One of the tallest projects under way in Portland is rising quickly in downtown, not far from near Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

The 469,000-square-foot 140 Columbia mixed-use tower will have 349 residential units, 236 motor vehicle parking spaces on levels two through five, and more than 14,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. GBD Architects designed the building for Dallas-based developer Alamo Manhattan, and Andersen Construction is serving as general contractor.

The structure is being built at 140 S.W. Columbia St., adjacent to the KOIN Tower, on a 0.92-acre full block. There will be a five-story full-block podium topped by an L-shaped tower; the north wing of the tower will be 20 stories, while the west wing will be 15 stories.

Rooftop balconies will distinguish the sixth, 15th and 20th levels, with amenity space included at each of these levels. The sixth floor will have a 3,200-square-foot terrace, and the 20th floor will sport a large lounge and community room for residents.

“Right now they’re working on level 10, on the south half of the deck,” Andersen Construction project engineer Cody Cloe said. “So, there’s PT, rebar and in-slab stuff going in; probably most of the activity is up there right now.”
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Crews are averaging completion of one post-tensioned concrete deck every two weeks. Recently, they set post-tensioned cables, rebar and MEP systems in preparation for slab pours.

On lower levels, Western Partitions Inc. carpenters are framing interior walls and installing drywall, while specialists lift and place facade panels.

Major subcontractors on site these days include: R2M2 Rebar and Stressing, whose ironworkers are laying rebar and post-tensioned cables; Ocean Park Mechanical, whose workers are installing both dry and wet HVAC and plumbing systems; Eastern Steel Erectors, whose ironworkers are erecting structural steel, stairways and other fittings; Patriot Fire Protection, whose sprinkler fitters are installing equipment; and Andersen Structural Inc., whose carpenters are performing structural concrete work.

The building will replace a longtime surface parking lot owned by Downtown Development Group. However, a concrete “bunker” providing entry from Southwest Clay Street to below-grade parking serving KOIN Tower has been retained. It will be incorporated into the new building, which wraps around the existing structure without relying on it for structural support.

The 140 Columbia exterior facades on Southwest First Avenue and Clay Street will feature a gradient pattern stretching from the tower to the parking structure. The pattern begins with smaller window openings that become larger and more transparent toward the corner of First and Clay. Similar patterns are found on the rest of the building.

Construction of facades on the first five levels is being done with prefabricated wall panels that include everything from metal framing to envelope materials as well as precast concrete facade panels manufactured by Knife River at its Harrisburg plant. The complete wall panels are being trucked to the highly constrained site as needed and lifted into place with a mobile crane and carpenters from Western Partitions Inc.

Brick masonry will be the predominant exterior material on levels six through 20.

“They’ve got some precast panels being flown on the north face of the building that actually have waterproofing and everything in the panel,” Cloe said. “These prefabricated wall panels have the finished product on them in most cases.”

Project delivery is scheduled for late 2020.

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Construction can continue apace on the 100 Columbia project in downtown Portland now that the developer has secured a $96.5 million loan.

The loan was arranged by commercial real estate firm HFF on behalf of developer Alamo Manhattan and will be repaid over four years, Multi-Housing News reported. HFF previously obtained for the project team a $47.4 million loan “in a joint venture equity partnership with Diamond Realty Investments,” according to Multi-Housing News.

The Bureau of Development Services late last year issued a building permit for the project, and ground was broken in January on the 0.92-acre site at 140 S.W. Columbia St. Andersen Construction is serving as general contractor.

The estimated value of the project is $75 million, according to BDS documents.

GBD Architects‘ design for the project was approved by the Design Commission in November 2017. Plans call for a 20-story tower with 348 residential units, 15,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and rooftop amenity spaces at multiple levels.

Approximately 244 motor vehicle parking spaces will be included in an above-grade garage. Also, 521 bicycle parking spaces will be provided.

Construction is tentatively scheduled for completion in 2020.

The property owner is Downtown Development Group via Lot 53 LLC. It acquired the property in 2013 from the Louis Dreyfus group, according to media reports.

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The Portland Design Commission on Thursday voted 5-0 to approve plans for a mixed-use tower at��140 S.W. Columbia St.

“I think the team has done a remarkable job of responding to guidelines that address the active intersection,” Commission Charwoman Julie Livingston said. “The fact this above-grade parking garage now has really useful space that has presence on the facade of the building on the southeast corner is fantastic.”

The proposal calls for a 20-story, 200-foot-tall project with 349 residential units and 15,000 square feet of retail and office space. The project will include balconies at the sixth, 15th and 20th levels, rooftop decks and courtyards.

Incorporating the 244 parking spaces that developer Alamo Manhattan wanted was a major sticking point previously. The development team had hoped to extend the parking into a section that had a residential facade. The commission wanted a clear delineation between residential space and parking.

The team ultimately settled for 236 parking spaces and adding three residential units on the third level. They also changed the look of the windows on the building’s southeast facade.

“We are looking at a more playful pattern of punched gradient openings,” GBD Architects Associate Principal Craig Mendenhall said. “We are going to look at adding residential into the third floor to better contribute to the pedestrian realm.”

For the facades on Southwest First Avenue and Clay Street, the designers plan to use a gradient pattern stretching from the residential tower to the parking structure. The pattern will begin solid with smaller window openings and become more transparent with larger windows as it approaches the corner of First Avenue and Clay Street.

“The comment we got (from the commission) was this was parking disguising itself as residential,” Mendenhall said. “The idea on the lower elevation was to create a gradient of punched openings that works its way from west to east.”

Designers also used window treatments to help keep light from motor vehicles in the parking garage from spilling out into the public street. The revisions won over the commissioners.

“This project has come a long way and I really appreciate the work you have put into it,” Commissioner Jessica Molinar said. “I think the revisions you made go a long way to contributing to a vibrant streetscape and design corners that build active intersections.”

Commissioners debated the need to use a shadow box to help differentiate the parking and residential even further, but ultimately left that decision up to the architects.

“This is a remarkably strong project for this neighborhood,” Livingston said. “There is such a strong ground floor, such nice building massing and great materials.”

Also on Thursday:

550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The Design Commission informed the team proposing a seven- or eight-story mixed-use building that its design needs more work. Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners are developing the project.

Works Progress Architecture presented an eight-story, 94-foot-tall option and a seven-story, 84-foot-tall alternative. Both versions would include three levels of hotel space and a level of restaurant space. The main difference is that the taller version would have four levels of residential units, while the shorter one would have three. Each design was shown with or without below-grade parking.

“The issue the team is going to study is primarily in regards to contextual response,” Livingston said. “The difficulty is in fitting a residential building into the Central Eastside. They were going to take a look at how the skin might be modified to fit in better with the existing context.”

Both versions would devote approximately 8,650 square feet to the hotel and restaurant, and 107,544 square feet to residential and retail uses.

The project will return before the Design Commission on Dec. 14.

1500 N.E. Irving St.

The Design Commission approved plans for the Glisan Street Apartments with a 5-0 vote. C2K Architecture made additions to the canopies on the east side, revisions to a wall treatment on the north elevation, revisions to a rooftop unit and better definition of the program for a glass display case.

Second City Real Estate’s 69,130-square-foot project will include 750 square feet of ground-floor retail space, 22 parking spaces and 86 residential units.

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The team designing a mixed-use tower for 140 S.W. Columbia St.��gave the Portland Design Commission six options to consider during a work session��on Thursday. However, GBD Architects struggled to identify even one that would give developer Alamo Manhattan the 244 structured parking places it wants.

“We get your position about parking,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “But parking isn’t a guideline. In fact it is, for all intents and purposes, peripheral to the discussion we will have in this room.”

Parking is a major issue for the team planning a 20-story, 200-foot-tall building. The proposal calls for 347 residential units and 15,000 square feet of retail and office space.

The designers’ problem centers on the need to extend parking into a structure with the appearance of a residential tower. Architects can’t use the space for residential units or add a floor because they are already at the maximum allowable floor area ratio of 12:1.

Designers also can’t extend parking below grade because of landslide issues. They hoped to address the issues that by wrapping the exterior of the parking structure in precast concrete panels and changing the windows.

Despite their best efforts, the parking issue remained.

“Can the parking change? Yes it can,” said Craig Mendenhall, an architect with GBD Architects. “Is it detrimental to the project? Yes it is.”

Changing the windows within the residential facade would not suffice, according to most commissioners. They made clear that any design that extends parking into a structure designed to look residential would be a tough sell.

“You want a certain amount to make your pro forma work; I understand that,” Livingston said. “There is a design solution that requires some give at some point because right now there is no give on parking.”

Livingston said commissioners understood limitations that designers were working under, but that a design that would meet commission standards must have a clear distinction between housing and parking.

“It really does seem as though something needs to shift to allow this to be housing or shift to allow the parking to continue on and read (as parking),” Livingston said.

Commissioners were more complimentary of the designers’ choice of materials, saying precast panels would be a good choice.

The project is scheduled to return before the commission for a full hearing on��Nov. 2.

Also on Thursday:

6620 N. Richmond St.

The Design Commission denied the appeal of Type II staff approval of SERA Architects‘ design for a five-story, 96-unit market-rate apartment building.

The Cathedral Park Neighborhood Association had sought retail space added to the ground floor and streetscape improvements.

Conditions attached to approval concern public access, integrated seating and scale of art on a wall along North Richmond Street.
5036 N.E. Sandy Blvd.

The Design Commission spoke largely in favor of plans for a six-story mixed-use building at the corner of Northeast 51st Avenue and Sandy Boulevard. The proposal calls for a 64-foot-tall structure with 85 market-rate apartments, ground-floor commercial space and surface parking.

Laurie Skokan, who lives at 2236 N.E. 51st Ave., near the project site, had issued an appeal based on height and parking concerns. However, the commission has little say on those issues.

“I kind of assumed the Design Commission had the authority to say the building could not be that tall, but apparently that is not the case,” Skokan said. “I am not sure why we are here, but we will continue on.”

The record will be held open for the next 21 days for more testimony and rebuttals. A final vote on the appeal will be taken on Oct. 26.

Fremont Apartments

The Design Commission sent TVA Architects‘ design for a 17-story, 309,000-square-foot mixed-use building back for revisions. The proposal calls for a structure housing a restaurant on the ground floor and residential units on the upper stories.

The project will return before the commission on Nov. 2.

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A debate about ground-floor apartments on Southwest River Parkway didn’t keep the Block 41/44 project from winning the approval of the Portland Design Commission��on Thursday.

The discussion focused on whether to configure units on the busy street as retail or residential units. After nearly an hour of wrangling, the Commission and the design team agreed to a live/work format and give the units street-level entrances.

The South Waterfront project, which was approved 4-0, will include more than 500 residential units, 10,000 square feet of retail space and 385 parking spaces. The original plan called for ground-floor residential units on the Block 44 portion of the project on Southwest River Parkway to be elevated above grade to give residents more privacy.

Commissioner David Wark voiced concerns that such an arrangement might hurt the vitality of the street, and said he wanted the design to encourage more retail.

“There is a very good example of the exact same set up of a mixed-use housing project just north of the Convention Center,” Wark said. “That whole north side has the same exact (ground-floor residential) units and it’s 100 percent dead. I just don’t see why we would support that.”

GBD Architects principal Kyle Andersen said the project design team, which included Jones Architecture, wanted to concentrate retail where it had the best chance of success – toward Abernathy Way. The complex will be bordered by Southwest River Parkway to the west, the Willamette River to the east, Southwest Lowell Street to the south and Southwest Lane Street to the north. Abernethy Pedestrian Way will separate Block 44 and Block 41.

Other projects in the south end of the South Waterfront District had incorporated ground-floor retail in the past, Andersen said. The strategy didn’t pay off.

“ … None of it was successful; it all failed,” Andersen said. “It was eventually converted back to residential. It’s very quiet up there.”

He added that the Block 44 units were designed in a way that allowed them to be converted into retail if the shopping climate proved it could support more space of that type.

However, Wark remained unconvinced. He was concerned that the level of renovation needed would make such a conversion difficult.

Commission Vice Chairman Tad Savinar had another concern – ground-floor residential units possibly resulting in a long line of closed blinds at the street level.

During the meeting, the Design Commission offered several approaches that would create enough privacy to encourage residents to leave blinds up, and finally settled on a live/work arrangement as the preferred choice for the ground-floor area.

In the end the design team agreed to that suggestion, with a condition to lower the units to on-grade units with accessible entrances from the sidewalk.

Commissioners complemented other changes that the architects, developer Cairn Pacific and landowner Prometheus Real Estate Group brought from earlier hearings. Those changes included darker roof material that wouldn’t reflect sunlight into other buildings, more signage on pedestrian walkways, and changing the color of pavement on Abernathy Way to show a difference between areas for autos and pedestrians.

A UNANIMOUS APPROVAL FOR TEN WEST

Efforts to renovate the five-story Ten West building at 1017 S.W. Washington St. earned the approval of the Design Commission by a 4-0 vote.

The project overcame concerns about the entrance at the southeast corner of the building, specifically the doors and saving the storefront transom.

Commissioners and project architect Jones Architecture were able to come to an agreement to work with city staff on a design that would simulate the look of the entrance without involving the construction issues that would have been required by saving the transom. Other renovations included replacing 126 windows, seismic upgrades and interior renovations.

MIXED-USE PROJECT SENT BACK FOR REVISIONS

A 200-foot tall proposed mixed use building at 140 S.W. Columbia St. was sent back to GBD Architects for revisions.�� The building will include 347 residential units, 15,000 square feet of retail and office, and 244 parking spaces.

Commissioners wanted revisions to improve the coherency of the building, especially focusing on the materials on the second through fourth floors. The project will return for a short work session on Sept. 7 before another full hearing is scheduled for the project.

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