5 MLK stands a muscular 17 stories on a full block at the Burnside bridgehead, making the audacious statement that business can be done just as well in Portland’s close-in Eastside as it can across the river in downtown.

Designed by Chicago’s GREC Architects with nods to neighbors such as the looming Yard building, 5 MLK was a $110 million bet by The Green Cities Co. on Portland’s once-soaring commercial real estate market. The building is stuffed with amenities for office tenants, including high-tech air circulation that can be segregated from residential units, private outdoor terraces and a sprawling gym.

What 5 MLK does not have is an office tenant. The gleaming new building has 120,400 square feet of newly constructed Class-A office space – every bit of it vacant. For now, the owners are missing out on about $4 million a year that the office space on floors two through six would bring when fully leased.

The tower is one of many new office buildings that have run headlong into a global pandemic, an unforeseeable event that has frozen commercial real estate. How projects like 5 MLK bounce back from the pandemic will have a significant impact on Portland’s overall economic recovery.

“We have a large inventory of space (in Portland),” said Kelly Saito, one of four managing partners at The Green Cities Co., which formerly was the investment arm of local developer Gerding Edlen. “There were new deliveries before us which maybe paved the way for establishing the newest generation of new buildings within the city.”

Many projects to renovate existing buildings have made some older products more competitive with new office space.

“Over the same period of time, we had a number of the existing (Class) A-B buildings downtown that have been repositioned, renovated, had amenities put in,” Saito said. “So on top of the new construction, there’s a fair amount of inventory of existing space that’s been renovated or is being renovated.”

Since the pandemic emerged a year ago, there has been very little leasing activity in Portland as office tenants waited to make any major decisions. 5 MLK received its first temporary certificate of occupancy in September.

(5 MLK, a mixed-use building, also has 220 apartments that last week were 16 percent leased as well as 14,000 square feet of retail space. An underground garage has approximately 158 parking spaces.)

Total office vacancy in Portland rose to 15.3 percent in 2020, up from 12.3 percent a year earlier and the highest mark since 2010, according to JLL. Average asking rates slipped slightly to $33.61 per square foot.

Saito said asking rents at 5 MLK are in the “mid-$30s” per square foot on a triple-net basis. Apex Real Estate Partners is representing the space.

Before the pandemic, developers largely agreed that the dream of the 2020s was alive in Portland. In-migration boomed in recent years as Seattle and Silicon Valley tech companies relocated or expanded in the more affordable Silicon Forest. That changed in 2020, when net migration fell to about half of its 2016-17 peak, according to the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

Commercial real estate experts are watching for any signs of the market emerging from the pandemic. The effects of the pandemic are hard to overstate: Actual physical occupancy of U.S. offices fell to 17.6 percent on average, according to JLL, as workers stayed home in droves.

Companies such as Facebook have signed major leases in cities such as New York and Chicago, while also rolling out accommodating work-from-home policies. That’s drawn questions about how resilient the office market will be in 2021 and years to come.

It’s not yet clear what the new normal looks like, Saito said.

“Clearly, there’s downward pressure in general given both inventory and where demand has fallen to,” he said. “And demand has diminished in the short term, for sure. That’s directly related to working from home. There’s no question that when things return to normal, that normal will be different to some extent – and there’s a lot of projections being made about what that might look like.”

While questions remain about the future of office space, the sector may be buoyed by a broad economic recovery. Many economists are forecasting a strong rebound as the U.S. emerges from pandemic-related shutdowns in an atmosphere of low interest rates and pent-up consumer savings. Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs, for example, earlier this month raised its forecast for U.S. GDP growth to 6.8 percent in 2021.

That should trickle down to office demand, said Ryan Severino, JLL’s chief economist.

“As the economy bounces back, you should see a commensurate change in demand as well,” he said during a Feb. 11 webinar.

Physical occupancy should also come back to near pre-pandemic levels, Severino said.

“We reasonably expect that by the end of the year, the majority (of) people would be back in an office space,” he said. “Remote work is going to expand, but we don’t see this as being the death knell for office and the demand for office space. Employees do want to be in an office.”

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Not even face coverings could hide the satisfaction of architects Don Copper and Janet Olson while crews continued to wrap up construction of the 17-story 5 MLK mixed-use building in Portland’s Central Eastside.

Copper is a managing principal and Olson is a principal with GREC Architects, a Chicago firm known for designing lakeside high-rises in the Windy City or lush, sprawling parks in far-flung places like Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. But at the east end of the Burnside Bridge, general contractor Hoffman Construction is finishing a project in a much different setting.

“This is our first project in Portland,” said Copper, who has worked with 5 MLK developer Gerding Edlen in Chicago on several occasions. “The scale of the city, the 200-foot blocks, as opposed to Chicago with its 300-by-600-foot (blocks), it’s a significant difference in how we experience a place – because with the smaller blocks, even though it’s a legitimate city, it has a really manageable scale.”

Beyond the city, Copper and Olson were inspired by the natural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest as they designed 5 MLK, which is located on the southwest corner of the intersection of East Burnside Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. There, the gleaming new building sits kitty-corner from the 21-story Yard residential tower like a massive sentinel guarding the entrance to East Portland.

“We definitely looked at things on many levels of scale,” Copper said, “but all of them in the context of Portland and the region.”

That context ranged from the region’s natural features to the bustling area.

“I’d say on the location and the site, we kind of saw what was happening here, which now has happened, and I think it’s really developed nicely,” Copper said. “(Gerding Edlen) let us run. That’s the beauty of working with them; they have … business approaches to a building and we take the creative architectural design approaches, and the two mix really well.”

5 MLK has two distinctly different faces. The northeast corner facing the Burnside/Martin Luther King Jr. intersection features the main entrance and lobby, which serves both residential and commercial tenants. The southwest corner, by contrast, is marked by a prominent sequoia tree and a rounded facade that serves to highlight the entrance to ground-floor retail spaces that front both Southeast Ankeny Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The building’s southwest corner also has on the second through sixth stories a series of terraced outdoor patio spaces.

“We came up with this concept directive that we call urban landform,” Copper said, “to try and make the building like a natural landform that sort of cascades down and has waterfalls. And having all these landscaped terraces that once the landscaping is mature, the landscaping will hopefully become as much a part of the structure as the architecture and soften the architecture.”

On the inside, 5 MLK is different from anything the firm has done before, Olson said. The goal was to start with a tree in the main lobby and adopt as many natural elements as possible. In addition, the lobby is intended to be a much more public space than those in similar buildings. Plans call for it to eventually host live musical performances and other events after the pandemic subsides.

“It really kind of is what that area of the lobby has evolved around – engagement with the tree,” Olson said as she circled the large planter.

Other natural elements in the lobby come in the form of stone-clad walls that are intended to resemble Oregon’s ubiquitous basalt columns formed by volcanic activity, as well as generous natural wood finishes and furniture. Even the carpets and furniture have circular shapes and patterns as an ode to water droplets spreading steadily outward.

“With things like this, where it’s a big statement, and it’s viewable from outside, if you’re a passerby on Burnside you can view this and feel a part of it even though you’re not inside,” Olson said. “So that, along with bringing in natural daylight.”

To that end, there’s even a lobby skylight that is both a source of light and a connection to the rest of the building.

“You can look up and see the terraces, and eventually the plantings will grow and you will see that,” she said.

Floors two through five have a combined 120,000 square feet of office space and separate amenity decks, while floors seven through 17 hold 220 residential units that range from 510 to 1,174 square feet.

The unique sixth floor has a huge array of amenities to serve both residential and business tenants. These include a large fitness center, conference rooms, classrooms and more. Another amenity space on the 17th floor offers residential tenants additional entertainment areas, as well as a small, outdoor swimming pool.

Structurally, the building bears little resemblance to those built in the Midwest, where seismic resilience isn’t as important. 5 MLK has concrete shear walls and columns.

“Where we could, we left those exposed,” Olson said. “In a handful of units we have exposed shear walls, like some in the entry, or in the bathroom, like a kind of surprise. Also, on the sixth floor it’s an element that separates two of the conference room spaces, and we’ve exposed it on both sides of that. It keeps that raw material aspect engaged.”

The building’s seismic resilience was created in an interesting manner, Copper said.

“The two elevator cores are shear walls that almost create a box,” he said. “They’re two U-shaped structures that go all the way up the building, and the elevators are inside those.”

Structural engineers with KPFF decided to link them with very large steel beams at each end, Copper added.

“In this way the core is designed to fail at a certain level of force,” he said. “There’s a lot of reinforcing steel in this building that would not be in the same building in Chicago.”

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Skilled craftspeople continue to swarm the 5 MLK project site in Portland even as the anticipated spring 2020 completion date approaches. Approximately 60 carpenters, all employed by framing subcontractor Performance Contracting Inc., are building interior metal framing on virtually all 17 stories and the rooftop mechanical penthouse.

The mixed-use building is coming together at 5 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., near the east end of the Burnside Bridge. Hoffman Construction is serving as the general contractor for the project, which was designed by GREC Architects of Chicago for Gerding Edlen Development.

Plans call for 220 residential units, 120,000 square feet of office space and 15,000 square feet of commercial space – some that will be occupied by a high-end restaurant.

Approximately five to six months of work remain, Hoffman Construction project manager Brian Reeves said.

“It will be more toward the end of April, and some work will probably spill into May,” he said.

Work is ongoing at all levels. There are Corona Steel ironworkers, Van Lom Concrete cement masons and Coffman Excavation crews working on the ground-floor restaurant space and pedestrian walkways. Meanwhile, PCI carpenters, JH Kelly plumbers, Cherry City Electric electricians and General Sheet Metal HVAC specialists are installing mechanical systems on residential floors seven through 17.

“We topped out the concrete in September,” Reeves said. “So now the facade is up with the exception of the lower level and the slab-edge covers and parapet covers.”

Floors two through five will be delivered as office shell space and are essentially complete at this stage. The sixth floor will have more office space as well as amenities for office tenants placed on a series of cascading outdoor decks that continue down through the second floor.

On the roof a large mechanical penthouse is being constructed and prepped to receive HVAC, electrical and other mechanical equipment and prefab skids to hold it all.

“We are progressing up the tower in finishes right now,” Reeves said. “So there are various levels of finishes complete. Level eight is the most complete level, and there are a few apartments that are fully completed up there.”

One unique element on the 17th floor will be an amenity deck containing depressed seating and even a swimming pool. The latter required significant structural accommodation for the 16th floor, including extra-thick concrete support beams, resulting in 16th-floor ceilings roughly five feet taller than standard. The extra height in the residential units provides a unique feel, especially because the floor-to-ceiling glazing is retained.

The building skin consists of an elaborate window wall system that provides each floor with floor-to-ceiling glazing. It uses what GREC designers call a pattern of vision glass, spandrel glass, porcelain panels in two colors, and projecting mullions. Other exterior materials include metal soffits and ground-level stone masonry planters.

With a 300-foot-tall tower crane still in place on the site, the project team has a lot to do.

“There’s still quite a bit yet, definitely,” Reeves said.

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The Central Eastside Industrial Council has commissioned a parking study as an increase of jobs in the urban district has not come with additions of spaces for motor vehicles.

The study is “to determine exactly how much parking we have and how much parking we need, and whether we’re using the parking that we have efficiently,” said Brad Malsin, the council’s president and a Beam Development principal.

Portland’s zoning, in particular the Central City 2035 plan, limits residential and office uses in the Central Eastside in an attempt to protect the district as an industrial sanctuary. As multifamily and office development creates pressure on industrial space across the city, the Central Eastside is meant to remain a place where industrial businesses can continue to flourish.

That has become a challenge.

“I think it needs to be done,” Jim Kennison, director of bakery operations at Franz Bakery, said of the parking study. “It is the industrial district, and the industry is getting kind of crowded and pushed out.”

Pressures have grown. In June 2018, Autodesk moved from Lake Oswego to the Towne Storage building, a renovated 100,000-square-foot warehouse south of the Burnside Bridge that was originally built in 1916 and has no parking. Media reports at the time said Autodesk had 200 employees at the location, with room to scale up to 500.

The construction software firm declined a recent interview request, and did not respond to an email asking how many employees work at the Towne Storage building.

Whereas the parking situation is a problem for many employers, it’s an opportunity for some developers. Harsch Investment Properties‘ 7 SE Stark building, nearly completed, has six floors of parking with 265 stalls.

“It’s a critical need,” said Jordan Schnitzer, president of Harsch Investment Properties. “Many tenants realize that while lots of people walk and bike and use Uber, there’s a lot of people that still drive their cars and a lot of people that want to visit businesses.”

Some of 7 SE Stark’s parking will be available to other users, Schnitzer said.

“We’re first going to take care of our tenants, and then any excess parking, we’ll take care of Olympic Mills and the public,” he said.

The Olympic Mills Commerce Center, a commercial building near 7 SE Stark, has tenants including Olympia Provisions and Fish Marketing.

Gerding Edlen‘s 5 MLK, another building under construction in the area and expected to be delivered early next year, has three floors of underground parking. A spokesperson for the developer did not respond to a message seeking comment. An executive with Apex Real Estate Partners, the leasing agent for the project, also did not respond to requests for comment.

District Office, a six-story building from Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners at 525 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., will have one floor of underground parking.

The growth affects many longtime industrial businesses, which rely on parking and easy access for trucks to transport their products. Franz Bakery has operated in the neighborhood since 1906, and is in a relatively good position with three parking lots for its approximately 500 employees in the district. Few employees use public transit, Kennison said, because of schedule challenges.

“Our problem here is we work pretty much 24/7,” he said. “Bus service and light rail is not great on holidays or weekends.”

TriMet spokeswoman Tia York stated via email that the Central Eastside “enjoys some of the best supply of transit in the region.” Next spring, bus line 20 will be upgraded to frequent service – every 15 minutes – joining six frequent service lines currently operating in the area. TriMet is also working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation to accelerate bus service to make riding transit more attractive, York stated.

The Central Eastside Industrial Council also operates the Water Avenue Shuttle, which runs two shuttle buses during peak commuting hours from the Dairy Building on Southeast Eighth Avenue to the Oregon Convention Center.

Kennison said some small businesses have moved out of the district. That’s hardly an option for a company the size of Franz, he said.

“We’re a big company,” he said. “It’s going to be really hard for someone like us to move – I’m not saying that’s happening.

“Smaller businesses that can be more mobile, they don’t want to hassle with the parking,” he added.

The Lloyd area, just north of the Central Eastside, has its own parking challenges. Go Lloyd, a business group, conducts an annual parking survey of more than 13,000 on-street and off-street parking spaces. In 2018, the survey found usage rates were 10 percent higher than during the previous year.

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A man suffering a mental health crisis climbed to the top of a construction crane in Southeast Portland and stayed there for more than five hours before climbing down and being taken into police custody Wednesday.

According to the Portland Police Bureau, the agency’s Special Emergency Reaction Team and Crisis Negotiation Team responded to the area of Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Ankeny Street just after 1 p.m. to assist Central Precinct officers with a “person in crisis who was in an elevated position on top of a crane.”

Police say the man climbed atop the 290-foot crane at the 5 MLK�����ܾ����徱�Բ��������ٱ� and that responding police followed him using harnesses and other climbing gear. Police said they were able to identify the man and talk with him as he paced back and forth along the crane’s catwalk looking at the job site below.

5 MLK is a 17-story building being constructed by general contractor Hoffman Construction.

“Right now we’re still investigating how the individual yesterday gained access to the crane,” Hoffman Vice President Dan Drinkward said. “We don’t want to go into detail on that, but what I can tell you is there are a number of strategies we employ to restrict access to the tower cranes.”

According to Sgt. Brad Yakots, a public information officer with the Portland Police Bureau, the subject was not believed to be a construction worker. The crane was locked down and the site evacuated shortly after 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

After crisis negotiators climbed the crane and talked with the man for over two hours, he finally made his way down the crane’s internal ladders just before 6:30 p.m. and was taken into custody by officers.

The man reportedly scaled a perimeter fence to access the job site before climbing the crane. The operator was able to shut down the crane and call authorities as the man made his way up.

“(The crane’s operator) is unharmed, and he did a very good job of shutting down the crane – shutting off its power so the crane won’t move,” Yakots said in a media briefing.

Around the world, a spate of so-called “rooftopping” adventurers have trespassed onto building sites to climb tower cranes, tall buildings and other structures and then document their activities. As a result, anti-climb devices have become commonplace at sites in Europe and beyond. These include shields around the cranes’ bases with solid walls up nearly 10 feet tall, locking hatches in cranes’ masts and many other precautions.

Drinkward said security around cranes typically starts with a perimeter fence and continues inward. At the base of the crane there is normally a locked structure and gate, often with solid walls; there are intermediate hatches in the crane mast with locks; no-climb netting outside the crane; locks on the hatches that go into the cab; and at the top, a switch to kill power.

Nevertheless, no set-up is perfect, Drinkward said.

“Each of these crane installations is a custom installation,” he said. “The way you configure the crane is different at each site, so the strategies you use vary from project to project and they change as the project gets built.”

Changes take place even as the building rises, he added.

“It’s a dynamic environment and you’re constantly balancing the security of the crane and the ability of the crane operator to safely move up and down to do his work,” he said.

Drinkward praised the actions of the crane operator, who is a Hoffman employee.

“We’re really grateful for the quick action of our employees to secure the cab of the crane and ensure the individual in crisis was not able to operate the crane,” he said.

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The area surrounding the Burnside Bridge‘s east end has experienced a surge of new development in the past several years, and it’s not done yet.

The Burnside Bridgehead, a gateway to Portland’s inner east side, formerly was a site of urban blight. But new buildings Yard, Slate and the Fair-Haired Dumbbell have arrived. Some existing buildings in the area have received adaptive reuse projects.

Now, crews are constructing the latest addition: 5 MLK.

Designed by Chicago firm GREC Architects to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold standards, 5 MLK will feature a 17-story, U-shaped tower as well as a five-story podium structure with a landscaped courtyard inside the “U.”

Gerding Edlen is developing the project on a compact, 0.14-acre parcel at the corner of Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Burnside Street. The building will hold 220 residential units, 120,000 square feet of office space and 15,000 square feet of commercial space. There will also be 170 vehicle parking spaces in a three-level, below-grade garage.

Crews broke ground slightly more than a year ago after demolishing the century-old former Fishel’s Furniture building. The project team expects to top out the concrete structure in September, and finish in April 2020.

At present, general contractor Hoffman Construction is self-performing concrete work via subsidiary firm Hoffman Structures Inc. Crews are set to finish pouring concrete for post-tensioned slabs on the fifth floor.

“What we’re doing is trying to put these on a 10-day cycle with the concrete PT decks,” Hoffman Superintendent Lou Parker said Feb. 27 amid a morning snow flurry. “So we’re trying to pour every Thursday or Friday. We poured last Friday and this one here is supposed to pour this Friday.”

Of course, a recent outburst of winter weather managed to present challenges.

“The weather does affect us,” Parker said. “Everybody that came in today is stepping up. We put a (concrete wall form) panel in this morning early, trying to beat the wind, and they were still wrestling with it pretty good; it’s a tough day out there.”

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A 101-year-old building has been razed to make way for construction of a new 17-story mixed-use building at the Burnside bridgehead. NorthStar handled demolition of the former home of furniture retailer Fishels at the intersection of East Burnside Street and Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. In its place, developer Gerding Edlen is building 5 MLK, which will include 10 stories of apartments over six levels of office and amenity space, retail space and below-grade parking. The building was designed by Chicago-based GREC Architects, and Hoffman Construction is the project’s contractor.

Demolition wrapped up last week, and earthwork is set to follow. Foundation work will begin in May, and the project is slated for completion by the fourth quarter of 2019.

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5 MLK, a mixed-use tower planned near the east end of the Burnside Bridge, received conditional approval from the Portland Design Commission on Thursday. Commissioners voted 3-0 to give a green light; Don Vallaster abstained, and David Wark, Samuel Rodriguez and Tad Savinar were not present.

“I thought you guys did a good job; it’s a great building,” Commissioner Andrew Clarke said. “It’s just a great addition to a growing cluster of buildings that is slowly forming in the neighborhood.”

Plans for Gerding Edlen‘s project at 5 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., the former site of Fishel’s Furniture, call for a 17-story building that will include 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, 220 residential units and 170 underground parking spaces.

Main conditions attached to the commission’s final approval are that planters in the lobby not become permanent and that a storefront be accessible by building patrons. Also, the vertical fins used on the building’s upper stories must match the color of the back-painted spandrel glazing used in the window wall system, and the canopy/parapet fascia at the 17th floor roof terrace must be clad with spandrel glazing that matches glazing used at the parapet of the “bridge” massing.

This was the project’s fifth appearance before the Design Commission. The final design features multiple rooftop terraces, vegetation and an open aperture between the retail and residential units to evoke a natural feeling. GREC Architects, of Chicago, is hoping that the building, along with Yard across the street, will serve to frame the Burnside Bridge and act as a gateway to the city beyond the Willamette River.

Commissioners Julie Livingston and Jessica Molinar debated much of the makeup of the entryway before giving their OK. Concerns focused on whether the design presented too many barriers to the public.

“We want there to be a very active intersection with a lot of pedestrian activity,” Livingston said. “To the extent that this interior space can really engage the urban environment that surrounds it, it will be more successful.”

Lead project architect Donald Copper, a GREC principal, said the team sought to use fixed planters with trees throughout the lobby in order to appeal to passersby. The main entry to the lobby is on the corner of Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Burnside Street.

“The original concept was tied to the natural area,” he said. “The consensus was to use a step facade to start to engage the curve.”

Commissioners said they believed that the trees combined with window screens would create a barrier to public sight and access into the structure. The compromise finally hashed out was to make the planters movable. As such, they became part of the building’s furniture and not under the commission’s purview.

“Our preference would be to have fixed planters so they could have drains,” said Kelly Saito, Gerding Edlen’s managing partner.

However, most commissioners believed that fixed planters, combined with a lobby floor lower than the sidewalk outside, wouldn’t meet the city’s design guidelines.

“I think the elevation change between the sidewalk and the floor with the planting creates a great barrier,” Livingston said. “Make the street fantastic and you can do whatever you want with the planters.”

Other smaller issues revolved around the prominence of the main entryway and the use of an open aperture.

“This entry does not seem particularly obvious or prominent,” Vallaster said.

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For eight years, the Portland Development Commission patiently cobbled together four blocks at the eastern end of the Burnside Bridge.

City leaders thought the area could serve as a gateway to downtown from East Portland, and so the PDC in 1998 began acquiring properties there.

Revitalization of the area had a long way to go. The Convention Plaza building was a second-rate office property, and the surrounding area had little going on.

Yet the site offered 4 acres of close-in land fronting the Willamette River on one of Portland’s busiest streets.

Development there would be aided by maximum height allowances of 200 feet, a generous floor-to-area ratio of nine-to-one and central employment (EXd) zoning.

Today, the area is bustling with construction and activity. Guerrilla Development‘s colorful Fair-Haired Dumbbell is under construction, while Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners‘ Slate and Key Development and Guardian Real Estate Services‘ Yard are fully built. Additional projects are at various stages of development.

“It’s a really interesting site in Portland, an interesting opportunity,” said Jeff Pickhardt, a Key Development principal. “It’s basically the epicenter of Portland, and it had been a blighted site for a long time.”

Initially, the PDC inked a memorandum of understanding with Opus Northwest, a subsidiary of Minnesota-based Opus Group, for podium-and-tower construction on the entire property. But Opus was hit hard by the Great Recession in 2008 and ’09, and the deal dissolved.

The PDC – led at the time by Executive Director Bruce Warner under then-mayor Sam Adams – restarted. The agency brought in Beam Development, a local firm that had performed several well-regarded rehabilitations of historic buildings, as a strategic adviser to craft a new framework plan.

Crucially, instead of seeking one large developer to take the entire site, the PDC moved to bring in multiple developers.

“It was smart on PDC’s part to have some diversity of development groups,” said Jonathan Malsin, a Beam Development principal. “We understood that that could lead to a better result of having a mix of architectural styles and product types.”

Beam Development was invited to redevelop a parcel in the area. The firm, led by Brad Malsin and his son, Jonathan, chose the Convention Plaza building, which since opening in 1926 had served at various times as a military barracks, a soup kitchen and offices before being targeted for demolition. But instead of knocking it down, Beam renovated the property at 123 N.E. Third Avenue into the Eastside Exchange.

Cascade Energy Inc. was the first tenant to take space in the 80,000-square-foot building, and then the Technology Association of Oregon and the Oregon Film Office followed.

Beam Development opened the door for others to step into the area, Pickhardt said.

“You could credit Beam and really PDC for activating that part of town,” he said. “Beam was heavily involved in the framework plan, and they really took the first step at the bridgehead. Their work early on, and particularly Eastside Exchange, was a catalyst for others to follow suit.”

In the wake of the Great Recession, most developers were not in a position to redevelop 4 acres of urban property. Parceling out the four-plus blocks over time enabled the PDC to spread the financial risk among several developers.

Key Development had investigated developing a large project in the Burnside bridgehead area in 2010. The Hood River company was interested in making its mark in Portland. After Beam developed Eastside Exchange, Key jumped in with bids for Block 67 and a portion of Block 76. Block 67 became Yard, a 21-story tower with 284 residential units and ground-floor retail space.

Yard attracted criticism for its dark appearance and unbroken mass, but Key Development and Guardian Real Estate Services sold the building in December to a Thailand-based company for $126.68 million after an unsolicited offer.

After completion of the Eastside Exchange, Beam and UD+P followed with Slate, a 10-story mixed-use project on Block 75. The Works Progress Architecture-designed building has 75 market-rate apartments and 45,000 square feet of commercial space. The building opened in November.

Guerrilla Development’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell – two six-story buildings totaling 56,000 square feet – is rising on Block 76. A June completion date is targeted for the office and retail project, developer Kevin Cavenaugh has said.

Cavenaugh used a unique crowdfunding mechanism to raise $1.5 million for the $18 million project. The façade will have a colorful design by Los Angeles artist James Jean, setting the project apart from Slate’s light-colored boxes and Yard’s dark appearance.

Meanwhile, Key Development is preparing to break ground on the western portion of Block 76 for a six-story, 22,000-square-foot commercial building, Pickhardt said. That project has received design approval from the city of Portland.

Development continues to radiate outward from the 4 acres comprising the Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan formed in 2010. To the east, Dallas-based Trinsic Residential Group is building Aura Burnside. The six-story multifamily building at 55 N.E. Grand Ave. will include 167 residential units; it’s scheduled to open in late summer.

To the south, Gerding Edlen plans to build a 17-story mixed-use building at 5 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. 5 MLK, as the project is known, is set to include approximately 220 apartments, 10,000 square feet of commercial space and 170 underground parking spaces. 5 MLK is being designed by GREC Architects of Chicago.

At 17 S.E. Third Ave., Sentinel Development and Westport Capital are rehabilitating the 108,600-square-foot Towne Storage building into creative office space. LRS Architects is designing the project, and Bremik Construction is serving as general contractor.

At 230 E. Burnside St., Arthur Mutal and NFN Investments completed adaptive reuse of the 16,400-square-foot R.J. Templeton Building into creative office and retail space in 2014.

ESI Group designed and constructed a 28,720-square-foot warehouse rehabilitation for New Seasons Market’s central kitchen at Southeast Second Avenue and Ash Street.

More properties could be developed in coming years. Cairn Pacific owns property at 811 E. Burnside St. that hosts an eclectic collection of local shops. There are no current plans to develop the property, located across Burnside Street from the Doug Fir Lounge and the Jupiter Hotel, but that could change as the neighborhood develops, Cairn Pacific founding principal Tom DiChiara said.

“It was sleepy down there for a long time,” he said.

Not so now. Looking back, backers of Burnside bridgehead redevelopment are proud of their work.

“It’s amazing that it’s all come together like it has in a relatively short period of time,” Pickhardt said. “To get that scale of development done collaboratively with the neighbors and PDC is remarkable.”

Geraldene Moyle, now a senior project manager at the PDC, said the city was able to be nimble in acquiring the parcels and selling them for fair market value. Developers had to work around a Portland Bureau of Transportation couplet project, elevation changes and other issues.

“I think it’s been successful,” she said. “Based on what we owned, based on the constraints of the site, the couplet, the height, we were able to deliver a site that fulfilled the goals of the framework plan.”

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Portland design commissioners told backers of the 17-story 5 MLK project at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end that their efforts to reduce the appearance of an unbroken mass have improved the design.

Gerding Edlen’s mixed-use proposal received advice from the Design Commission last week. Plans for a former Fishel’s Furniture site call for a building with approximately 220 apartment units, 10,000 square feet of ground-floor and lower-level retail space and 170 underground parking spaces. The design makes extensive use of landscaping; it may become one of Portland’s most landscaped buildings. Architectural drawings show lush greenery is envisioned on several aspects of 5 MLK.

The 5 MLK project will, along with Yard, frame the Burnside bridgehead from the east side of the Willamette River. The project is part of an area development boom that includes Yard by Key Development and Guardian Real Estate Services, Slate by Beam Development and Fair-Haired Dumbbell by Guerrilla Development.

5 MLK’s design includes a “notch” that reduces the building’s profile as viewed from the west. The tower would rise to 200 feet.

“Our basic massing and design concept is meant to metaphorically connect natural land forms, with particular attention to the river,” said Donald Copper of Chicago’s GREC Architects.

Copper said he worked to mitigate the potential “canyon effect” of the large Yard and 5 MLK buildings standing across Burnside Street from each other (5 MLK is also located a block east of Yard).

At the sixth-floor level, the design includes a bridging element via an aperture. Terraced landscaping climbs up the base of the building, and then continues through the aperture.

Commissioners on Thursday praised the architects for better unifying the base and tower.

“The integration of the two pieces is definitely moving in the right direction,” Commissioner Julie Livingston said.

Chairman David Wark encouraged the architects to make extensive use of gardens and landscaping.

“Maybe this is a case where more is better,” he said.

Copper said he’s considering using large, operable windows on the residential units.

Gerding Edlen partner Kelly Saito said he’ll be happy to consider the Design Commission’s advice.

“I think that they’re suggestions we can definitely look at,” he said. “Their suggestions affect more the appearance than the use. It doesn’t affect the feasibility; it’s whether it works with the architecture.”

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