Canvas at Press Blocks, a nine-story building, is bringing 132,500 square feet of office space to market in Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood amid rapidly changing economic conditions.

The project from Seattle-based developer and property manager Urban Renaissance Group adds inventory to an urban office market weakened by a glut of supply, the COVID-19 pandemic and widely publicized destructive protests.

“It is a very competitive market right now, and tenants are considering all options,” URG CEO Patrick Callahan stated via email. “Our location will appeal to tenants looking at both urban and suburban locations, with plenty of parking and great transit access. For the right tenant, we’re willing to get creative.”

Canvas is the first of two phases for the Press Blocks. The second will be headlined by the Plaza Building, a 23-story residential tower with 342 units. A smaller, 30,000-square-foot commercial building will have office space, ground-floor retail suites and an outdoor public plaza.

The Press Blocks buildings were planned during the longest economic expansion on record that stretched for more than 10 years following the Great Recession. URG invested heavily in Portland. Other developers were investing, too: More than 1 million square feet of office space is expected to be delivered in Portland this year. Through the third quarter, 869,067 square feet had come online, according to JLL.

“There’s a lot of space coming online,” said Tim Harrison, research manager at JLL in Portland. “Any tenant looking for space is going to have the pick of the bunch. They’re going to have all of the options they need.”

Like other new projects, Canvas at Press Blocks faces economic headwinds that were hardly foreseeable when they broke ground. Total vacancies in Portland’s Central Business District rose to 15.9 percent during the third quarter, and rents fell 0.7 percent to $37.41 per square foot on average, according to JLL. .

in a recent report from PWC and the Economic Lands Institute, placing it significantly below average of the markets studied. Downtown rents have not dived yet, Harrison said. Instead, landlords are getting creative with concessions such as free-rent periods or ample tenant improvement budgets.

“Investors are pretty reluctant to decrease that face rate,” Harrison said. Nevertheless, he added, “landlords are getting creative where they need to be.”

Jordan Menashe, CEO of Menashe Properties, said the office market is already showing signs of a turnaround, and more tenants are asking about lease extensions. The family firm owns and manages more than 1.5 million square feet in the Portland area.

“I can say with confidence that we’ve hit the trough,” he said. “This will be the sharpest and quickest recession to date in American history.”

As downtown faces a glut of new office projects, the suburbs are seeing an uptick in leasing activity. “Beaverton is having its time in the limelight for sure,” Harrison said. He said he expects the fortunes of suburban and downtown office space to widen in 2021.

“The suburbs are healthy,” he said. “I wouldn’t say they’re booming, but they’re healthy, whereas the urban core will not be for at least the next 12 months.”

The move to the suburbs upends developers’ strategies during the recent expansion. Conventional wisdom held that young, talented workers preferred to live and work in urban cores close to amenities. That thinking drove projects such as Block 216, Eleven West and 250 Taylor.

Those projects balance office space with other uses. That may benefit Portland’s downtown core during the downturn, as relatively small chunks of office space are more readily absorbed, Harrison said. “150,000 square feet of office is not that big of an office building in the grand scheme of things,” he said.

Meanwhile, the suburbs have seen little to no speculative office development, resulting in tighter inventories, Harrison said.

Canvas at Press Blocks is part of a burst of development in Goose Hollow, which sits just west of downtown. As in the Pearl District, new higher building heights allowed by the Central City 2035 zoning plan contributed to increasing densification in what had been low-slung neighborhoods.

In addition to Press Blocks, the Providence Park expansion, Wood Partners’ 21-story ART Tower and Greystar Real Estate Partner’s eight-story building at 1715 S.W. Salmon St. have remade the neighborhood.

Canvas at Press Blocks is attracting interest, Callahan stated. Migration Brewing has taken a rooftop taproom. For office tenants, the building offers 19,000-square-foot floor plates.

“We’ve had several potential anchor tenants look at the building and would welcome the opportunity to do a deal with any of them,” Callahan stated. “We have one full floor built out in move-in ready condition and we’re ready to do a deal there, even on a short-term basis. We also have great retail space on the ground floor and are excited about activating the streetscape around Providence Park.”

The new project will also have to deal with changing perceptions of Portland’s urban core. Protests that have often resulted in shattered windows and graffiti have been shown on TV news channels around the world.

The months of protests “certainly has” had an impact, Harrison said. “Long term, I don’t think it has an effect. Companies are going to keep coming downtown.”

Callahan is among those who think it’s time for the downtown streetscape to return to a sense of normalcy. He noted that Goose Hollow hasn’t seen the level of protests that the downtown core has had.

“All the boarded-up windows have hurt the perception of downtown Portland,” he stated. “With the protests abating, it’s time for tenants and property owners to take down the plywood.”

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The roof deck at the 250 Taylor project site in downtown Portland is a swarm of activity right now.

The 10-story office tower is being built by general contractor Turner Construction on a half-block parcel fronting Southwest Taylor Street between Second and Third avenues. Ground was broken in March 2018 following demolition of a pair of buildings, and completion is expected this fall.

Currently, Turner Construction carpenters as well as R2M2 Rebar & Stressing and Bergelectric crews and others are busy laying rebar, installing in-slab conduit and plumbing lines, and constructing formwork so the final deck slab can be poured in the coming weeks.

On the lower floors, glaziers are installing a sophisticated curtain wall system that features terra-cotta strips on the exterior that will give the building a darker, earthy appearance.

The majority of roughly 150 tradespeople on site are piecing together the building’s interior. Crews from Fred Shearer & Sons are performing metal interior framing on the building’s first six floors, with American Heating and Cooling crews installing ductwork for HVAC systems. Bergelectric crews are also busy wiring newly framed spaces as they are constructed.

250 Taylor will have approximately 183,500 square feet of space when completed. NW Natural will occupy all 10 floors as the building’s sole tenant.

Ankrom Moisan Architects designed the project for Third & Taylor Development. The team also includes: KPFF Consulting Engineers (structural and civil engineering), Glumac (mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering), GeoDesign Inc. (geotechnical engineering) and Lango Hansen Landscape Architects.

The office building is part of a nearly full-block development that will include a 20-story hotel. It also was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects and will be built by Turner Construction.

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Excavation and foundation work is under way on 250 Taylor, a 10-story office building spanning a half block on Southwest Taylor Street between Second and Third avenues. Turner Construction Co. is the general contractor for the project, which was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects for Third & Taylor Development.

Work at the site began last summer with demolition of a single-story commercial building and the six-story Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple building. Demolition work was completed in early November 2017, and Turner Construction crews returned to the site in March. Currently, DeWitt Construction crews are busy installing soldier pile and tie-backs, and removing dirt from the site to accommodate a two-level parking garage. The project should be fully excavated within two weeks.

Pours of the foundation, a mat footing three to six feet thick consisting of about 5,000 cubic yards of concrete, will be completed over the course of three Saturdays next month. A luffing crane will be installed in June as well. The parking garage and electrical vault will be poured over the course of the summer, and the structure will be back at street grade around September. All ten stories above grade will consist of post-tensioned concrete self-performed by Turner Construction. The project is slated for completion by fall 2019.

Because the site’s southwest portion abuts the 124-year-old Auditorium Building, extra care has been taken in excavating and shoring along that portion of the property. Excavation that would normally be done in five-foot lifts was instead done in three-foot lifts, and crews were limited to cutting only what could be lagged and backfilled before end of day.

Construction crews also had to take extra precaution to not disturb an 18-inch cast-iron water line that was built in the early 1900s and runs through the site. Temporary shoring was built to retain the dirt around the pipe and ensure that it didn’t move, and the project team worked closely with the city during permitting to ensure that tie-backs are all set at proper depth and angle in order to avoid the pipe.

The project team also includes KPFF Consulting Engineers (structural and civil engineering), Glumac (mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering), GeoDesign Inc. (geotechnical engineering) and Lango Hansen Landscape Architects.

The office building is part of a nearly full-block development that will also include a 20-story hotel, also designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects and to be built by Turner Construction. That project is in the permitting phase.

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A new 10-story office building planned in downtown now has the Portland Design Commission‘s approval, but not without regrets that the existing building on the site cannot be saved.

Demolition is looming for the 124-year-old Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple at Southwest Third Avenue and Taylor Street. The building formerly was on the city’s Historic Resource Inventory, but was removed to allow development of the new tower designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects. The Design Commission approved the project with a 3-0 vote on Thursday.

Commissioner Tad Savinar stated before the vote that he intended to abstain and wished he had done more to save the old building.

“This is a hard job, and I failed when the project came in the first time,” he said. “I think I could have done more in the interest of saving the Temple Building. If I had known then what I know now, I think we would have pushed harder. I feel that I let folks down.”

Commission Chairman David Wark hinted that he had regrets as well.

“I don’t mean to admonish, but I hope in the future in the same situation we can find a new path – it’s a very good building,” he said.

Ankrom Moisan Executive Vice President Murray Jenkins said he too was sad that the historic building couldn’t be saved, but explained that demolition is as much about risk of collapse as about the cost of a retrofit. The six-story structure is one of the tallest unreinforced masonry buildings in the city. It has multiple floor structures – some made of wood and some of steel.

“There’s a risk of actually doing construction to save it,” he said. “We’ve tried for a year to save it. We wanted to make sure it wouldn’t bring down the adjacent development.”

The Temple Building was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival style by Justus F. Krumbein, who was the architect of Oregon’s second state capitol building. Restore Oregon, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving historic places, led the charge to save the Temple Building.

Peggy Moretti, Restore Oregon’s executive director, testified before the Design Commission in August that the building is a “prominent resource” and that the design of its replacement “does not accomplish the goal of creating a new landmark.” Restore Oregon board member Matthew Davis repeated that message to the commission on Thursday.

“It is supposed to be replaced by a landmark, but I’m not seeing a future landmark in these latest designs,” he said. “We are asking you to deny the project.”

Downtown Neighborhood Association board member Grant Higginson agreed. He cited the restoration of the Brewery Blocks as an example of retaining historic character, and said the new office building design doesn’t meet that standard.

“City guidelines say to preserve, and the current proposal preserves nothing,” he said.

Although demolition of the Temple Building was a foregone conclusion, according to Jenkins, the design team plans to contact the Bosco-Milligan Foundation to determine which items can be salvaged. The plan is to create an inventory of reusable pieces.

Once discussion turned to the new building, it became clear that commissioners were pleased with the way the design team had responded to their suggestions.

Michael Great, managing principal at Ankrom Moisan, told commissioners he agreed with their previous comments that the first design had “too much architecture for a half-block.” So, the team moved the loading zone and garage entrance from Southwest Third Avenue to Second Avenue, and recessed the northeast corner to direct more attention to the historic Auditorium Building next door.

“We want to let it be the star of Third Avenue,” he said.

Frameless glass retail entries at the ground level will give emphasis to what’s happening on the inside, Great said. Instead of being offset, the two-story glazed main entrance will be centered in the middle of the block of Taylor Street, with a secondary entrance nearby leading to 100 bike spaces.

The new design also pushed back the 10th floor to make room for a rooftop terrace at the ninth level at the southeast corner.

Commissioners praised the updated design.

“I like the way it defers to the Auditorium Building, and the notch at the northeast corner is a nice move, and I like the way you moved the entrance,” Commissioner Don Vallaster said.

Commissioner Andrew Clarke agreed and said he was glad the new design moved the loading docks.

“The (loss of) the Temple is a little disappointing, but I like the (new) building,” he said.

Commissioner Julie Livingston said she liked the way terra cotta accents were pulled down to grade, and Commissioner Jessica Molinar said she appreciated that the new design now has canopies all the way around for pedestrians.

“That’s great and I don’t find any issues that don’t comply with (city design) guidelines,” Molinar said.

Clarke, Livingston and Molinar voted to approve the design, while Savinar and Wark abstained.

Also on Thursday, the Design Commission reviewed:

Headquarters hotel

The first request for design advice for a new, massive hotel near the Oregon Convention Center was issued two years ago. As such, Thursday’s hearing was expected to be “more like a design advice request hearing,” city planner Tim Heron said in his report on the project.

Now, the design should have a better chance of gaining approval when it comes back before the commission in a few weeks, Heron said.

“We hope to have a really successful Oct. 20 hearing,” he said.

The 14-story, 600-room hotel will be on a superblock, Heron said. On the block next to it, a six-story garage will hold more than 400 parking spaces.

Design commissioners and the applicant, ESG Architects of Minneapolis, spent two hours discussing staff concerns. Among them were unresolved issues involving architectural coherency in respect to the Lloyd District as well as activation of ground floors and corners.

Southwest 11th Avenue and Alder Street hotel

A 15-story, 220-room hotel is proposed for the corner of Southwest Alder and 11th Avenue in Portland’s West End. A design advice hearing had not been requested for this project, city planner Grace Jeffreys said, and Thursday’s hearing was its first design review.

The building is designed by SERA Architects to reach a height of 150 feet. City staffers have several concerns, Jeffreys said, about the design and quantity of canopies, the quantity of columns, other details such as ground-floor setbacks and accessibility of the hotel restaurant’s entrance to disabled individuals.

The project is scheduled to return for a second design review on Nov. 17.

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Two old buildings in downtown Portland have sat mostly vacant for decades, but a proposal to replace them with new structures is getting plenty of pushback.

The design for redevelopment of 7/8 of the block between Southwest Second and Third avenues, and Taylor and Salmon streets originally called for preservation of the 123-year-old Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple and the 109-year-old Hotel Albion. But at a recent design advice hearing before the Portland Design Commission, representatives of Ankrom Moisan Architects presented a new proposal wherein the two buildings would be demolished and replaced with a 20-story hotel and a 10-story office building.

Restore Oregon, a nonprofit, recently filed with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals an appeal of the city’s decision to allow removal of the two existing buildings from its Historic Resource Inventory. That action was performed by the Bureau of Development Services, at the owner’s request, according to Restore Oregon Executive Director Peggy Moretti.

“We would love to see those buildings not come down,” she said. “And we would like to understand why in the world they can’t be integrated.”

Restore Oregon also sent a letter to Portland City Council urging it to close a “loophole” in city code that allows owners to circumvent a 120-day delay for demolitions of historic buildings.

“The intent is to allow time for public input and exploration of alternatives to demolition,” Moretti said. “The fact that someone could just go and the same day they apply get a property removed is a direct contradiction (to city code) and is also counter to state code.”

The Portland Historic Landmarks Commission also sent a letter to the Design Commission, calling the Temple building “one of the most architecturally-significant downtown buildings” remaining from the 1890s.

“Frankly, we have not seen the demolition of a historic resource of this caliber in our near-decade of tenure on the Landmarks Commission,” the letter states. “It is unprecedented and unthinkable that this would be allowed.”

Murray Jenkins, a principal with Ankrom Moisan, told the Design Commission that as the firm evaluated possible preservation of the buildings, “challenges were great.” He recounted some of the buildings’ problems.

“The Temple building is one of the tallest unreinforced masonry buildings in the city, and while it was under separate ownership, it had not been maintained or upgraded over the years and is in a bad state of repair,” he said. “Floors three through six are still being used for storage, since the 1920s, and it’s also currently on the city’s dangerous building list.”

Jenkins said that 3-D scans of buildings were performed and found that the Temple building was “bearing point loads versus spread footings.” The Hotel Albion, referred to throughout the meeting as the Lotus building because the Lotus Cardroom and Café operates on the first floor, also showed structural limitations, he said.

“In the Lotus building we learned that there were load-bearing masonry walls internal to the building footprint,” he said. “So not only external walls were load-bearing, but we also had internal load-bearing masonry walls. This unfortunately led us to the conclusion that reusing the existing Lotus (building) was not feasible.”

But Jenkins made clear that he and others from his firm were looking for direction as to how to proceed because of both buildings’ structural problems.

“The challenges we face with these buildings are as tough as it gets,” he said.

Michael Great, also a principal with Ankrom Moisan, told the commissioners that his firm’s preference would be to save the two buildings. However, he added that the new design, although “not fully vetted,” would provide much more flexibility.

“What we’re asking you today is for your feedback on design direction,” he said. “We want to listen to what you have to say and further evaluate our choices. We understand there is great value in trying to retain the Temple (building).”

Commissioner Jeff Simpson said he would support any attempt to save the two buildings, but understood their lack of structural integrity. He asked if some of the Temple building’s original features – such as skin and materials – could be retained.

Great replied that would be difficult because of the six-story, unreinforced masonry structure’s substantial height.

“It would be a very complicated solution to maintain the facades,” he said.

Commissioner Tad Savinar asked if the Hotel Albion had any current uses.

“No, everything is empty above the first floor,” Great said. “It is an unserviceable and unusable building from an occupant comfort standpoint. The current owner has not found a use for it that’s appropriate, and the upper floors have not been used for at least 50 years.”

Commissioner Don Vallaster said he would rather see the Hotel Albion saved because it is only three stories and would be simpler to work with.

“I don’t think the Temple building is going to be a big loss,” he said. “It’s kind of like Centennial Mills. It’s old (and) it’s there, but what are you going to do with it? Maybe it’s time to move on.”

Commission Chairman David Wark and Savinar both favored saving the buildings. Wark said he would “absolutely 100 percent prefer restoration over demolition.”

Savinar criticized the lack of detail in the proposal for the new buildings and said that he would have high expectations for any design calling for replacement.

“If you’re going to tear down a historic building, you’d better come back with something great,” he said.

The project is still in the design advice stage and no date has been set for its next appearance before the Design Commission, city planner Hillary Adam said.

The post Downtown demolition plans resisted appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The 123-year-old Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple and the 109-year-old Hotel Albion both sit on a block in downtown Portland, between Southwest Second and Third avenues and Salmon and Taylor streets.

The buildings also both were added to the city’s Historic Resources Inventory (HRI) in 1985, until they were removed earlier this month at their owner’s request.

Now both could soon be demolished.

Ankrom Moisan Architects in September participated in a pre-application conference with the Bureau of Development Services to discuss a development on 7/8 of the block holding both the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple and the Hotel Albion. Then, this month Third & Taylor Development LLC appeared with Ankrom Moisan on a design advice request document for the project that proposes new construction to replace those buildings with a boutique hotel, office space and parking.

Neither building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They were simply identified in the HRI via a survey of potentially historic assets within the city. Their fates, however, more plainly were given to their owner in 2002, when the state determined that neither a historic district nor historic property can be added to the national register without owners’ consent.

“Those two (buildings) would be a slam dunk to be put on the register,” said Brian Emerick, chairman of the Historic Landmarks Commission. “But the owners never proceeded to do that. It’s unfortunate in a lot of ways because other states don’t have this limitation.”

Even though the Temple and Hotel Albion buildings were on the HRI, they could have been demolished – only national register listings could prevent that. However, an HRI building can’t be demolished without a demolition delay period, Restore Oregon Executive Director Peggy Moretti said.

“There is a 120-day demolition delay period for buildings on the HRI intended to be used for an opportunity to explore alternatives,” she said. “It just offers a little dialogue, a little interaction with the neighborhood or the district. It doesn’t prevent demolition altogether.”

Nevertheless, the Bureau of Development Services removed the Temple and the Hotel Albion from the HRI on Nov. 5. The removal process is simple. An owner needs only to fill out a one-page form and sign it. A building will be removed that same day.

“It’s a simple process to have (the building) removed (from the HRI),” Emerick said. “There’s all these loopholes. We have all of these significant resources that are essentially unprotected. They don’t have the protection in the code and now we’re seeing an intensified building period going on with the development scenario changing and making sense on a lot of projects it didn’t before. With the pressure for density, you’re going to start seeing a lot more threatened resources.”

In September, the 7/8 of the downtown block targeted for redevelopment was owned by Eugene-based House of Gold. John Plew, owner of the Lotus Cardroom and Café, a ground-floor tenant in the Hotel Albion, said the property will be sold.

The 91��Ƶ wasn’t able to determine exactly who operates Third & Taylor Development LLC. It was registered by Dina Alexander, an attorney in Portland. Calls to Alexander and Ankrom Moisan Architects were not immediately returned.

Restore Oregon senior field programs manager Brandon Spencer-Hartle said that the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple and the Hotel Albion are two of 11 properties that have been removed from the HRI in the past year. Most of those have been single-family dwellings or small commercial properties, he said.

“These two properties are highly visible,” he said.

Emerick is predicting significant outcry.

“It’s going to create quite a hullabaloo,” he said of the apparent demolition on tap. “The Temple Building is in poor shape, but it’s certainly salvageable. It’s an amazing architectural historic resource right in the core of downtown. The removal of that is going to generate quite a bit of backlash – especially in the historic community. These are our shared community cultural assets. To be able to not have a say in being able to protect those going forward is really detrimental to preserving the things that are important and define our community. That’s really what the crux of this is about.”

Moretti said that closing the loophole allowing demolition without public input could be very simple.

“A sentence can be pulled out of the code and the loophole is closed,” she said. “It isn’t that big of a deal to change it if there’s will to do so. We have a sense that there’s some receptivity to look at this and make it right. We are optimistic that the city is receptive to fix it.”

Saving the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple and the Hotel Albion may be more challenging.

“For these two particular buildings, you could chain yourself to the doors, or appeal to a person higher in nature, or I don’t know,” Moretti said. “You find yourself kind of ending up with a public cry and see if anyone on the development side cares.”

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