Fresh design advice is pending for a long-planned affordable housing project on the former Safari Showclub site in Southeast Portland.

The Portland Housing Bureau for nearly three years has sought redevelopment of the parcel at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd., near Cleveland High School. In July 2019, a second design advice hearing took place for the project, which then was proposed as a five-story building with 180 residential units as well as 30 parking spaces for motor vehicles.

However, a , with applicant Dave Otte of Holst Architecture, was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. The latest submittal calls for a single building partially five stories and partially four stories, with 210 units. Also, there would be 40 parking spaces. The building would have four levels of wood framing above a single level of post-tensioned concrete. There would be approximately 7,000 square feet of active ground-level space.

Drawings submitted by Holst Architecture for developer Home Forward suggest the latest iteration would be an H-shaped structure. The project team is scheduled to appear before the Portland Design Commission on March 19.

Vehicle parking would be on the property’s south side, with accessibility from Southeast 31st Avenue.

Money for the project is coming from a $258 million affordable housing bond approved by voters in 2016.

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For Colas Construction, landing the $32 million contract in 2017 to serve as construction manager-general contractor for interior renovations at the Oregon Convention Center was a landmark. At the time, it was the largest contract ever for Colas Construction, and the largest one ever to be awarded to a minority-owned firm in Oregon.

It didn’t take long for Colas Construction to top that. The Portland company has been selected as the construction manager-general contractor for an affordable housing project at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd. for Home Forward and the Portland Housing Bureau that will exceed the value of the Oregon Convention Center project.

Colas Construction has elbowed its way into several large projects, often on behalf of government clients. In some cases, the family-owned firm has won the jobs over larger firms.

The company has striven to make a diverse workforce its calling card.

“While providing a quality product at a good value, we also are contributing to our community in a way that’s different from any of our other competitors, and that’s by being extremely inclusive and intentional about that at all levels of our business,” Colas Construction President Andrew Colas said. “Every level of management, every level of the trades, we want to make sure that our industry is more so reflective of our community.”

The company has grown rapidly since it was founded in 1997 by Hermann Colas Jr., who had emigrated from Haiti in 1969. The next generation now owns and operates the firm, with Hermann’s children Andrew Colas serving as president, Aneshka Colas-Dickson as vice president and chief financial officer, and Alex Colas as project manager.

Colas Construction has come to occupy a unique position in the Portland area as perhaps the largest minority-owned contractor. That makes the firm a natural fit for public agencies looking to fulfill diversity and inclusion goals, and demonstrate they’re making progress on including minority-owned firms in large construction projects. Colas Construction’s status as a contractor certified by the state Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID) often is an edge in competitive bidding.

“Colas Construction being a COBID, minority-owned firm was definitely a factor” in it being awarded the Oregon Convention Center contract, said Brent Shelby, senior construction project manager for Metro. “We’re awfully proud of the fact that it was at the time of bid the largest award for a minority contract.”

Half of the Oregon Convention Center project funding, or about $16 million, went to disadvantaged, minority-owned or woman-owned businesses, Shelby said. Colas Construction delivered the project on time and on budget, he said.

The firm’s success in procuring public projects has led to private grumbling from some competitors. Yet the contracting policies appear to be working as designed, providing a leg up for a Haitian-American family firm.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think my father would have been able to found a construction company in the ’60s in Portland, Oregon,” Andrew Colas said. “That’s a sad reality and truth to this state and city.”

Colas said his company now competes against seasoned contractors that can lean on many decades of accumulated capital and business relationships.

“If you look at the majority of the businesses of color that are in the construction industry you won’t find many, if any, that are over 30 years in business,” he said. “So there is no advantage there. Most businesses, they’ve had the ability to have retained earnings for 50 years, and build up huge capital, and that’s a real thing in a very capital-intensive industry.”

Other contractors, including Andersen Construction and R&H Construction, have worked with Colas Construction in joint-venture partnerships. Those collaborations allowed a growing firm to gain experience on large projects.

“Our team enjoyed the opportunity to partner with Andrew Colas and the rest of the Colas family during the early years of their company’s growth as a commercial general contractor,” Norm Dowty, vice president of business development and marketing at R&H Construction, wrote in an email, in response to questions. “During that time, our teams collectively delivered several notable projects for nonprofit entities in the Portland metro area.”

Now, Colas Construction is increasingly getting sizable contracts on its own.

In September, Prosper Portland announced it had selected Colas Construction to build a five-to-seven-story building on a roughly quarter-block parcel at Northwest Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street. The two parties have entered into exclusive negotiations for the project, and Colas Construction is working with Resolve Architecture and SERA Architects on early designs. If the project moves forward, Colas plans to take a floor of the building for its own headquarters. The construction firm’s offices would move from the current location at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Couch Street.

Bow Leung Bing Kong Tong, a local Chinese cultural organization, is also involved in the project with an eye toward taking office space. The project would also include residential units and ground-floor retail space.

“If we were to move forward with this project … we’d want to make sure that it represented as best as possible some of the cultural heritage – Chinese culture, Japanese culture, even African-American culture – within this neighborhood,” Colas said.

Colas Development Group LLC, a new entity formed in June, would serve as the project’s developer.

“We’re not looking into development,” Andrew Colas said. “This is more of an opportunity to put our construction company’s headquarters in what I think is a very unique neighborhood, and we want to add to the fiber and fabric of this neighborhood.”

Another upcoming project would bring a sizable affordable housing development to 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd. The city purchased the former Safari Club parcel near Cleveland High School for $3.72 million in 2017. The Housing Bureau later announced it would use affordable housing bonds to develop the site.

Colas Construction has been tapped to build the project, which will have approximately 175 apartments on four stories over one story of retail space.

Colas Construction is also working with Beam Development to build the ODOT Blocks project in the Central Eastside Industrial District.

Colas Construction executives are well-connected with public agencies. Aneshka Colas-Dickson served a term on Prosper Portland’s board. Andrew Colas currently serves on the Board of Trustees at the University Oregon, his alma mater. Colas said the firm has avoided projects in Eugene during his time on the board to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. Colas Construction worked on projects in Eugene prior to Andrew Colas’ time on the board.

“We’re a business that stands out and is looked at, so I would never want to do anything that would create that perception,” Colas said. “Long-term-wise, we’ll look to move into other markets. But for now we’re just focused on being really, really good at what we do on our home turf.”

Civil court records show no major cases involving Colas Construction, but only a lien with a developer that was moved to arbitration and a pair of personal injury matters related to vehicle collisions – not uncommon for a construction company. The developer did not respond to a request for comment.

Hermann Colas Jr. came from a family that owned the second-largest rum distillery in Haiti. He started Colas Construction after becoming frustrated with an incompetent contractor who was building his house.

Hermann still comes into the office regularly, even though he sold the business to the second generation years ago. He said he was not surprised Colas Construction has grown large enough to tackle major projects on its own.

“There was never a thought to do something small,” he said.

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A team planning to build affordable housing in Southeast Portland on Thursday received advice from the Portland Design Commission for the second time, and got mostly positive feedback. The subject property, at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd., is owned by the Portland Housing Bureau; the project is being developed by Home Forward, the city’s housing authority. Colas Construction is serving as construction manager/general contractor.

Holst Architecture is behind the design, and Ground Workshop is providing landscape architecture services. Plans call for a five-story building of 180 housing units occupying a nearly 50,000-square-foot site. Townhomes are planned on the ground floor, and units ranging from studios to three-bedroom apartments are in the works on the upper floors. Plans call for 30 parking spaces to be made available to residents.

When the design team previously met with the Design Commission in May, the renderings showed blockier-shaped buildings that commissioners said lacked character. The new design shows large structures with angled edges and concave features.

The team did a good job of listening and responding to the criticisms provided previously, and the new façade is attractive, Commissioner Zari Santner said. Fellow commissioner Don Vallaster similarly said the changes were effective, especially the more dramatic edges. He added that the smaller and more subtle curves were awkward and did not create the same effect.

The design features two courtyards, the first of which is public and sits at the entrance to the complex. A second courtyard wedges itself through the middle of the building and features a zigzag path through planters, intended only for residents.

A major point of discussion for the Design Commission was what role the building might play within the context of Powell Boulevard. Vallaster said he has not yet heard a compelling argument for how it would fit within the neighborhood, although he did say that it could create its own context.

The design team expressed a desire to do as much, with hope that future buildings in the area can follow the project’s example. The designers described Powell Boulevard’s current makeup as “an eclectic mix of frontages.”

Commissioner Chandra Robinson, in her first hearing on the board, said the building would be a great context creator for the street, especially at its entrance, which would be warm and exciting to passersby.

“It is precedent-setting in that it is providing a stopping place that we do not have now,” she said. “I really appreciate that it’s not mirroring the rest of what’s on Powell, but it’s adding something new.”

While some criticism was given to more nuanced aspects of the building, including a ground-floor scale disproportionate to the upper floors and a large swath of blank concrete on the backside wall, commissioners generally expressed satisfaction at where the project is heading.

“Context is a little difficult to figure out in this neighborhood,” Commissioner Samuel Rodriguez said. “I think this is creating context.”

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A pre-application for a proposal to build 180 units of affordable housing on Southeast Portland property formerly occupied by a strip club.

The Portland City Council last year approved the $3.72 million purchase of a parcel at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd. for affordable housing development. The property, across the street from Cleveland High School, once held the Safari Showclub. Now it’s poised to gain a two-building apartment complex.

The larger of the two proposed buildings would be U-shaped, with the open end facing west and fronting Southeast 30th Avenue, and have an interior courtyard. The second building would be rectangular and sit slightly south of its counterpart.

Holst Architecture, the project’s designer, has applied for the conference.

While many of the development’s proposed dimensions and details remain unknown, drawings submitted to the city suggest that both buildings could be roughly 170 feet in length. Also, as few as 30 parking spaces could be provided.

Some initial estimates for the property suggested the Housing Bureau could build up to 300 affordable housing units on the site or even build townhouses along the southern edge. But plans submitted do not call for any townhouses.

Money for the project is due to come from a $258 million affordable housing bond approved by voters in 2016.

The upcoming conference is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 4, at Bureau of Development Services offices at 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave.

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The Portland Housing Bureau may lean toward an acquisition strategy for spending the remaining uncommitted dollars from the city’s $258.4 million affordable housing bond, the bureau’s director said.

To date, the city has purchased or committed to acquiring 263 affordable housing units and building 384 new ones, or 647 units in total. Mayor Ted Wheeler has set a goal of preserving or building 1,300 affordable housing units with the bond money by 2023.

The November 2016 ballot measure gave the Housing Bureau flexibility to either purchase existing housing to serve as affordable units, or build new housing. The bureau is working to strike a balance between building new units and preserving existing ones, Bureau Director Shannon Callahan said.

“From the very early creation of the concept of the bond, both were important concepts,” she said.

Yet unless an Oregon constitutional amendment passes in November, the Housing Bureau is likely to move toward purchasing units rather than building, Callahan said.

The amendment, Measure 102 on the November ballot, would allow public agencies to fund affordable housing construction in partnership with nongovernmental for-profit and nonprofit developers. Housing advocates say the measure would leverage public bond dollars to create more affordable housing.

Callahan acknowledged high construction costs are part of the reason for the acquisition strategy. Yet it raises the prospect that after the bond runs out, the city will have created only a few hundred new units. Acquisitions are in keeping with the housing bond’s goals, Callahan said.

“Our mantra with the bond wasn’t we necessarily need more housing; we need more affordable housing,” she said. “We were really clear with what we intended to do.”

Private groups are fighting many of the same forces.

“It’s getting to be more expensive to build new than it is to preserve what we already have,” said Anthony Petchel, director of philanthropy and communications for REACH Community Development, a private nonprofit group.

Construction costs are difficult to lock in more than a couple of months in advance, while financing must be arranged for much longer terms, Petchel said.

“The biggest challenge is right now, especially on the construction cost side – that needle is constantly moving,” he said.

The Housing Bureau has issued bonds from the 2016 measure only once, to purchase the Ellington Apartments. The bureau is waiting for the results of the constitutional amendment before moving forward on any other bond issuances, Callahan said. The bureau has used interim financing instead. The Housing Bureau to date has committed bond funds to:

• purchase the Ellington Apartments for $47 million in February 2017, preserving 263 units;
• purchase a newly built 51-unit apartment complex at 10506 E. Burnside St. for $14.3 million (The Housing Bureau counts this project as new construction, even though it was built by a private developer as market-rate housing. Instead, the Housing Bureau will offer subsidized rents and use the property to house families transitioning out of homelessness);
• purchase a parcel at Southeast 30th Avenue and Powell Boulevard for $3.72 million to accommodate new construction with up to 200 housing units;
• purchase a property at 5827 N.E. Prescott St., in the Cully neighborhood, for $500,000 to accommodate new construction with at least 50 units; and
• purchase the Westwind Apartments at 333 N.W. Sixth Ave. for $3 million. The existing 70-unit building will likely be demolished, Callahan said. The bureau is considering construction of a six-story replacement with a similar number of units – at an estimated cost of $21 million.

“The building envelope will change,” Callahan said. “Our initial thoughts are we would do a five-over-one there with the same number of units with supportive services and service delivery space.”

As the Housing Bureau looks to acquire buildings, it will focus on properties with family-size apartments of two bedrooms or more, Callahan said.

Metro will also face the task of striking a balance between preserving and building affordable housing if voters approve a $652.8 million regional bond measure in November. The ballot language would provide the regional agency and local partners with flexibility to build affordable units, purchase existing ones, buy land for affordable housing or prevent displacement.

Metro’s aim is to create or preserve 3,900 housing units with the money.

“We wanted to leave some flexibility for the local partners who are going to be doing most of the implementation,” Metro spokesman Craig Beebe said. “They can look at what the situation is in their communities.”

Buying instead of building could help provide more units for the money, said Gerard Mildner, a Portland State University associate professor of real estate finance.

“It’s more efficient to buy existing units than build new, because it’s a better fit for the housing that low-income households need,” he said.

Housing production from the two bond measures would not be enough to make any dent in housing affordability, he said.

“Neither effort is likely to produce very many units,” he said.

Mildner said it would be better policy to simply give low-income individuals money or vouchers to pursue the housing that best fits their needs. He argued the bond measures would provide housing for a few thousand low-income people, while doing nothing for many others who need housing.

“It’s a bit of a lottery for the poor,” he said.

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Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler told members of the Housing Advisory Commission on Tuesday that affordable housing would be his top priority in 2018.

Wheeler spoke Tuesday at the commission’s first meeting since ousting Housing Bureau Director Kurt Creager in December. He offered a broad defense of his administration’s approach to affordable housing.

“I am unequivocally highly supportive of the work being done by you and being done by the Housing Bureau,” Wheeler told commissioners. “Housing affordability continues to be the top priority of this administration.”

Wheeler has been beset by criticism in the media that the Housing Bureau has been slow to spend the $258.4 million of affordable housing bond money that voters approved in November 2016.

“Personally, I respectfully disagree with that perspective,” he said. “There was some groundwork that was very important to lay down. There was some community work and outreach that I thought was critically important.”

The City Council in October 2017 endorsed a framework plan to guide spending the bond proceeds. The plan calls for generating 1,300 affordable housing units.

“I’m very optimistic on what we’re going to be able to do on the housing bond side in the year ahead,” Wheeler said.

The Housing Bureau in September purchased the site of the Safari Showclub, at , for $3.72 million. The city plans to demolish the former strip club, and officials have said 100 to 300 affordable housing units could be built in its place. The design process is under way, with construction expected to begin in 2019.

Shannon Callahan, a former policy adviser to Commissioner Dan Saltzman, is serving as interim director of the Housing Bureau. Wheeler has assigned housing adviser Cupid Alexander to represent his administration on the commission.

Wheeler said he’ll be judged by how many affordable housing units are produced under his watch.

“The public is really clear about their priorities, more than I’ve ever seen it,” he said. “Housing is really important to people right now.”

The city’s approach must be data driven, with unit production at the forefront, Wheeler said.

The City Council has endorsed “very aggressive” goals for supportive housing, Wheeler said. The council in October set a goal to create 2,000 additional supportive housing units by 2028. The program seeks to pair housing with intensive services to keep residents at risk of homelessness off the streets.

“Permanent supportive housing is the best way that we can actually address a number of the chronically homeless populations that are on our streets,” Wheeler said Tuesday.

The effort comes at a time of declining federal support for social services. Wheeler said Portland has a looming discussion about “how we can best provide services in an environment – let’s all be honest – where the federal government is slowly abandoning us.”

Wheeler has asked all city bureaus to produce budgets with a 5 percent cut. He emphasized that that doesn’t mean the bureaus will have their budgets reduced.

The city has a long-term budget imbalance despite record revenues, Wheeler said. Portland needs to get ahead of the problem before the next economic downturn, he added.

“Here’s the challenge: We have record revenues, but no one expects the record revenues to continue,” he said. “We have a problem in our cost structure. The reality of the economy is … recessions always follow boom economies. We are not yet positioned to be able to deliver our services sustainably.”

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The city of Portland, in slow and lurching fashion, is beginning to make a move toward increasing affordable housing.

A first City Council hearing of a framework plan for how to spend $258 million in bonds approved by voters is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 11. A second hearing would be held Oct. 18, with a vote possible that day.

If the plan is approved by the City Council, the Portland Housing Bureau plans to open transactions on bond deals on Oct. 20.

“We’re close,” Housing Director Kurt Creager said.

Mayor Ted Wheeler had asked the Housing Bureau to hold off on spending from the voter-approved bond until a plan was in place.

Part of the plan is a $50 million to $80 million budget for a “turnkey projects” pilot program, Creager said. Developers would use their own lines of credit and working capital to build projects and then sell them to the Housing Bureau.

Creager said the program could serve as a “backup plan” for developers who are encountering a market with more supply than it has had in recent years.

“They could get their profit and overhead covered, and a reasonable developer’s fee, without coming up with more money to please their bank in a softening market,” Creager said.

The program needs to be well funded to work, he added.

“I don’t think it should be less than $50 million, because it’s not worth people’s time and money,” he said.

As the Housing Bureau prepares for an influx of funds, private-sector nonprofit developers are finding a tougher time financing deals. Tax-credit equity markets have cooled since President Donald Trump’s election, and interest rates have ticked up.

The combination of more expensive loans and less equity has dented the ability of nonprofit developers to finance projects.

“We along with the entire industry have tried to figure out how to make up that gap,” said Cynthia Parker, president and CEO of BRIDGE Housing.

Nonprofit developers use a syndicator of tax credits – the National Affordable Housing Trust – that is owned by BRIDGE Housing and others. The tax credits are typically combined with bank financing. In July, BRIDGE purchased the Ramona, a 138-unit affordable apartment complex in the north Pearl District. Construction of The Abigail, a 155-unit mixed-income project with 128 affordable apartments, finished last year.

BRIDGE has other affordable projects under way in Hillsboro, the North Macadam neighborhood and the Eliot neighborhood.

The Housing Bureau’s bond money looms as an injection of funds into the affordable market.

Creager said the bureau has a “moral and ethical obligation” to build or preserve 1,300 affordable units with the bond dollars as promised. Portland voters approved the bond measure in November; property taxes increased as a result.

The bond funding should arrive at a good time, because the multifamily market is widely expected to slow, Creager said.

“We recognize that markets are dynamic and we have about four more years to put this money into service,” he said. “We’ll be liquid at the right time when the market recalibrates, instead of adding more froth to an already overheated market.”

While the Housing Bureau waits for the influx of bond money, it has made some opportunistic purchases.

In February, the bureau bought the Ellington Apartments in Northeast Portland for $47 million. The purchase preserved 260 units, including 44 affordable ones.

The City Council recently approved a $3.72 million purchase of a parcel at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd. for affordable housing development. The property across the street from Cleveland High School is now the Safari Club, a strip club.

The site will be home to 100 to 300 affordable apartments, and could be used as an emergency shelter during development, Mayor Ted Wheeler said via Twitter.

The wide range of the number of units is due to different possible configurations for the site, Creager said. At maximum density, the Powell property could have up to 300 multifamily units, but the Housing Bureau is considering building townhouses along the southern edge of the property. That would help blend in with the neighboring homes, Creager said.

The Housing Bureau has been looking for a location to build affordable homes; if it goes this route, it may bifurcate the site, he said.

“It might be an appropriate place for it,” he said. “We’re not sure that maximum density is necessary. It sort of depends on the soil condition we find too.”

The townhomes could be three-level, no-lot dwellings sold to low- and moderate-income households at or below 80 percent of area median income, Creager said.

The lot was used at one time for dumping, and there’s a small landfill that must be excavated and disposed of properly, he said.

On Sept. 30, the $3.72 million purchase and sale agreement will close and the city of Portland will take possession of the property. It’s expected to serve as a women’s and children’s shelter until development of affordable housing on the site can take place.

“Until we have an entitled project for development, we’ll probably keep the building in some active use,” Creager said. “Because it’s across from the high school, it’s probably most suited for families or women. The best possible outcome would probably be utilization as a shelter for 12 to 24 months.”

Construction on the site will likely begin in 2019, Creager said.

The Housing Bureau has also acquired a site at Southeast 60th Avenue and Stark Street, north of Mount Tabor.

The property at 511 S.E. 60th Ave. is a YMCA child development center. The YMCA will be able to continue operations in a nearby church during construction at the site, Creager said.

The Housing Bureau aims to build 40 to 50 affordable units, along with a replacement YMCA facility and shared parking.

Portland paid $1.2 million for the property, known as the Mount Tabor Annex. The YMCA’s existing lease means the organization has possession of the property until Oct. 22, 2019, for use as a child-care facility.

A developer will be chosen by the housing commissioner after an open, competitive process, Creager said.

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