three UW graduate students and nine undergrads are part of a global team assembled to tackle this . The team also includes an English design engineer and more than 30 U.S. subcontractors – including Portland-based David Evans & Associates and the Portland offices of KPFF Consulting Engineers and WSP. Another of the graduate assistants, Travis Thonstad, even helped author a scholarly article on design development of the project. (Thonstad now works professionally on the East Coast.)

“It was a global problem, so it required a global solution,” said John Sleavin, deputy director of Sound Transit‘s $3.7 billion , which includes at Lake Washington. The 5,700-foot-long span now carries westbound and express lane traffic, and is the widest and fifth-longest floating bridge in the world.

Among the consulting engineers were experts in marine vessels, who were able to consider matters like trim, ballast and how high the bridge sits on the lake. Sleavin said there was in adding a railway to a structure that floats.

“A floating bridge, in the simplest terms, is a marine vessel that cannot go into port,” he said. “It’s basically a ship we’re putting this on.”

There are six degrees of motion that affect a span like the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge, and that engineers in this case had to account for. The hardest piece to get right is the approaches.

To allow the light-rail cars to ride smoothly onto and off of the bridge, U.K. engineer Andy Foan developed a new, highly-responsive track system dubbed the Curved Element Supported Rail (CESuRa).

UW students led by Stanton have worked closely for five years with Sound Transit officials and consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff, primarily involved with lab-testing various prototype materials, like the CESuRa system. Thonstad led testing of the system, starting in 2012, using a custom steel rig that mimics the movements of a train. After that, Thonstad assisted with full-scale testing at the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colo.

The rail cars were tested at 55 mph. Playing the role of human passengers: barrels full of water.

“They actually do a pretty good job representing how a human body reacts in those circumstances,” Sleavin said. “And we obviously can’t use real passengers.”

It’s fitting that students were so involved in an innovation to a bridge that was itself dreamed up by an engineering student. Though floating bridges are rare in the world, Oregon’s neighbor to the north is considered the global home of the floating bridge. They are an option when a body of water is too deep to effectively employ columns, as is the case with Lake Washington, which has an average depth of 108 feet and a deepest point of 214 feet. Floating bridges can work if the water is a relatively stable level and lacking strong currents and ice floes, as a young engineering student, Homer Hadley, reasoned about Lake Washington nearly 100 years ago.

Hadley’s plan was finally put to use in 1940 with the construction of the Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge. The Murrow bridge’s companion span was named for Hadley upon its completion in 1989. Rail was envisioned to cross Lake Washington as far back as 1976, when a pact was signed to add high-capacity transit to the bridge. But it wasn’t until Seattle was squeezed by development in the mid-2000s that testing began. The Washington State Department of Transportation put together a panel including engineers of all stripes that identified 23 issues designers would have to account for in their final plans.

They anticipated problems with corrosion, wind, lightning, maintenance, attachments for the tracks to the bridge pontoons and structural impacts to the bridge, to name a few.

After the constantly changing lake levels, the next great challenge for the UW team was attaching rails to the bridge pontoons without use of bolts (a condition of the Federal Highway Administration was to not add holes to the bridge.) This meant traditional methods of building rail could not be considered.

After puzzling through various trials, Sound Transit’s engineers decided to use layers of various adhesives between the bridge decks and rails. But the adhesive solution has be able to withstand extreme vibration and shrinkage from the curing process.

When Sound Transit’s initial attachment solution appeared insufficiently flexible, former UW student Matthew Sisley wrote reports to Sound Transit. Using his notes, they changed course. Three years later, Tsvetanova is leading a team testing the final prototype, which has been informed by the earlier UW test results.

Though the students weren’t all paid or given school credit for their work, it was as real as can be, Stanton said. The students will have the same pride traveling over the bridge in a light-rail car as any other team member. Beyond that, firms that rely on Tsvetanova daily have taken note not just of her technical ability, but her ability to lead others by way of a clear and persuasive passion for the project, Stanton said.

“In fact, they’ve been leaning on me a lot, saying, ‘When is she going to graduate? I want to employ her.’”

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Permits issued

• Robert Edgar was issued a $589,400 permit to infill the entry vestibule and install new storefront doors and windows at Collision Rebuilders at 1118 N.W. 21st Ave. in Northwest Portland. The applicant is Collision Rebuilders and the contractor has yet to be selected.

• The Port of Portland was issued a $547,685 permit for a tenant improvement at the former Learning Palace space at 9971 N.E. Cascades Parkway, at Cascade Station near Portland International Airport. The contractor is Management Resource Systems.

• Castlegate LLC of Bend was issued three permits valued at $1 million each to build three three-story, eight-unit apartment buildings at 14633 N.E. Rose Parkway in Argay. The applicant is Darter Construction and the contractor is SGS Development. Seven such structures are planned.

• Amstar/KOZ Portland LLC of Denver was issued an $8 million permit to build a six-story mixed-use building with ground-floor retail space at 1075 N.W. 16th Ave. in Northwest Portland. The applicant is Koz Development and the contractor is Seabold Construction.

• Bulldog Capital LLC was issued a $533,503 permit to build a four-unit apartment building with tuck-under garages at 5312 N.E. 11th Ave. in the Vernon neighborhood. The contractor is Bulldog Capital Development.

• The Port of Portland was issued a $3 million permit to build a three-story office building at 9225 N.E. Cascades Parkway, at Cascade Station near Portland International Airport. The applicant is Scott | Edwards Architecture and the contractor is Perlo Construction.

• The Port of Portland was issued a $45 million permit to build a shell-only warehouse at 15000 N. Lombard St. in St. Johns. The applicant is Mackenzie.

• Yamane Development Holdings Group 1 LLC was issued a $1.3 million permit to build a two-story, 19-unit “congregate living facility” at 15855 S.E. Powell Blvd. in the Centennial neighborhood. The applicant is BAMA Design and the contractor is Mel Construction.

• Flynn D. Case of Salem was issued a $9.8 million permit to build a three-story self-storage facility at 12323 S.E. Division St. in Mill Park. The contractor is Perlo Construction.

Permit intakes

• Oregon Public Broadcasting is pursuing a $2.5 million permit to perform a tenant improvement at 7140 S.W. Macadam Ave. in Southwest Portland. The applicant is LRS Architects.

• Robert Edgar is seeking a $589,400 permit to infill an entry vestibule area at Collision Rebuilders at 1118 N.W. 21st Ave. in Northwest Portland. The applicant is Collision Rebuilders.

• 8L LLC is seeking a $700,000 permit for a tenant improvement at 38 Davis St. in Old Town Chinatown. The applicant is Studio Petretti and the contractor is Balfour Beatty Construction.

• VRA Properties LLC is seeking a $1.5 million permit for a tenant improvement at 633 N.E. 12th Ave. in the Kerns neighborhood. The applicant is LRS Architects and the contractor has yet to be selected.

• John F. Potts is seeking a $23.5 million permit to build a six-story, 211-unit apartment building at 1337 E. Burnside St. in Buckman. The applicant is Encore Architects and the contractor is Alliance Pacific Northwest Builders.

• Danny J. Jones and Kathleen F. Jones are pursuing a $1 million permit to build a three-story, eight-unit apartment building at 37 S.E. 83rd Ave. in the Montavilla neighborhood. The applicant is Susak Properties and the contractor is DK Homes.

Source: Portland Bureau of Development Services

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A 95-year-old lumber company wants to become Oregon’s second mass timber manufacturer, by turning its plywood veneers into a low-cost alternative to cross-laminated timber (CLT).

Freres Lumber Co. is building a 4-acre expansion at its Lyons mill and has begun installing a wood press and milling machine so it can press and form mass plywood panels (MPP). The product would be a lot like the plywood the mill already produces, only much larger and – pending approval by the American Plywood Association – certified to bear structural loads.

There’s hope at the company that MPP will join CLT in high-rise construction once expected building code changes occur and a supply chain establishes itself in the Pacific Northwest.

“It’s an extremely compelling idea and it can open up a lot of different marketplaces,” Vice President Tyler Freres said.

Leadership at the company decided two years ago to pursue the venture after Freres and his brother and fellow vice president, Kyle, visited a CLT manufacturer in Austria. Tyler Freres said they noticed how much raw material was going to waste using sawn hardwood lumber to make engineered wood panels.

“So when we came back, we worked on ways to potentially use a plywood-like panel, or veneers in different orientations, to try to replicate that type of product,” he said.

Freres says there are a couple of ways MPP creates less waste than CLT. Veneers, like those Freres Lumber uses to make plywood, are peeled off a log using a lathe.  Lumber, by contrast, is made by sawing a log into smaller pieces, so there’s less loss using plywood compared to hardwood lumber. MPP also is said to be efficient because knots and other defects in lumber must be sawn around, which usually results in scrapping usable material.

MPP also lacks the need for intermediate facilities to kiln-dry lumber down to a suitable moisture content, as is the case with CLT.

At the Freres mill in Lyons, a testing facility is already rolling out prototype MPP, and a patent application is pending on the mill’s process.  The mill expansion project could be completed as early as late October, with commercial roll-out potentially ready by mid-December. The company expects to receive APA certification within nine months.

But that doesn’t mean smooth sailing from there, according to two industry experts.

“I’d be surprised if they’re able to do it in 18 months,” said Ethan Martin, senior technical specialist for Woodworks.

Freres Lumber is working to get the product certified with APA as a grade of CLT, Martin said. The APA’s certification standard – PRG-320 – is a performance-based standard, meaning it has to demonstrate it can handle a specific load. But the standards to get certified by the International Code Council, which writes the building code, are more detailed than the APA’s.

“Even if it gets PRG-320-certified, the building code still says, ‘CLT manufactured in accordance with PRG-320.’ It doesn’t say composite lumber, or plywood, manufactured in accordance with PRG-320,” said Martin, who toured the Freres expansion this month. “Years ago, the wood industry all stepped back and wrote a CLT handbook, did all the testing, and got it into the building code. I’d say Freres is about where CLT was four to five years ago.”

What seems more likely to Martin is that over the next few years, as larger code issues are worked out, Freres Lumber supplies a few “one-off” projects that receive special permission to use MPP. Aside from those one-offs, the company would be able to use its new expansion facility to produce other products.

Right now, Oregon is home to one of the U.S.’s two APA-certified CLT manufacturers. DR Johnson in Riddle for decades focused on high-end Douglas fir products until it became the first American company to branch into CLT. To produce its CLT panels – which are typically made from lower-grade lumber – DR Johnson buys lumber from elsewhere. Freres said this is one way his company will be more vertically-integrated than the CLT model.

But Timm Locke of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute said he isn’t sure it matters.

“It’s two different ways to skin a cat,” he said. “In fact, the possibility exists that if this MPP takes off, Freres may find that they need to buy veneer on the open market to support their own manufacturing. And they may find that their veneer is more appropriate for other uses.”

Locke says one drawback with MPP could be in aesthetics. CLT is popular with designers because of increased structural possibilities and a clean look. MPP manufacturers have a possible solution in using hardwood as a surface layer, already common in smaller plywood panels.

Locke said OFRI is “equally excited” about CLT and MPP. (Tyler Freres is an OFRI board member.)

If a product has the same design values as CLT and it also competes in the market to be used in placed of poured concrete, Locke thinks it will only lead to more buildings being made of wood.

“I think what the Freres brothers are doing is an innovative approach to manufacturing,” he said, “and I’m happy to see traditional wood products companies doing it.”

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The University of Oregon is looking for a firm to head an expansion-renovation of its University Health, Counseling and Testing Center.

The $17 million project will include the renovation of 12,000 square feet and the addition of 20,000 square feet, according to a request for proposals issued earlier this month.

The current building is located in the middle of the university’s Eugene campus and offers students comprehensive health care, including primary care, pharmacy, laboratory, dental, x-ray and sports medicine.

There is currently a “tremendous” need to expand the facility due to growth of the student body along with deferred maintenance and facility problems, according to the RFP. The building was built in 1965 and was last expanded in 2007.

Construction is scheduled to begin next June, with fall 2019 the target for occupancy.

The university intends to contract with the winning bidder initially for only preconstruction services, with provisions for later adding the construction phase to the scope of work.

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The four partnering agencies behind a 10-story project tentatively called 4th and Montgomery are in the early stages of exploring the use of mass timber.

The proposed idea was confirmed Wednesday by Alisa Kane, the city of Portland‘s green building manager. Joining the city to develop the project are Portland State University, Oregon Health and Sciences University, and Portland Community College.

The building is planned for a site near PSU known as the Jasmine Block and will feature some retail and commercial space along the classrooms and offices. PSU is leading the project and will be the anchor tenant.

The site was once proposed as the site for the Oregon Sustainability Center, an ambitious high-rise that would have showcased Oregon’s green industry.

The city is a tenant and owner of one floor of the project. Its Bureau of Planning and Sustainability will relocate to the building upon completion.

The project is in the planning stage until May. Move-in is scheduled for fall 2020

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Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter last month announced the totaling $230,000.

It’s the most the organization has donated in recent history, and $13,000 more than it gave last year.

Oregon State University received the largest sum, with $67,600 going to its School of Civil and Construction and Engineering.

The Oregon Building Congress got $35,000 for workforce development, primarily at local schools. The Northwest College of Construction received $25,000 for its Construction Career Pipeline program, to support 130 students becoming journeymen. Constructing Hope’s pre-apprenticeship program received $15,000 for a no-cost, nine-week pre-apprenticeship course for 125 disadvantaged people. The Clark College Foundation received $10,000 for support materials for the second year of the Professional Edge for Construction program for 50-60 high school graduates and their families.

Other grant recipients include Business Education Compact, Impact NW, Portland Youth Builders, Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., Oregon Institute of Technology, Portland Workforce Alliance and the Willamette Education Service District.

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Three Oregon State University students are close to finding a practical agricultural application for an emerging technology already at work in the building industry.

The team of engineering students Jonah Seikmann and Brett Stoddard and accounting student Mitchell Moos was awarded a $2,500 grant for their project applying radio-frequency identification (RFID) patches to detect moisture in crop fields.

The technology could save farmers up to 20 percent of the water they use, said Seikmann, 19.

“The current agricultural practice is to overwater,” he said, adding agriculture accounts for 7 percent of water used on the planet.

RFID tags are already in use in construction, helping builders detect weak points in drying concrete. The tags work by storing information and sending it via electromagnetic waves to a receiver. Other current uses of RFID include tracking livestock and pets and timing athletes at competitions.

The OSU team’s “Hydrone” prototype would take off at pre-appointed times and follow a route passing over RFID tags embedded in the field. Team members reached Tuesday said they now believe a more practical application of the device is on a rig that mounts to a piece of farm equipment, such as a tractor or center-pivot irrigation system. A handheld device might also be appropriate for the market, said Stoddard, 21.

Current moisture detection sensors, like those by Digi, can run upwards of $200 each. The Smartrek sensors used by the OSU team would cost around 18 cents apiece.

OSU agricultural sciences assistant professor Chet Udell got the ball rolling on the project. He passed the idea along to Seikmann and Stoddard, and Moos joined the effort later.

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Portland’s new bike-centered amenity, Gateway Green, represents a bit of a paradox. The 25-acre parcel is highly visible, wedged as it is between two well-traveled interstate highways in East Portland. But park booster Linda Robinson acknowledges there’s a problem.

“People can’t find it,” said Robinson, a Friends of Gateway Green (FoGG) board member. “People can’t even find the bike path to get there.”

This became obvious to Robinson early in the park’s , when she would arrange meetings with other stakeholders at the parcel, and they’d consistently get lost trying to reach it. The park is accessible only via a spur off the Interstate 205 multiuse path, and the nearest one can park a vehicle is the Gateway transit center a quarter-mile away.

So now, local design firm Propel Studio is finalizing concepts for a package of wayfinding and signage options for the Gateway neighborhood, to help bicyclists – plus residents – find the off-road facility. The 4-year-old firm’s work is being paid for by a $50,000 Prosper Portland grant.

And it’s not just the park. The entire business district is difficult for outsiders to locate, said Tom Badrick, a FoGG board member.

“If you hop on light rail and get off at the Gateway transit center, you can’t find anything from there,” he said. “Nothing is obvious.”

Also, with a shortage of public streets, is difficult to navigate, according to Badrick. He remembers shopping at the old Fred Meyer store – more open-air promenade than big-box – as a child growing up in Gateway. He moved back eight years ago and has been involved with a number of community groups, including the Gateway Area Business Association.

“Some areas are different, but some areas, it just seems like time stood still,” he said. “Still, it’s not very pedestrian-friendly. It used to be a lot more pedestrian-friendly.”

But before Propel could address signage in Gateway and the issue of directing people to Gateway Green, it first had to tackle another, broader issue, according to partner Lucas Gray.

“It’s hard to design signage and wayfinding if there’s no overarching logos, texts, fonts, colors, etc. to work from,” he said. “So we started to think big picture – what is the identity of the Gateway district?”

The Gateway area was founded by Fred Meyer himself. Continually trying to evade city regulations, the one-stop-shopping innovator in 1954 established a new shopping center amid the orchards east of Portland. Included in the design was a prominent arch, like a scaled-down version of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

Suburban sprawl continued for the next five decades, and the Gateway arch was taken down in 1991 due to deterioration. Gateway’s location at the confluence of two interstates and with easy access to downtown and the Portland International Airport continue to make it a target for development; however, zoning requirements challenge developers, and connectivity and access to parks challenge residents.

Gateway was designated one of seven regional urban centers in the Metro 2040 Growth Concept planning document, with the area scheduled to receive millions of dollars’ worth of transit and highway improvements in the coming years.

Young people who settle in East Portland, priced out of hipper neighborhoods, still expect urban amenities like reliable transit and fine dining. Propel Studio’s work crafting signs for Gateway Green has involved striking a balance between old and new, Gray said, and a big sticking point has become the arch.

“Some of the older business owners think of the arch as this really iconic thing, and they are really interested in having that image restored and prevalent in the identity of the area,” Gray said. “And there’s the younger people – and some of the older people – who want it to be a little bit more progressive, and for us to forget the arch. It’s not there anymore and it’s not relevant to the future of the district.”

Most of the aesthetic options Propel has created reference the arch by varying degrees. One option features an arch carved out – or “subtracted” – from a larger space. However, some options leave out the arch altogether.

Funding has yet to be secured for fabrication and installation, and it’s possible the final branding won’t match Propel’s ideas. But incorporating branding into architecture is an exciting, emerging field, according to Gray, and it’s the sort of work Propel would like to do more of.

For the Gateway area, Propel envisions three tiers of “intervention.” The first is a large-scale object that would function as a mix of community meeting point, art installation and simple shelter, similar to the Jorge Pardo-designed streetcar stop at the east end of the Broadway Bridge.

“It hasn’t been 100-percent defined,” Gray said.

The structure might contain bike-friendly amenities, like a tire air pump. The cost for this level of intervention is estimated to run around $100,000 each.

The next tier down would involve medium-scale objects, like information kiosks similar to those designed for the Lents area. Propel envisions rolling out four or five of them at strategic locations, at an anticipated cost of around $10,000 each.

The third level would be small-scale interventions to create pathways through the neighborhoods. These items would be much more affordable and faster to fabricate than the others. Reusable medallions could be used to imprint roads and sidewalks during repavement projects. Sign-toppers made of laser-cut steel could run as little as $10 each, Gray said.

There’s even talk of “tactical urbanism” tactics, like temporary wayfinding devices to help community members become familiar with new routes.

formally opened with a ceremony June 24, a 100-degree day. More than 1,000 people attended, most on bikes.

The moment was a great relief to Robinson, who, along with developer Ted Gilbert, spent more than a decade shepherding the project. But it served as a reminder how much work remains, she said, citing water hookups, restrooms and other work.

As for what Robinson would like the final designs to look like, she said she hasn’t decided if she’d like the arch to be incorporated in Gateway going forward.

“I’m still vacillating back and forth – should we use it, should we not use it?” she said. “I don’t think we should totally ignore it.”

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Permits issued

• Costco Wholesale Corp. of Issaquah, Wash., was issued a $744,277 permit to expand an existing tire center at 4849 N.E. 138th Ave., in the Argay neighborhood, into a new tire installation area with vehicle lifts and a remodeled interior. The contractor is Robinson Construction Co. and the applicant is MG2 Architecture.

• RSGF Collins Circle LLC of New York City was issued a $1 million permit to remove and replace brick cladding and windows along the east side of the building at the Collins Circle Apartments at 1704 S.W. Jefferson St. in Goose Hollow. The applicant is RDH Building Sciences Inc. and the contractor is Charter Construction.

• Mississippi Apartments LLC of Las Vegas was issued a $27.6 million permit to build a six-story, 211-unit apartment building with 126 basement parking stalls at 3309 N. Mississippi Ave. in the Boise neighborhood. The applicant is Holst Architecture and the contractor is Fore Construction.
• Castlegate LLC of Bend was issued four permits of approximately $1 million to build four three-story, eight-unit apartment buildings on Northeast Rose Parkway in the Argay neighborhood. The applicant is Darter Construction and the contractor is SGS Development.

• 120 Clay Development was issued a $506,000 permit on a deferred submittal for a raised access flooring system at the office building at 120 S.E. Clay St. in the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood. The applicant and contractor is Turner Construction.

• Morrison Development LLC was issued a $1.3 million permit on a deferred submittal for an aluminum storefront at 1155 S.W. Morrison St. in downtown. The applicant is Culver Glass and the contractor is Turner Construction.

• The city of Portland was issued a $2.7 million permit for construction of a new control building with a pump station at 700 S.E. Water Ave. in the Buckman neighborhood. The applicant is the Bureau of Environmental Services and the contractor is Stellar J Corporation.

Permit intakes

• WL-SKB Johns Landing 5550 Owner LLC of San Francisco is seeking an $893,000 permit to renovate the common areas of the office building at 5550 S.W. Macadam Ave. The applicant is FFA Architecture and Interiors and the contractor is Lorentz Bruun Co.

• Portland State University is pursuing a $31.3 million permit to renovate Neuberger Hall, a 220,000-square-foot building at 1855 S.W. Broadway in downtown. The applicant is Hacker and the contractor is Fortis Construction.

• PDX Redevelopment LLC is pursuing two permits totaling $2 million in value to build a six-unit condo building and a 12-unit apartment building in the 5700 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the King neighborhood. The applicant is Studio 3 Architecture Inc. and the contractor is PDX Redevelopment Co.

• Urban Development Group is pursuing a $2.5 million permit to build a three-story, 12-unit apartment building at 7000 N.E. MLK Boulevard in the King neighborhood. The applicant is Urban Development Group and the contractor is AV Pacific LLC.

• Craig B. Nelson is seeking a $5 million permit to build a four-story apartment building at 5710 E. Burnside St. in the Mount Tabor neighborhood. The applicant is LRS Architects and the contractor is PDG Construction Services.

Source: Portland Bureau of Development Services

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Millions of Metro grant dollars are now hitting the streets to help identify solutions to housing unaffordability in Greater Portland.

Seven agencies received one-time Community Planning and Development Grant awards of $100,000 or less in 2016. It was the final round using the “Community Planning and Development Grant” title. The name will change next round to “,” and be based on Metro’s 2040 Growth Concept planning document.

A from the city of Beaverton is seeking a consultant to identify possible “anti-displacement” policies the city could adopt to preserve and increase affordable housing options. The contract would be valued at $100,000.

Also receiving grants were the cities of Portland ($100,000), Oregon City ($100,000), Milwaukie ($65,000), Wilsonville ($62,000) and Tigard ($50,000), and Washington County ($97,500). The grants will serve different objectives, from finding opportunities to increase “missing middle housing” in the city code (Oregon City) to finding affordable housing options near areas in Southwest Portland eyed for light-rail expansion.

The grant money comes from Metro’s 0.12 percent construction excise tax on projects valued over $100,000.

For projects valued over $10 million, a $12,000 payment is due.

(Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct grant amount received by Washington County.)

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