Developers of a 15-story, mixed-use building in downtown Portland are preparing for construction of the foundation. They received the go-ahead from the Portland Design Commission earlier this year.

Sky3 Place – spearheaded by Las Vegas-based Molasky Group of Companies in partnership with Portland-based E&F Properties LLC – will feature 196 apartments (including three penthouses), 96 underground parking spaces and 10,615 total square feet of retail space on the ground floor and mezzanine levels.

Plans for the building indicate that the ground floor will hold five separate retail spaces each between 1,110 and 2,100 square feet. The mezzanine level will have one retail office space nearly 1,400 square feet.

The building will be a mix of concrete and prefabricated steel panels, according to Abe Samani, project manager with Puyallup, Wash.-based Absher Construction Co., the project contractor. The two below-grade parking levels and the first two floors, including the ceiling of the second floor, will be concrete. Upward from there, prefabricated steel panels will be used, Samani said.

“This method saves quite a bit on cost and scheduled construction time,” he said. “Instead of bringing the materials to the construction site and erecting them there, they’ll do the fabrication off-site and we assemble the panels.”

Demolition crews in August razed an existing half-block structure on Southwest Jefferson Street between 11th and 12th avenues to make room for Sky3 Place. If all goes according to plan, the building should be delivered sometime around late March 2016.

Portland city code limits wood-frame buildings to five stories, so using metal framing allowed the architects to increase density on the site without making construction too costly. But Samani said the technique presents some unique challenges.

“Any time you have prefabricated panels it’s important to make sure it fits,” he said. “It takes a tremendous amount of engineering before you get the panels on site to make sure it’s built correctly.”

Construction with prefabricated components allows less room for error, Samani said. The goal is to have as few on-site modifications as possible.

This will be Ankrom Moisan Architects‘ first prefabricated metal-framed project in Portland, but it has designed two in Seattle. The firm found it cuts construction costs on midsize buildings (between 12 and 16 stories) from about $220 per square foot to between $160 and $170 per square foot.

The Portland City Council in May approved an application by Sky3 Place developers to participate in the city’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption program. Via MULTE, building owners are exempted from paying an estimated $690,000 in real property taxes during the first year of operation. The exemption will continue for 10 years and may be extended thereafter if the building owners are willing to reserve 20 percent of the units as affordable housing, meaning tenants would make less than 80 percent of the area’s median family income.

Sky3 Place is located just around the corner from The Jefferson, a mixed-use building constructed in 2008 with 80 apartments reserved for households making at or below 50 percent of the area’s median family income.

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As The Molasky Group of Companies planned for Sky3 Place – a 15-story building with 195 apartments above ground-floor retail space in Southwest Portland – the team discovered that typical framing materials wouldn’t be feasible.

“Our conclusion was it didn’t make sense to build either a stick-built (structure) or high-rise because steel prices were too high,” said Peter Wenner, vice president of the Las Vegas-based developer.

The Molasky Group found a solution: a prefabricated metal-panel framing system that allows for accelerated construction and reduced costs. That opened a door for Puyallup, Wash.-based Absher Construction Co., which has a long history working with Innovative Green Building System LLC of Kent, Wash. Its internationally patented system is set to frame the $42 million Sky3 Place building at 1101 S.W. Jefferson St.

Now Absher Construction, which has used IGBS in the Seattle area, is bringing it into Portland.

“We looked at who’s built with this system before and there were only a couple of contractors who have done this,” Wenner said.

Blaine Wolfe, a project executive for Absher Construction, said that before it began using IGBS it had to find the right system, create a reliable supply chain and grasp how to navigate the licensing process.

“Understanding all the patents and royalties is important,” he said. “Otherwise, you can step in the wrong direction.”

Once Absher Construction hammered out the details of using IGBS, crews put the system to work.

“We were offered an opportunity five years ago to construct an eight-story project above grade,” he said. “We just jumped in with both feet and just figured it out.”

The system can be built twice as fast as a post-tension concrete slab and metal-framed building, said Sean Robinson, Absher Construction’s superintendent for Sky3 Place.

“It’s a pretty simple system,” he said. “We’re basically erecting a panel that’s pre-done and lifting it off the truck.”

The system proved 20 percent to 25 percent cheaper than post-tension concrete would have cost for a similar-size structure, Wenner said. Cost savings come through material costs and labor costs because most of the work is done off-site, he said.

Such savings could convince more project owners to use IGBS or one of several other lightweight-gauge steel systems available in the marketplace. Absher Construction is now targeting commercial and residential projects that are between eight and 18 stories, Wolfe said.

“We’ve actually seen a number of projects in the Portland and Seattle areas that are targeting above five-over-two wood structures to a true high-rise structure,” he said. “This is a product that sits right in between.”

The city is still reviewing building plans for Sky3 Place, which was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects and received unanimous approval from the Portland Design Commission in March. Demolition and excavation has begun, but new construction has not.

Portland’s Bureau of Development Services will look at the building system over the next several weeks, said Amit Kumar, the bureau’s senior structural engineer.

“As long as they’re designed properly, I don’t think there are structural concerns,” he said.

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