It took a Great Depression-era program to build the McLoughlin Promenade wall that frames Oregon City’s signature sights. Fixing that badly deteriorated wall took a Great Recession program.

Oregon City got approximately $1 million to repair the promenade wall through the federal stimulus package passed last year, said Laura Butler, Oregon City’s project manager for the renovation.

The promenade wall, a Works Progress Administration project, was completed in 1938. “The money came from President Roosevelt to bring employment back,” Butler said. “And that’s happening again with the stimulus.”

The maintenance project started last August. General contractor Pioneer Waterproofing Co. is set to finish later this month – four months ahead of schedule. With a high bluff as a work site, workers had to take special precautions to stay safe, said Mike Crawford, Pioneer’s president.

They used special brackets to support them as they worked on the bluff’s edge. “They were 70 or 80 feet above the road or above the railroad tracks,” Crawford said.

“We had to custom-build (the brackets) to provide a working area on the outside of the wall that kept workers safe and kept construction debris and tools within the area,” he said. “And we had to make sure nothing could drop on them.”

The work involved cutting out mortar joints and replacing them – called tuckpointing – and replacing the Grand Staircase and mortar caps and railings along the wall. Subcontractor Michael’s Precast made 190 new concrete rails to match the originals, which had badly deteriorated.

Subcontractors Concrete Alternatives and Dale Britton Excavating also worked on the project.

Although Butler said she didn’t know of any pieces of the wall tumbling off and hitting the highway below, the rock wall and concrete railings were in bad shape. “They were covered by an immense amount of moss, and a lot of the wall was deteriorated and crumbling,” she said. “It wasn’t in safe condition.”

The railings were the greatest safety hazard, Butler said. “In a lot of places, the concrete around the rebar had been eaten away and deteriorated, and the rebar had been bent into a V shape,” she said.

While the wall dates from the New Deal, much of the work in the area predates that era. The concrete Grand Staircase replaced an earlier wooden version.

The unusual slope of the steps reflects that earlier era, Butler said. “They have a strange rise and run – a very short rise and long run,” she said. “That’s because they were originally constructed to allow horses to go up them.”

A wooden elevator was built in 1913 and replaced with the existing municipal elevator in 1955, Butler said. Horses still had to take the stairs.

Pioneer kept the original stones in the wall as it replaced the mortar. That replacement took some historical sleuthing.

“The contractor went in and did an analysis of the existing grout mortar, and determined how much rock and sand were in it,” said Wendy Schmidt, a consultant with Wallis Engineering. “Then they matched that with the new mortar they were putting in.”

Older mixes included more whole river rocks and less crushed, mined rock. “They used bigger, rounder rocks,” Schmidt said. “Today you see more fractured rock.”

Once the project started, workers realized the wall needed more work than expected, Crawford said. “As we were cleaning the walls, some deterioration that wasn’t as noticeable before became more noticeable.”

Oregon City officials secured some urban renewal money so they wouldn’t need to return for bigger repairs later, he said. “The city felt it was in their interest to get it done now.”

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Federal legislation could scale back some of the benefits of Build America Bonds even as Oregon agencies have started to embrace the program, which is part of the federal stimulus package. The program pays a subsidy to offset borrowing costs.

Legislation extending the bond program passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week and stands a good chance of clearing the Senate as well, said Tom Towslee, spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a longtime Build America Bonds proponent. That bill, however, would cut those subsidies.

Unlike traditional tax-exempt bonds, Build America Bonds are taxable. The federal government pays agencies that issue Build America Bonds 35 percent of taxable interest rates to make the bonds more attractive.

The House bill would roll that subsidy back to 30 percent. That could change in the Senate, Towslee said.

“We’d prefer to have a higher rate for transportation projects,” he said. “The higher the rate, the more attractive (the bonds) are; the more attractive they are, the more they’re used.”

They’ve already been used extensively, Towslee said. Build America Bonds now make up 20 percent of the entire municipal bond market.

The state of Oregon held its first sale of Build America Bonds in April. “We got what you’d call a screamin’ deal,” said James Sinks, spokesman for the state Treasurer’s office.

The Oregon Department of Transportation saved $56 million on the $580 million bond sale, averaging a net interest cost of 3.74 percent. The money goes to transportation projects across the state authorized under the Oregon Transportation Investment Act III.

“We’re able to fund projects at a lower cost,” said Les Brodie, chief financial officer for ODOT. “We’re saving $3.2 million on debt service per year by doing this.

“It’s like having a lower mortgage cost.”

It took Oregon longer than other states to embrace Build America Bonds. More than two-thirds of states had already sold the bonds by last summer.

In August 2009, the tiny Dayton School District became the first public body in Oregon to use the bonds, selling $9 million worth. The sale represented a $1.3 million savings over the life of the bonds, Superintendent Janelle Beers said at the time.

Transit agency TriMet was the second public body in Oregon to sell the bonds. Including Build America Bonds in its $49.6 million bond sale in November 2009 will save TriMet nearly $3 million over the life of the bonds.

That money goes to buy buses and a new system to locate and dispatch vehicles in TriMet’s fleet.

Most bond sales that have included Build America Bonds have also included traditional tax-exempt bonds. Rates can change quickly, causing the better deal to change from day to day.

“Whenever the treasury is doing a bond sale, you go out and find the best terms and best vehicle,” Sinks said. For the OTIA III bond sale, the interest rate and federal subsidy for Build America Bonds made them an easy choice.

“Based on what was happening, we were able to go out and get the lowest-interest bonds in the country this year,” he said.

Because of the fluctuations, dropping the federal subsidy to agencies even a few percentage points can make taxable bond sales less attractive. That’s one concern with the recently passed House bill, Towslee said.

“We’re generally OK with what the House has done,” he said. “But we would prefer to see the 35 percent rate kept for transportation projects.”

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Even for a company that specializes in building and maintaining ropeways, the replacement of the Portland Aerial Tram‘s haul rope was unusual. For starters, it took place in midair.

Doppelmayr CTEC, the company that operates and maintains the tram, replaces cables on similar systems all the time, said Mike Commissaris, general manager for Portland operations. But only two systems, in Portland and Jackson, Wyo., require the work be done on an aerial staircase called a splicing bridge.

“Normally, you can do it on the ground,” Commissaris said. “But we have a 200-foot tower to clear the roads and neighborhood.

“We cannot get enough slack to reach the ground.”

The Portland Aerial Tram runs on a 34.5-millimeter cable, nearly a mile and a half long, looped to carry both tram cars. To replace it, workers clamped the old cable, cut it and spliced in a new one.

They pulled the combined cable until the new rope had passed through the entire path and then cut the old rope free. Then they performed a delicate braiding act on the bridge between the lower tram station and the tower.

Workers undid four of the eight strands of steel cable on each end of the rope. Eleven or 12 people at a time worked to unwind the strands individually and braid them back together over 67 feet of cable.

It’s hard enough work on the ground, Commissaris said, but this was on a shifting staircase suspended in midair. “You can’t describe how it feels when you’ve been up there for 12 hours,” he said.

The weather mostly cooperated during the process, from May 25 to 31, Commissaris said; some rain fell, but nothing serious.

In three and a half years since the tram opened, it has become a vital link between the Marquam Hill and South Waterfront campuses of Oregon Health and Science University, said Brett Dodson, tram manger for OHSU. Some people take two or more round trips on the tram each day.

While the tram was down, shuttle buses transported passengers between the campuses, taking 15 to 20 minutes each way in smooth traffic and even longer in rush hour. Compared to a few minutes on the tram, the outage could have cost an hour or more in travel times.

Knowing the closure was coming, however, many people made other arrangements, Dodson said. “Overall, I think the entire community and public did a good job of planning and finding alternate ways to get to campus,” he said.

“There were a lot of people riding their bikes up the hill or using TriMet.”

The project cost around $300,000 for materials and labor, Dodson said.

The expected useful life of a tram rope is approximately three to three and a half years when placed under the pressures the Portland tram puts on it, Commissaris said. The new rope will require less maintenance than the old one, however.

That’s because the core, a solid plastic, won’t stretch as much as the old polypropylene rope core. The old cable needed to be shortened three times; the new one could last until replacement without being shortened.

“The solid plastic offers more support for the strands,” Commissaris said. “And it won’t stretch as readily.”

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The first section of the Springwater Trail has closed for construction. The trail is closed for repaving between Southeast 28^th and Linwood avenues.

During construction, expected to last through June 15, the detour will follow a meandering pass that snakes through Sherrett Street, Johnson Creek Boulevard, Harney Drive and Flavel Drive.

Construction on the trail is happening in four phases through July 23. Detours will be in place before each closure begins.

The project involves paving the trail with a two-inch permeable asphalt, new signs and bollards along the trail. A $1.8 million federal stimulus grant is paying for the project.

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In the previous round of high-speed rail stimulus grants, Oregon got a small fraction of Washington state’s total. The latest round, announced today, passed over the Pacific Northwest entirely.

U.S. Department of Transportation officials announced nearly $80 million in high-speed-rail money for projects in five states. Of that amount, $66.6 million will go to Florida’s Tampa-to-Orlando corridor, planned to accommodate 168-mph trains.

Projects in California, Wisconsin, New York and New Mexico will also receive money.

Washington got $590 million for the last round of high-speed-rail projects. Oregon got $8 million, most of it for repairs to Portland’s Union Station.

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Like any builder, Jeff Fish doesn’t want to pay more for building permits. With the city’s permitting agency short on cash, however, he would pay even more if services declined.

“When you compare the cost of a fee increase on permits as opposed to increased inspection time, you’re talking dollars and dollars,” said Fish, president of Fish Construction NW. “In the long run, paying 8 percent is a better trade-off than having your house sit there.”

For Portland’s Bureau of Development Services, it’s not a choice between raising fees and cutting service. The bureau will raise most permit review and inspection fees by 8 percent along with reducing services.

The BDS was to eliminate 17 full-time positions by Monday, said bureau spokesman Ross Caron. Two of those are currently unfilled; some of the employees may shift to vacant positions, or displace employees, in other bureaus.

That leaves 146 positions within the bureau, Caron said, and continues a difficult trend. Last fall, the BDS cut around 150 positions.

Because the bureau collects fees based on the value of permits issued, the drop in construction has caused a severe drop in revenue. From July 2009 through April 30, the total value of permits issued was $699 million.

In the same period from 2007 to 2008, the total value of permits was $1.7 billion.

The biggest drop has been in the largest construction projects, Caron said. The bureau issued 19 percent fewer permits in this period, but the permit value fell 42 percent.

Inevitably, the bureau has had to reduce service, he said. There aren’t enough employees to help Development Services Center customers at all times.

Starting Monday, customers with questions between 8 a.m. and noon will be helped only when employees are free. Otherwise, customers will be helped between noon and 3 p.m.

Mornings will be devoted to land-use reviews and building permits; permits will not be processed after noon. The Development Services Center will remain closed on Mondays, as it has been since last fall.

Reduced service and increased price is a dangerous combination, said Brad Hosmar, chief operating officer for Arbor Custom Homes. “The city of Portland has reduced its staff so significantly that it can’t perform at a level that is satisfactory to (its) customer base, which is us,” he said.

In the current economy, customers respond to even the smallest price increases, Hosmar said. Increasing permit costs pushes the cost of homes higher.

“The bottom line is those costs are passed on to the consumer,” he said. “And right now, price is king.”

Long waits for building permits and high costs have caused Arbor Custom Homes to focus on other jurisdictions, Hosmar said. “We have one site left (in Portland), and after that, we’re probably not going back into the city of Portland.”

Jeff Fish said Fish Construction NW does most of its work in Portland and will continue to do so. He said he understands some of the bureau’s delays but hopes they will be turned around soon.

“It’s more on the inspection side than the permit side,” Fish said. “A couple years ago, you could call and get an inspection on the same day. Now, if you call on a Thursday, they’ll probably get in on a Friday.”

The economy could start to turn around soon, and lead to more revenue for the BDS. Or it might not.

“I don’t know if we’re on the bottom of this or not,” Fish said. “We’ll see how much longer they’re going to fight through this and keep the staff they have.”

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The project to replace Portland’s easternmost fire station marks the last new-construction project in the city’s 1998 seismic upgrade bond. Work on Station 31 will start this fall and last about a year.

Station 31 is unique in serving more than just Portland: Gresham firefighters also use the station, on Southeast 174th Avenue. “It’s right on the border of Portland and Gresham,” said Brian Alcid, senior facilities maintenance supervisor with Portland Fire & Rescue.

The cities alternate use of the station, with Portland firefighters using it for two days and Gresham firefighters for one day. “It’s a good arrangement with both fire bureaus,” Alcid said.

That arrangement will continue after the new station is built, he said.

Station 31 needed improvements to meet seismic standards, Alcid said, but a retrofit wouldn’t have cost much less than a total replacement. “It was pretty much a wash,” he said.

“Operationally, the station is a little undersized and it didn’t have the function we needed.”

The present business office and kitchen are tiny. There’s not much room to fit the fire engine and other equipment.

There’s also no room to grow: the service area might need a ladder truck or another fire engine in the future, but the existing building couldn’t accommodate that. Adding an engine requires four additional firefighters.

The new station will have an expanded area for fire equipment, called an apparatus bay, said Rich Attridge, project manager for Portland’s Office of Management and Finance. A second floor above the apparatus bay is designed to accommodate future growth.

Portland officials have one more fire station remodel left under the $65 million bond. Station 31 is estimated to cost $3.1 million, with $2 million for construction.

There’s enough money left under the bond to complete every project envisioned in 1998, Attridge said. “We’ve completed all that we said we were going to,” he said.

“It was a hard road, because we’ve had such huge inflation during the 12 years we’ve been running this program,” he said. “And construction inflation has been even worse.”

The project site will be a bigger challenge than the budget, Attridge said. “The ground is so hard that it doesn’t percolate down very well,” he said.

Right now, the Station 31 site is mostly pavement, said Chris Hendryx, project manager with Michael Willis Architects. “There’s a very high amount of impervious area,” he said. “It’s just blacktop.”

Designers devised a flow-through system using planters to treat all the storm water on site.

With a brick veneer, Station 31 will have a traditional look, Hendryx said, but it will perform better than older stations. Insulation and high-efficiency systems will reduce utility costs.

Lighting will switch on only when needed. Thanks to tubular skylights, that won’t be often, Hendryx said. The tubes let daylight reach deep into interior hallways and bathrooms.

“We were able to get natural daylighting into virtually every space,” he said.

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As the owner of a 4-acre industrial park, Terrill Collier had an interest in a green rating system that looks at the entire site instead of focusing primarily on buildings. As a certified master arborist, he felt he had something to contribute.

Collier’s Clackamas County industrial park is one of three Oregon pilot sites for a new rating system called the Sustainable Sites Initiative. It’s also one of only three participating industrial sites in the country.

“When you think about it, arborists are the original green people,” Collier said. “A lot of what we do is sustainable, and we’ve been doing it for years and years.”

Sustainable Sites ratings will account for how a project’s landscaping is designed, built and maintained, said Steve Windhager, director of the Sustainable Sites Initiative. The approach will complement Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

“There are projects that don’t get LEED certification because there’s not enough of a building component to them,” Windhager said, such as “parks, rail yards (and) transportation corridors. The U.S. Green Building Council has said LEED is not planning to reach out to recognize those types of projects.”

Future LEED updates will include Sustainable Sites guidelines and performance standards, Windhager said. Some of those standards that could make it into LEED ratings include those for selecting sites.

Many building projects fail to look closely at how the site itself, including the soils and vegetation, affects sustainability, he said. “Normally sites at best do a topographical analysis and maybe a tree survey.

“This goes beyond the coarse-grained and goes much deeper,” he said. “How is air quality affected? How do we design to mitigate the heat-island effect on the site?”

Collier wants to incorporate his own expertise as an arborist and former chairman of the national Tree Care Industry Association into the design and building industries. “I would like to see some of these … standards, like how to protect trees during construction,” he said. “Often, contractors view trees as two-by-fours sticking out of the ground.”

Eventually, Collier hopes to get LEED certification for his industrial park. His sustainable touches are mostly outdoors, and include features such as bio-swales, native plantings and organic pest control and plant care.

“What Sustainable Sites is trying to do is get more LEED points for the landscape outside the building portion,” Collier said. “A lot of our green practices should be occurring outside the building. It’s just as important, if not more important.”

Industrial sites are ripe for landscaping changes, Collier said. Many are little more than paved surfaces with a few shrubs.

“Our 4-acre site will probably have 40 different species of trees,” he said. “It showcases how you can use organic practices to maintain an industrial park.”

Oregon’s other two pilot sites are the Ash Creek House and the Headwaters at Tryon Creek, both classified as residential projects. The three are among 175 project sites testing Sustainable Sites guidelines and standards.

The finished initiative program will roll out in 2013, Windhager said, after incorporating experiences from the pilot sites.

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For the first time since 2007, Oregon has added jobs in the construction industry for two consecutive months. Even accounting for normal seasonal changes, the construction workforce grew by 400 between February and April.

Contractors welcome any signs of a turnaround, although they’re not sure this is it.

“This isn’t something you see on CNN and everybody’s back where they were three years ago,” said Randy Williams, chief financial officer for R&H Construction. “Developers need banks to lend money before they assume risk, hire architects and start the meter running.

“It’s such a complex business,” Williams said. “So much has to go on before you put shovels in the ground.”

With that said, if financing loosens up, the economy could change quickly, he said. “Once people start feeling the recovery and getting jobs back and spending money, it seems like a chain reaction.”

So far, the pieces haven’t fallen into place. Demand for architects, as measured by the American Institute of Architects’ Architectural Billings Index, continues to drop, although not as quickly as it had earlier in the year. That index gives a sense of construction projects to come.

Chip Laizure, vice president with JE Dunn Construction, said the year ahead looks a lot like the last year. “The stronger areas are still public and institutional,” he said.

“But we’re still not seeing the private sector, especially the developer side of the equation, coming back.”

Competition remains fierce on projects, Laizure said, with twice as many bidders as he saw on projects compared to a few years ago. Short lists are getting longer as project owners prequalify more firms to bid.

“Now, anywhere from seven to 12 firms are getting short-listed,” Laizure said, compared to three or four in the past. “That’s burning up a lot of resources and money on the contracting and subcontracting side competing for these things.”

State economists haven’t rushed to declare the construction recession over just yet. Although the gain from March to April was 1,300 jobs, the expected seasonal change for that period was 1,200 jobs.

That leaves a gain of 100 jobs for an industry employing more than 64,000 people. “It’s really small for the whole size of the industry,” said Nick Beleiciks, senior economic analyst with the Oregon Employment Department.

“We might start thinking the numbers are significant when it’s around 500 or 1,000,” Beleiciks said. “Then we’re going above seasonal patterns.”

While some contractors have stayed in business by reaching into new types of construction, others have broadened their geographical range. “We’ve been doing more work in L.A. and San Francisco and Seattle to keep our volume up,” said Mark Bruun, executive vice president of Lorentz Bruun Co.

“We’re just anchored in, just trying to be ready for when the economy turns around.”

Bruun said he’ll look for one sign things have picked up again: “When you put out an ad for superintendents and you don’t get a stack 6 feet high, you’ll know we’ve turned the corner.”

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A national contractors’ group has called attention to shortages of paint use to stripe roadways. The Associate General Contractors of America has met with state and federal transportation officials to address the shortages just as the summer highway construction season gets started.

The problem hasn’t hit Oregon highway projects yet, said Dave Thompson, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation. ODOT orders its striping paint in March for delivery through July, Thompson said.

“Therefore, we have some already on hand, but we will need more as the construction season goes on,” Thompson said. “So we’ll be watching the issue closely.”

AGC warned in April that titanium dioxide, used as a paint whitener, was in short supply. This month, the shortage also hit methyl methacrylate, a sticky substance used in highway paints, because of chemical plant breakdowns.

The shortages could lead to a jump in material prices for road projects, wrote Ken Simonson, chief economist for AGC.

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