Owners of Portland’s new generation of mixed-use buildings are hungry for commercial tenants, and restaurants are highly desired. Yet their presence below high-end apartments and offices has at times presented problems.

Greg Goodman, president of Downtown Development Group, met recently with the owners of Stretch the Noodle, a popular Chinese food cart in downtown Portland. They are considering a move into a brick-and-mortar location.

Goodman is seeking commercial tenants for his new building at Southwest Third Avenue and Ash Street. Construction of the six-story building is in the final stages, with a temporary certificate of occupancy in hand.

Discussions between the restaurateurs and the landlord came to a halt, however, after Goodman’s HVAC contractor, which handles the ventilation system, warned him that a Chinese restaurant would not be a good fit for a building with residential units, because of cooking smells and smoke, Goodman said.

Downtown Development Group is still actively seeking tenants for the building – possibly a different restaurant, a fitness center or another retailer.

“We’re looking at everything and anything,” Goodman said.

The building, designed by GBD Architects, has 130 apartment units above the ground floor. Of those, 20 percent are designated as affordable at 80 percent of median family income.

Conflicts between restaurants and residents are becoming more common as urban density increases and developers seek buzz-worthy restaurants as ground-floor tenants.

For landlords, restaurants are often regarded as attractive tenants, generating foot traffic and publicity. And in Portland, it’s a way for designers to satisfy central city design guidelines that call for ground-floor “active uses.” Restaurants have also helped fill some of the gap left by the shift of much traditional retail to online commerce.

Typically, restaurants operate in mixed-use buildings without giving rise to any major problems, landlords said. But there have been other incidents.

In a recent episode that garnered extensive media coverage, developer Cairn Pacific was forced to install a rooftop scrubber on The Carson, a new building in Slabtown, to alleviate smoke coming from Mama Bird, a fried-chicken restaurant run by chef Gabriel Pascuzzi.

Residents of The Carson and a neighboring Cairn Pacific building, the L.L. Hawkins, complained, spurring the ventilation upgrade.

Installation of the scrubber is expected to cost Cairn Pacific approximately $125,000 to $150,000, principal Tom DiChiara said. Final costs are still being tallied, but the equipment seems to have solved the problem, he said.

“This wasn’t a cheap repair, but it seems to work to address the issues we were having,” DiChiara said. “It’s been up and running for a few weeks, and we haven’t had any complaints.”

The smoke issues presented by Mama Bird were a “unique circumstance” because of its wood-burning stove and nearby apartments, DiChiara said.

“I’ve done many, many mixed-use buildings and never had these issues,” he said.

Duane Simard, who owns and operates Stretch the Noodle with his wife, Xuemei, said he was disappointed to not reach an agreement to occupy the 230 Ash location. Duane Simard said the couple engaged a consultant, toured the space and prepared a proposal before they were told it wouldn’t work.

“It did bother me that they would say our food had an odor – that it’s odiferous,” he said. “It has a very nice aroma.”

Stretch the Noodle currently operates out of a food cart at Southwest Third Avenue and Washington Street, where regulars often wait 40 minutes for hand-pulled chao mian and other dishes.

Simard said he suspects delays in arranging financing for the restaurant also played a role in the Goodmans’ decision to move on.

“I really like Greg,” he said. “I wish we could have worked that out.”

There are other examples of Chinese restaurants at mixed-use buildings in Portland. Beam Development‘s building at Southeast Eighth Avenue and Stark Street is home to Danwei Canting, a restaurant that focuses on food from Beijing. The restaurant is vented to the roof, Beam principal Jonathan Malsin said, and hasn’t posed problems with smoke and odors – even with a roof deck near the vent.

“It hasn’t been an issue,” he said.

Beam also hasn’t had any issues with Wa Kitchen Kuu, a ground-floor restaurant at the Slate building at the Burnside bridgehead, Malsin said. Slate has office space and residences above the ground floor.

Other mixed-use buildings also house restaurants that heavily feature smoked or fried meats, including Bullard on the ground floor of Provenance Hotels‘ Woodlark Building. Provenance did not respond to an email message for comment.

Approximately four locations, including Mama Bird, have given rise to smoke complaints in the past year, Multnomah County spokeswoman Kate Willson stated in an email message. Details on the complaints were not immediately available.

Elsewhere, a Houston restaurant called Turkey Leg Hut in November was ordered to temporarily stop smoking meat at night after neighbors filed a lawsuit, . And in 2016, a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was forced to shut off its grills after neighbors complained. The restaurant switched to cooking with gas, a .

Going forward, developers will need to tackle these issues during build-out, DiChiara said.

“Lessons learned,” he said.

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The first piece of Downtown Development Group‘s Ankeny Blocks plan is quickly coming together in Portland’s Skidmore/Old Town Historic District.

230 Ash, rising on a half-block parcel along Southwest Ash Street, between Second and Third avenues, will offer five stories of apartments above ground-floor retail space. The former surface parking lot’s transformation is providing something rarely seen in the immediate area: new residential units.

General contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis is building 230 Ash, which was designed by GBD Architects.

“It’s a nice, exciting time for the project,” Cesar Aviles, project manager for Lease Crutcher Lewis, said last week. “Currently we’re working on our wood framing, where we’re up to level four, starting level five. We did all the concrete, and we’re starting on our exterior mock-up … we should get steel started in late February for the curtain walls that support the brick, and we’re shooting to have our roofing around March.”

Then crews will start drying in and performing interior work, Aviles said.

“We’re working on metal framing down on the ground floor, and then a lot of MEP rough-in throughout the building,” he said. “Where people can find space, they’re getting stuff done.”

Design requirements were stricter for 230 Ash than for typical projects because the property is within a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nevertheless, the team plans to pursue a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating for the project.

The 133 apartments on floors two through six will be either studios or one-bedroom units. Developers took advantage of Multnomah County’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption (MULTE) program to gain a 10-year property tax abatement by offering 20 percent of the apartments below market rate to people making 80 percent of the median family income or less.

At the ground level, 7,955 square feet of retail space will be available for multiple tenants – likely at least one restaurant. 230 Ash also will provide 58 motor vehicle parking spaces underground as well as 201 long-term bicycle parking spaces. A rooftop space will provide additional tenant amenities.

Exterior work is expected to continue through the end of July, while interior work will proceed through at least September. A certificate of occupancy is expected to follow, likely in October if current schedules hold steady.

Downtown Development Group will retain ownership of 230 Ash once it’s finished. HSM Pacific Realty is handling leasing of those spaces.

“It’s an interesting location,” Aviles said. “Voodoo Doughnuts is just up the street and you get a bunch of tourists. And yesterday, actually, the restaurant Mother’s (Bistro & Bar) was doing their grand opening, so they had probably a 300-person parade with a band and stilt walkers that was going on while Northwest Natural was doing their gas tie-in … there was a lot going on, a lot of fun stuff.”

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In the past few years, a growing influx of new tech workers and residents has helped transform the city of Portland.

This population growth and demographic change has, in part, allowed the Goodman family and its Downtown Development Group to begin to put into action a series of development moves, including its ambitious . It calls for 11 new buildings, including five high-rises, on downtown properties near the Willamette River between Washington and Burnside streets. One of the first projects is 230 Ash – a modest, six-story mixed-use building, but much more is planned by Downtown Development Group – one of the oldest development firms in Portland.

For instance, preliminary plans have been formed for Downtown Development Group to work with a local, unidentified engineering firm on a net-zero building at the intersection of Southwest First Avenue and Pine Street.

“It will be like the Bullitt Center in Seattle,” Downtown Development Group co-President Gregory Goodman said, referring to the commercial building that opened in 2013 and was certified as a “living building” by the International Living Future Institute. The six-story, 52,000-square-foot structure uses solar panels and other green features to produce more electricity than it uses over the course of a calendar year.

Meanwhile, talks with an outside developer, Gregory Goodman said, have been ongoing about a possible project at the west end of the Morrison Bridge on Block 40, as well as another on a half-block site that currently serves as a parking lot just south of the Pine Street Market.

“We’ve had interest from people, but we don’t know what we’re going to do with that half block yet,” he said. “We were thinking a heavy-timber office building or maybe more housing, or a hotel? We’re trying to sort through all of that now. We’ve definitely had a lot of interest in other sites.”

Also, on Wednesday, the city received a proposal for a 33-story tower and podium building to be constructed on the full block owned by the Goodmans that is bounded by Southwest Ninth and 10th avenues and Washington and Alder streets. The project would include 750,000 square feet of office, hotel and residential space above ground and four and a half floors of underground parking.

The block is home to the largest collection of food carts in the Portland area.

One project that has moved along is Eleven West, which received approval from the Portland Design Commission in December 2017. ZGF Architects has designed the project for developer Gerding Edlen. The site is Southwest Washington Street, between 11th and 12th avenues. Plans call for a 24-story building featuring 7,900 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Floors two through seven will hold 110,000 square feet of office space, while floors eight through 24 will hold 222 luxury apartments averaging 980 square feet each.

In addition, there will be four floors of below-grade parking accommodating up to 260 vehicles. A 7,900-square-foot rooftop amenity space will round out the project.

At 290 feet tall, Eleven West is intended to be “an iconic structure for our city in the west end,” Downtown Development Group co-President Mark Goodman said.

It’s also intended to mirror the Twelve West building finished in 2009 less than a block away. That building, rated Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design platinum, also developed by Gerding Edlen with Downtown Development Group as the largest investor.

“(Eleven West) has the benefit of two things,” Downtown Development Group Vice President Matthew Goodman said. “It has a proxy across the street that has performed very well. And, second, like any development, you learn from the things that went well, and we have the benefit of hindsight in having the parcel across the street and in the West End more generally. I don’t know if there’s a better location to be building that product right now.”

Currently, the project remains stalled because of needs for permits and full financing. In regard to the latter, Downtown Development Group is looking for a sizable financial partner, Matthew Goodman said.

“We want to be equity holders,” he said. “It’s an equity race, and we are trying to shop our partnership equity. With Twelve West we capitalized with a handful of families, but for this we’ll be looking for one large, potentially institutional investor. We’re kicking off the process and are hoping to have it wrapped up by the end of the summer.”

Eleven West, when it is finished, will join a surging West End replete with new office and hotel space. Projects include:  new six-story office building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Morrison Street; an 11-story, 179-room Moxy Hotel designed by DLR Group for a quarter-block parcel along Southwest Alder Street between 10th and 11th avenues; and a 15-story, 220-room Hyatt Centric hotel being built by Mortenson Construction on the same block at the corner of Alder Street and 11th Avenue.

“Look at the West End in the last year and it’s amazing,” Mark Goodman said. “It’s really got quite a there-there energy.”

Market conditions may soon change, he noted. But with interest rates still at historic lows, this may not be quite so important to investors and developers. This is, in part, what gives continuing impetus to projects like Eleven West.

“You have to acknowledge we’re toward the end of a development cycle,” he said. “But also key is that the cost of money is still historically cheap. Where you look at it from our perspective, where you look at holding it for many cycles, it’s more important to have low cost of funds than to directly develop into the right cycle.”

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The Goodman family – specifically, its Downtown Development Group – is one of the most prominent names in Portland real estate. That’s probably why the firm’s 230 Ash mixed-use development in the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District of downtown Portland has garnered so much more attention than a typical six-story building.

“It’s a really significant deal for us,” Downtown Development Group co-President Greg Goodman said Monday. “We’ve owned that property for 30-something years, we’ve assimilated 11 other properties in the area, and this is something we think will be the next West End or Twelve W. So, we’re going to go out of our way as we did in the West End to curate it and put local tenants in. It will represent Portland.”

Ground will be broken soon on 230 Ash, which is one of 11 envisioned developments comprising Downtown Development Group’s ambitious Ankeny Blocks plan. Early this week, general contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis started moving heavy excavating equipment onto the site for initial work at the half-block property.

230 Ash will include around 8,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, a mix of studio and one-bedroom apartments on upper floors, and a rooftop amenity space for residents. There also will be a below-grade parking garage and bicycle rooms at the basement and ground-floor levels with space for a total of 63 vehicles and 250 bicycles.

The building will hold a total of 133 residential units, 20 percent that will be “affordable.” These will be reserved for residents with incomes at or below 80 percent of the area median family income.

The development will be one of the few residential projects in the Skidmore historic district. While there is an affordable housing element, the residential units planned are definitely aimed at a specific demographic.

“This is the first multifamily project in that area,” Downtown Development Group Vice President Matthew Goodman said. “There’s a certain grit to the element around there, and this is not trying to reverse that; it’s trying to embrace that. We want to embrace the culture, because there’s a very exciting nightlife out there we think our tenants will enjoy.”

Matthew Goodman pointed out that recent figures show the proportion of so-called “young working class” residents, those 20 to 34 years old, living in Portland’s Central Business District is around 42 percent – double that of the rest of the city.

“We believe this is the perfect project for that demographic,” he said.

Notably, 230 Ash is the first Goodman family-owned project within the Downtown Development Group’s ambitious Ankeny Blocks plan to come to fruition.

The Ankeny Blocks, announced slightly more than two years ago, refers to the 11 downtown properties the family owns in an area between the Willamette riverfront on the east and Sixth Avenue on the west, and Burnside and Morrison streets on the north and south, respectively. Initial plans released by the firm envision up to five high-rise developments as tall as 460 feet, with others’ heights ranging from 75 to 325 feet.

The Goodmans are picky about who they will work with, having rejected several entreaties already from companies interested in building office space exclusively. Instead, they are looking to “curate” development in the Ankeny Blocks to create mixed-use space favoring businesses with local owners. They are taking this approach with 230 Ash, which they believe will be enhanced by the presence of other developments and businesses that add livability to the Skidmore historic district.

“We own land surrounded by people doing exciting things already,” Matthew Goodman said. “We’re not in a position where we’re reinventing this neighborhood; we’re excited to play a part in a neighborhood that already has a great organic trajectory. There’s arguably as much exciting stuff going on without us as with us, so it’s exciting to play a part.”

Design requirements for 230 Ash were stricter than for other projects because of the site’s location inside a district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“This is one of the few parcels that we own in this area that is historic,” Goodman said. “This wasn’t a ‘pick a design and build it.’ We had to build something we’re excited about, but built within narrow guidelines. It wasn’t as easy as it would have been in the other neighborhoods. It was something we haven’t had experience doing.”

This is why GBD Architects drew up 230 Ash to feature a brick exterior that complements neighboring buildings. The structure will be composed of two volumes at different elevations. A six-story mass will comprise the west side, while a five-story volume with a glass penthouse will sit to the east.

Downtown Development Group will retain ownership of 230 Ash once it is complete. Company co-President Mark Goodman said that participation in Multnomah County’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption (MULTE) program will provide a 10-year property tax abatement that will allow 20 percent of the building’s apartments to be offered below market rate.

“That’s the same program that (Portland Mayor) Ted (Wheeler) has now offered to people who beat the inclusionary zoning deadline,” Mark Goodman said. “He’s offered that to get some more low-income units on the market.”

The 8,000 square feet of retail space can be divided to accommodate as few as two tenants or as many as five, he added. HSM Pacific Realty is handling leasing of those spaces.

Proximity to the Willamette riverfront and existence of a young, educated population in the city core should serve to boost developments like 230 Ash and other new developments, Matthew Goodman said.

“There is already a very strong workforce in the area, especially young creative people,” he said. “It’s great having people who are young and educated in the neighborhood. It’s good for the Ankeny Blocks and it’s good for our project.”

230 Ash

Owner: Downtown Development Group

Development manager: Gerding Edlen

Architect: GBD Architects

General contractor: Lease Crutcher Lewis

Leasing agent: HSM Pacific Realty

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GBD Architects thinks a mixed-use project awaiting its building permit could blaze a trail for other residential projects in Portland’s Old Town.

“The most exciting thing is, Skidmore/Old Town, it has this great nightlife, lots to do at night,” GBD principal Agustin Enriquez said. “But no one really lives there. In an era where every other area in Portland is absolutely on fire in terms of development, Old Town really hasn’t seen much new development.”

230 Ash, formerly known as “3rd and Ash,” is the first of the Goodman family’s proposed Ankeny Blocks projects – 11 buildings with the potential to reshape a 30-block area in downtown. This month, the family’s Downtown Development Group received approval for 230 Ash from the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission. Construction is scheduled to start in November.

The site is a half block along Southwest Ash Street between Southwest Second and Third avenues. Enriquez said the new building will fit well amid the vibrant scene on Second Avenue, next door to Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub and 1-year-old Pine Street Market.

The building will be six stories with 133 apartments – a 50-50 mix of studios and one-bedroom units. There will be a rooftop tenant amenity, underground parking for 63 vehicles and 8,600 square feet for restaurants.

Designing a building for a nationally recognized historic district like Skidmore/Old Town was interesting, Enriquez said. This type of district is relatively uncommon, he said, and the firm’s architectural approach was a bit different for this project than those in areas where GBD predominates, such as the West End or Northwest Portland.

“The hope for this project is it will usher in the next chapter for Old Town with a density of residential use that doesn’t yet exist much,” Enriquez said. “So understanding the historic context, the design effort was tuned to finding a solution that is visually compatible with the existing buildings, but doesn’t trivialize the reality that it is being built in contemporary times.”

GBD has its hands full at the moment with a number of high-profile projects in development, including the Oregon Square superblock in the Lloyd District.

230 Ash

Owner: Downtown Development Group

Architect: GBD Architects

Contractor: Lease Crutcher Lewis

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