Successful contractors often have a sweet spot – a type of project in which they excel because of past experience. For Woodburn-based Triplett Wellman Contractors, one of those sweet spots is the elementary school.

Triplett Wellman has at least seven such projects ongoing right now in Oregon and Washington, including one north of the Columbia River, in central Vancouver. The firm, with Darryl Giorgini serving as superintendent, is building a replacement for aged Walnut Grove Elementary School.

The project is being paid for with money from a $458 million Vancouver Public Schools bond approved by voters in February 2017. Construction is taking place on the same property, slightly east of the existing building that was constructed in 1952.

Bassetti Architects‘ design calls for a two-story building with three distinct wings.

As of Thursday, crews with Nutter Excavating were continuing to excavate foundation footings on the west end of the site, while operators of heavier machinery performed grading and other site work on the east side. In the middle of the site, a three-person crew from Piper Mechanical continued below-grade installation of wastewater lines, while another crew from Prairie Electric installed conduit.

“Right now we’re working our way out with the footings,” Giorgini said. “We did the perimeter, then the electrical underground and plumbing underground went in because the starting depth on the plumbing is deeper than your footings.”

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At first glance, a new $34 million building at the University of Portland doesn’t stand out from nearby structures that are well over a century old. School officials and the building’s architects consider that a success.

Dundon-Berchtold Hall, the first new academic building to open on the North Portland campus in over two decades, was designed to be aesthetically similar to historic buildings in the vicinity.

“When driving up our main drive and seeing the building for the first time, we wanted it to seem like it had always been here,” said Jim Ravelli, the school’s vice president for university operations. “We wanted to have a classic, traditional look, yet have the features of a modern building.”

University leaders and the buildings’ donors were looking to echo design elements of older buildings across campus built in the Collegiate Gothic style, which is more typical of East Coast universities and less common of those west of the Rockies.

To achieve that goal, the university hired the design team of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, a New York-based firm with a portfolio including buildings at Harvard, Princeton and Notre Dame, and Soderstrom Architects, a Portland-based firm that has designed multiple buildings on the campus and has experience with education and faith-based design.

The building is clad in distressed brick and variegated Indiana limestone, while large oak doors in arched, recessed entries as well as a 58-foot clock tower and copper downspouts contribute to the classic look. Inside, a cathedral-like entrance, extensive use of wood molding and wainscoting, classic light fixtures and other details contribute to the sophisticated academic feel.

“This is something you would see at Yale or Harvard,” said Dan Danielson, president of Soderstrom Architects. “This is a very unique piece of architecture for Oregon.”

The L-shaped building footprint creates a large, open quad between Dundon-Berchtold Hall and Waldschmidt Hall, a 128-year-old administrative building. In order to create a cohesive aesthetic between the structures, the architects used tumbled brick on the new building for a more rustic, warm feel.

A classic appearance belies what is a thoroughly modern building equipped with high-tech features. Its 17 classrooms are equipped with drop-down projection screens and true-color laser projection, touch screen controls, digital white boards, and options for recording lectures. An 80-inch high-definition planar touch screen display is mounted in the lobby, and a student lounge has four collaboration areas with digital displays for presentations and content sharing. High-speed internet connectivity is delivered by 60 interior and six exterior wireless access points.

Green features include LED lighting, occupancy sensors to ensure lighting and air conditioning are on only in rooms that are in use, automatic window shades, and roofing materials designed to reflect sunlight and reduce the heat island effect. The university is targeting a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating.

The 65,616-square-foot building contains two stories of above-grade steel-framed space over one below-grade level. Each classroom has a capacity ranging from 40 students to over 90; some have tiered arrangements and installed furniture, and others have podiums, desks and chairs that can easily be moved and rearranged to facilitate collaboration and discussion. The building also has a 146-seat multipurpose auditorium, faculty offices, a large study lounge with a red marble fireplace, 12 formal and informal gathering areas, and the Dundon-Berchtold Institute for Moral Formation & Applied Ethics.

Dundon-Berchtold Hall opened to students in late August after 17 months of construction by contractor Fortis Construction; a formal blessing and dedication took place Sept. 26. The site formerly held Howard Hall, a gymnasium that was built in 1927 and then demolished following completion of a new recreation center in 2015.

The building’s design was formulated in part through a lengthy due diligence and study process. A steering committee co-led by the design team spent about 18 months engaging with faculty and students to discuss programming needs. Soderstrom Architects served as the prime architect, and Robert A.M. Stern was the project’s design architect.

The project team also included KPFF Consulting Engineers (structural and civil engineering), Interface Engineering (mechanical/electrical/plumbing engineering) and PLACE Studio (landscape architecture).

Ravelli offered high praise for the architects, Fortis Construction, and the subcontractors and skilled tradespeople who collaborated on the building.

“They took immense pride in this project,” he said, “and many of them have described it as a once-in-a-career opportunity.”

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The Daily Journal of Commerce held its third annual Building Diversity awards and education program Thursday to celebrate and examine diversity, equity and inclusion within the local building industry.

A total of 17 local firms, organizations, agencies and individuals were honored for their efforts to shape the built environment through outstanding work, leadership, mentorships, community involvement and promotion of industry diversity.

The lunch event was held at the Sentinel Hotel in downtown Portland and included networking,  an awards program, and a panel discussion featuring Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle, P3 Consulting owner and Portland mayoral candidate Ozzie González, and Emily Purry of INCIGHT. To view and download photos from the event, visit .

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The Daily Journal of Commerce held a Builder Breakfast event on Thursday morning at the Sentinel Hotel in downtown Portland. The presentation focused on south Hillsboro and Reed’s Crossing – a 463-acre master-planned community that will include large-scale residential and commercial development as well as parks, schools and infrastructure.

Over the course of the next 15 to 20 years, Reed’s Crossing will hold an estimated 20,000 people living in about 4,000 residences ranging from detached single-family housing to townhouses and apartments. Commercial development will encompass about 36 acres of the area, with 100 thousand square feet of planned retail space and 100 thousand additional square feet of office and medical space.

The area will also include an elementary school with capacity for 600 students; construction is anticipated to begin in 2021. Other sites within Reed’s Crossing could become home to additional elementary and middle schools. Over 50 acres of planned open space will include a greenway, two neighborhood parks, and miles of pedestrian walkways and bike paths.

Three panelists – David Brentlinger of Newland Communities, Dan Dias of the city of Hillsboro and Frank Angelo of Angelo Planning Group – spoke about the development and opportunities available at Reed’s Crossing. The discussion’s moderator was Stephanie Holmberg, leader of the real estate and construction group at Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt.

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After two and a half years of work, Mortenson Construction is exactly where it wants to be with one of the most prominent projects under way in Portland.

Crews broke ground on the Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center hotel in early 2017. Now, as the team prepares to deliver the building this fall, executives with Mortenson, the project’s developer and design-builder, are starting to relax a bit.

“Honestly the project is going really well, and we are about four hours ahead of schedule,” Dan Mehls, general manager of Mortenson’s Portland office, said recently. “It was a tough schedule, a challenging project and a challenging site in a very busy construction market, but we were lucky to have some of the best trade partners in the community contributing to the project.”

The hotel sits along MAX light-rail tracks, across Northeast Holladay Street from the northern end of the convention center. The project team is on track to hit remaining milestones on schedule, Mehls said.

“The project is on track for getting the building to the point this fall where the Hyatt folks can start their training process and get acclimated to the building,” he said. “There are multiple steps in the late summer, early fall this year, and all of that is on track.”

The hotel will hold 600 guest rooms as well as large meeting, food service and retail spaces. It will be owned and operated by Hyatt Hotels. Metro, the owner and operator of the Oregon Convention Center, has long sought a hospitality partner of this sort since the venue opened in 1990. The Hyatt Regency is tentatively scheduled to open in February 2020.

Currently, numerous finishing trades are on the site. Subcontractors include Delta AV, which is installing sound and video equipment; Otis Elevator, which is installing elevators; Oregon Electric Group, which is wrapping up electrical work; ISEC Inc., which is performing finish carpentry, and others. Elements remaining to be added include furniture, fixtures and equipment as well as carpeting, painting, landscaping, and more.

“It’s not super exciting to say the good news; it makes for an easy story,” Mehls said. “For us and the construction business, when so many projects have their challenges due to shortages in the marketplace right now, to say we’re right on schedule as planned two and a half years ago, we’re proud of that.”

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Professionals representing many firms within the building industry turned out for the Daily Journal of Commerce’s first Reader Rankings event on Wednesday. After thousands of businesses were nominated in more than 50 categories, those placing in the top three were recognized at the event at the Jupiter Hotel, in Portland’s Central Eastside.

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Several months after installation of a massive dry well, construction of the Argyle Street Apartments, in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood, is in one of its busiest stages.

Crews are framing walls, installing mechanical and electrical and plumbing systems, placing windows, and wrapping the building with a weather barrier expected to help the project gain Earth Advantage gold certification.

Walsh Construction is the general contractor for the affordable housing project at 2133 N. Argyle St. REACH Community Development Corp. is developing the project, which was designed by MWA Architects.

Plans call for a single four-story building; however, the complex will more closely resemble a pair of buildings connected via a three-story sky-bridge spanning a ground-floor breezeway. The 189 apartments will be studios, or have one, two or three bedrooms.

Crews are working their way through the building from the ground floor up, Walsh Construction project engineer Scott Rascoe said. MEP subcontractors are not waiting for framing crews to get more than one floor ahead of them, either.

Currently, Wood Mechanix carpenters are framing the second story. Tapani Plumbing and O’Neill Electric employees are working on the ground floor while KO Contracting workers are installing double-glazed vinyl windows.

Use of prefabricated wall panels by Pacific Wall Systems of Olympia, Washington, has significantly reduced the number of carpenters needed, according to Rascoe. Instead of a crew of 30 to 40 carpenters framing walls by hand from scratch, barely half that number are not only framing walls, but also installing joists and sheeting walls, he said.

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In east Multnomah County, crews are taking advantage of summer to replace a pair of elementary schools. One is East Gresham Elementary, at 900 S.E. Fifth St. There, general contractor Bremik Construction is leading construction of a new, two-story school and demolition of the original single-story building, which was designed by Edmundson & Kochendoerfer and built by general contractor Johnson & Sterner in 1950.

Subcontractors are scrambling to put the finishing touches on a new, 76,000-square-foot building scheduled to open in time for the 2019-20 school year. Concrete tilt panels atop a slab-on-grade foundation and structural steel comprise the backbone of the building, which will feature 24 classrooms along with specialized learning rooms, gathering spaces and flex spaces.

The new school will also include a media center overlooking the cafeteria, a music room, a covered outdoor play area, a gymnasium, and new vehicle parking.

DLR Group designed the project for the Gresham-Barlow School District, which is paying for it with money from a $291 million bond approved by voters in 2016. Designers aimed to provide a new school with four key improvements: better daylighting and HVAC systems; a better learning environment with modern technology; better safety and security; and better parking for buses and parents’ vehicles.

Meanwhile, NorthStar, a New York City-based contractor, is handling demolition of the old school, which is riddled with asbestos in piping insulation and other items. NorthStar crews licensed by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality were required to seal off one room at a time with plastic sheeting and regulated air flow to abate the asbestos.

School district employees, meanwhile, removed furniture, cabinetry and any other equipment that might retain value. Blackboards, drywall and other materials were removed, and demolition was expected to continue through July, Bremik Construction superintendent Grant Lang said.

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Hotel construction is red-hot in Portland these days, and one of the projects under way is the sizable Hyatt Centric Portland in the West End of downtown, at the corner of Southwest 11th Avenue and Alder Street.

The 15-story, 215-room hotel is being built on a quarter-block parcel that formerly held a three-story office building occupied by the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette. Mortenson, the design-build contractor and lead developer, purchased the property in 2017 after it was declared surplus by United Way.

Construction has moved quickly since demolition of the office building in March 2018.

“It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, no,” Mortenson Construction project manager Angie Helfert said. “We’re topped off, we’ve got enclosure basically run up through 13 and we should be enclosed on three through 15 in the next week and a half or two.”

Now, the construction site is swarming with up to 80 craft workers daily, Helfert said. Substantial completion is expected in approximately six months.

“We’ve got our elevators starting in the next month, we’ve got curtain wall starting in the next month, and the GFRC (glass-fiber-reinforced cement panels) on most of the elevations of the building, those are starting next month as well,” she said. “Rough-in is in pretty much every phase from starting tile and all the way through. It’s all over the boards; some of the (mechanical) equipment is already set, so we’re moving.”

On nearly all floors as well as the rooftop, where a mechanical penthouse is being constructed, carpenters from Anning-Johnson, Mortenson’s crews and workers from other firms are installing metal framing. Meanwhile, ironworkers are installing steel staircases and other elements, and electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians are installing mechanical equipment. Also, glaziers are installing windows on floors 13 and higher.

SERA Architects designed the hotel to hold more than 131,000 square feet, including some 3,000 square feet of meeting space. The Hyatt Centric is intended to appeal to younger businesspeople interested in exploring the city instead of hunkering down in their rooms.

A destination restaurant will operate on the ground floor, in a space facing Alder Street.

“There’s an operator on board, but they’re probably about a month out from announcing,” Helfert said. “We are super excited once the restaurant operator announces. They’re a local, and we finished the design for that space, so that will open at the same time as the hotel.”

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Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. held its annual career fair on Friday and Saturday, drawing hundreds of students and women interested in the trades to the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Northeast Portland.

More than 70 companies and organizations hosted exhibitions, and 40 interactive workshops and activities were available to attendees at the two-day event. 2019 marked the 27th annual career fair, which is intended to introduce young women to career opportunities in the skilled trades. More than 100 volunteers contributed to OTI’s event this year.

On Friday, high school students from around Oregon attended the career fair. Then on Saturday, OTI welcomed the general public.

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