Design students from around the world recently reimagined the ODOT blocks in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District.

Mackenzie partnered with NewSchool of Architecture and Design in San Diego for an integrated design studio. It drew more than 80 participants, including about 20 students from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia who collaborated virtually.

The ODOT blocks presented students an opportunity to learn about urban analysis, site selection criteria for resilient urban development, design parameters, and design methods and tools. The students based their proposals on real client needs and constraints within Portland’s municipal code, and received input from Mackenzie and Beam Development.

“Through direct experience with projects such as the ODOT blocks, students get to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of integrated design and are better prepared to enter architectural practice that is defined by complex relationships throughout the community,” stated Daniel Deutsch, studio coordinator and head of architecture programs at NewSchool of Architecture and Design.

The ODOT blocks comprise three vacant parcels – formerly owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation – along Southeast Water Avenue. Prosper Portland purchased the land for $2.485 million.

The Daily Journal of Commerce reported in April 2020 that Prosper Portland’s board voted to authorize negotiations with Beam Development for a ground lease and a disposition and development agreement for one of the three vacant blocks. Beam would also have exclusive development rights for the other two blocks.

The students’ completed design work will be shared with the client, Mackenzie’s marketing director, Jan Mason, said.

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Commercial landlords in the Portland-metro area are enduring the ongoing shutdowns along with their tenants, but also pointing to reasons for optimism.

Different commercial real estate sectors have been affected by varying degrees. Retailers have experienced tremendous stress because of pandemic-driven closures; some have worked with building owners to have portions of their rent delayed or forgiven. Other sectors, such as grocery, have seen little negative impact.

Restaurants have been hit particularly hard by losses of sit-in dining and alcohol revenues.

“It’s the restaurants and bars that are the lion’s share of the impact,” said Tom DiChiara, principal at Cairn Pacific, a developer that has invested heavily in Northwest Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood.

Some restaurants were immediately in a dire financial situation when stay-at-home orders were given, DiChiara said. That may impact how Cairn Pacific chooses tenants for its buildings in the future, he added.

“Some of that was surprising and warrants further study as far as the financials of tenants,” he said.

Beam Development also has a substantial tenant portfolio of local restaurants and shops such as Bunk Sandwiches and Water Avenue Coffee. Some of those tenants have kept money flowing in with “fairly robust” to-go service, Beam Development principal Jonathan Malsin said.

“Public-facing businesses continue to be at least initially the hardest hit,” he said. “It hasn’t been some kind of catastrophic fall-off in collections. But businesses that are suffering, we’re working with them and helping to maintain occupancy.”

Cairn Pacific has reduced or deferred rents to keep commercial tenants in place. But such concessions can’t be extended indefinitely, DiChiara said.

“We’re working with them where we can,” he said. “But there’s going to be a limit. There’s going to be a limit at some point.”

Additional economic ramifications are expected to materialize as the coronavirus crisis drags on, Malsin said.

“It’ll start affecting all businesses, but a lot of those office types of businesses that are not publicly facing may be hit later,” he said.

JLL recently released a study of how Portland’s commercial real estate sector performed in past recessions. The overall takeaway was positive, particularly for office.

“What we did tend to, in terms of rents, was bottom out faster than the national average, and we tended to rebound faster than the national average,” said Tim Harrison, research manager at JLL in Portland.

Coming out of past recessions, Portland experienced strong population growth from young people moving for employment.

“I don’t think there’s a reason to think the same thing isn’t going to happen again,” Harrison said. “I can certainly see another wave of in-migration coming our way.”

Most of Beam’s tenants have relatively small footprints. That’s proven a boon in past recessions, Malsin said.

“Having a rent roll with a lot of smaller tenants is not a bad way to get through a recession,” he said. “If a 1,500-square-foot tenant doesn’t make it in the middle of a recession, it’s easier for us to pivot and re-rent at a lower cost,” he said.

Commercial rent collections have remained strong for Menashe Properties, CEO and principal Jordan Menashe said.

“It’s a mixed bag, but collections for April and May were 97 or 98 (percent),” he said. “June, as of (Monday) morning, is looking good.”

Nevertheless, Portland now is being affected by both the pandemic and the upheaval of nationwide protests.

“Our community has taken a one-two blow, but my gut tells me that we’ll get through the other side of this,” Menashe said. “My positivity radar has gone up.”

But the extent of the downturn remains to be seen, DiChiara said.

“It depends on how long things play out,” he said. “June is still a little too early to see. We have engaged with our tenants and have plans with them that will get us through the summer months.”

Multnomah County will be the last jurisdiction in Oregon to apply for Phase 1 reopening procedures. County officials have said the target to begin the first phase is June 12.

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It’s out with the ODOT Blocks, and in with the Workshop Blocks.

Beam Development is moving forward with Prosper Portland to develop the first of three vacant blocks in the Central Eastside Industrial District. The agency’s board on Wednesday voted unanimously to authorize negotiations with Beam for a 99-year ground lease and a disposition and development agreement.

Beam would also have exclusive development rights on two neighboring blocks acquired from the Oregon Department of Transportation in 2017. All three blocks are pinched between Water Avenue and the Eastbank Esplanade in the fast-growing employment area.

The lease agreement would allow Beam the option to purchase the property in year 20 and again in year 30.

Beam plans to build approximately 100,000 square feet of industrial office space on Block A – the northernmost block between Taylor and Salmon streets along Water Avenue. The developer is branding the project Workshop Blocks.

The building program for Block A would revolve around what Beam calls an “inclusive technology cluster.” A nonprofit is being sought to potentially anchor the ground floor. The building would have a modest complement of retail space and, possibly, on-site day care. The upper floors would be dedicated to industrial office space. Some of the office space is likely to be coworking or flexible office, said Jonathan Malsin, a Beam principal.

“We’re focused on continuing to deliver innovative office space,” Malsin said during Wednesday’s Prosper Portland board meeting, which was a video conference.

The structure is likely to be constructed of cross-laminated timber, Malsin said, and build upon Beam’s experience with District Office – a six-story office building on Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The Block A building would have one level of underground parking.

Hacker, which designed District Office, is on board to design the Workshop Blocks building on Block A. Colas Construction will serve as general contractor.

Prosper Portland will contribute $725,000 to remove polluted soil from the site.

Construction is expected to begin on Block A in 2022, and be completed the following year. The build-out of all three blocks is expected to be done by 2027.

Conceptual plans for the other two blocks imagine Block B centering on creative production, and Block C focusing on food and beverage production and related retail.

Zoning in the industrial district limits retail and residential use. The developable parcels are 34,809 square feet, 34,862 square feet and 25,601 square feet, respectively.

Beam was chosen as the developer in May 2018 after Prosper Portland’s request for proposals drew five applications.

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Portland’s commercial landlords are quietly working individually with tenants to reduce or delay lease payments during the coronavirus pandemic.

Landlords are prioritizing efforts to keep mom-and-pop tenants afloat while their doors are closed. On Monday, Gov. Kate Brown ordered most types of retail businesses to close. Even those businesses that are permitted to remain open – restaurants, for example, can provide to-go service – face a steep decline in revenue.

Guerrilla Development owner Kevin Cavenaugh wrote a letter to the company’s 32 restaurant and retail tenants forgiving April rent. The recipients of the March 17 note included operators of restaurants, bars and hair salons.

“It was a pretty easy decision,” Cavenaugh said.

Many of Guerrilla Development’s tenants are on leases of five, six or seven years.

“Guerrilla’s a long-term-hold company and a relationship company,” Cavenaugh said. “I care about you paying me rent a year from now, not two months from now.”

Beam Development is also working with its retail tenants who depend on a steady flow of foot traffic, including Water Avenue Coffee, Bunk Sandwiches, Danwei Canting and others. Beam relies heavily on local businesses that rent relatively small spaces.

“We’re sensitive to the health and survival of our tenants,” said Brad Malsin, Beam’s founder and principal. “We’re going to arrive shortly at a relief package for them.”

Other commercial landlords are taking similar steps, hoping to act as a buffer to ensure tenants can endure the shutdown. In doing so, landlords said they’re acting both out of selfless virtue and selfish business interests. Without tenants, landlords don’t make money. And in a sudden, precipitous economic decline, it may be more prudent to ride out the crisis with existing tenants rather than evict nonpaying ones as they might in more normal times – particularly with demand from prospective tenants likely to be next to nonexistent for weeks or months to come.

“It’s the right thing to be doing to give tenants relief, whether it’s commercial or residential,” said Paul Del Vecchio, founding principal of Ethos Development. “We’re going to be the buffer, and we’re prepared to be. We’ve proactively cut rent and told our businesses to pay their employees first. We want them to come out the other side.”

Ethos owns the Barley Pod food-cart pod on Northeast Halsey Street and other commercial spaces. Ethos has cut rent for April, and will address May when it comes closer, Del Vecchio said.

“We’re working with people,” he said. “There’s not a lot of slack in the economy, even when it was running well. So it doesn’t take much (to disrupt it).”

Del Vecchio and Josh Bean, an Ethos principal, went to their investors to discuss cutting rent for retail tenants. They didn’t hesitate.

“We reached out to our investors and all talked about it, and we decided it was better to lean into this proactively,” Del Vecchio said.

Some building owners are providing relief for tenants but did not want to be identified, fearing backlash from lenders, investors or less-vulnerable tenants who are not getting a break. A large-scale Portland landlord, who was not willing to be identified, said he is cutting rent in half for his mom-and-pop commercial tenants for the next three months, then amortizing the rent on the back end with no interest. He still expects corporate tenants to pay their usual rent.

Retail tenants are first in line for help. Office tenants often are locked into longer leases and are typically less vulnerable to a short-term downturn.

Brown’s  is discussing a potential moratorium on commercial evictions due to inability to pay. State agencies including Oregon Housing and Community Services and the Department of Consumer and Business Services are also pursuing relief options, according to the governor’s office.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It hasn’t been an issue,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Lessons learned,” he said.

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In Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District, construction of a six-story mixed-use building is progressing quickly.

District Office will have 90,400 square feet – five stories of creative office space above ground-floor retail space. There will also be one level of below-grade parking. Work began in May 2018 with . Then Timberland Inc. carpentry crews flew the first cross-laminated timber panel into place a year later, and the building was topped out barely three months after that.

Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners are developing the project, which was designed by Hacker. The general contractor is Andersen Construction.

A pair of concrete building cores will house elevators and stairwells as well as mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. Glulam beams and columns are being used, along with CLT floor panels manufactured by DR Johnson. A 3-inch topping slab on each floor will provide additional horizontal shear strength, while floor-to-ceiling glazing will let in generous amounts of natural light.

“The timber structure is fully up, the topping slabs are done, framing is up and going on all elevations two through the roof, and the roof starts going in today,” Andersen Construction project manager Katie Hoyt said late last month. “Fiberglass windows are done on the east elevation, they are a good portion of the way done on the south and they’ll be starting on the north side today, as well.”

The exterior will feature brick cladding, fiberglass windows and aluminum storefronts. The main entry will front Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Upon delivery, Hacker will occupy space on the sixth floor and part of the fifth; other tenants have not been named. Much of the building, at 525 S.E. MLK Jr. Blvd., will be shell space initially.

Power issues have complicated the project.

“Everywhere you look we’ve got live power lines,” Hoyt said. “And our temp power line for the job is coming across the street.”

There is a streetcar line on the east side of the project site, power lines on the north and south sides, and two buildings on the west side.

“When we’re done, our power into the building will go under Stark (Street); they’ve already done the excavation for that,” Hoyt said. “It will go into a switch vault and then into the building. So when we’re able to turn the live power on, then they can disconnect the temp power. But live power is predicated on having the electrical rooms done and signed off and lockable – all that good stuff.”

The project’s tower crane is set to be dismantled in November. Project completion is expected by the end of the year.

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It’s been more than a year since Beam Development was chosen by Prosper Portland to develop the ODOT blocks, a series of three vacant parcels along Southeast Water Avenue in the Central Eastside.

The developer and the economic development agency say the project is still moving forward despite some delays and economic headwinds.

“It’s going well, albeit it’s going slower than we would like,” said Brad Malsin, principal of Beam Development. “The process of getting through all of the details with Prosper has been slow going, but we are making progress.”

Beam is operating under a memorandum of understanding with the agency while the two sides negotiate a development and disposition agreement. The experienced Central Eastside developer was chosen to lead the ODOT blocks project in May 2018.

On Wednesday, Prosper Portland’s board approved a resolution authorizing agency staff to seek state reimbursements for infrastructure that would be extended to the site. The Industrial Site Readiness reimbursements administered by Business Oregon would be used to compensate for conveying utilities, conducting environmental remediation and making street improvements for the industrial office site.

Prosper Portland staff estimated the agency could seek $13 million to $17 million in state reimbursement funds.

The ODOT blocks comprise three parcels formerly owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation that were purchased by Prosper Portland for $2.485 million. The properties total 2.19 acres and are located along Southeast Water Avenue between Madison and Taylor streets.

Plans call for commercial buildings on each block of about six stories with industrial and creative office and “maker” space for entrepreneurs. The nonprofit Innovation Quadrant is on board to take office space in the first building, Malsin said. The group’s space needs are to be determined, but will likely fall in the 10,000 square foot to 15,000 square foot range, he said.

“Our ideas center around a hub of ground-floor manufacturing and prototyping that would potentially be an adjunct to the IQ’s headquarters,” Malsin said. “It could be used collaboratively for the IQ as well as other makers and designers that could share that space.”

The project team includes architecture firms Hacker Architects and Mackenzie, and Colas Construction.

“We’re all still together,” Malsin said. “We all still are excited about the project. We are looking to continue to identify the opportunities that are unique to the Central Eastside and unique to that site.”

As plans for the ODOT blocks shuffle along, other Eastside office projects are poised to beat it to market, including Beam’s own District Office, a 72,000-square-foot project developed in partnership with Urban Development + Partners. 7 S.E. Stark from Harsch Investment Properties is nearing completion with approximately 70,000 square feet of office space, and 5 MLK from Gerding Edlen will bring about 120,000 square feet of office space to market early next year.

“I would definitely say that we are very aware of what is coming on the market in our district,” Malsin said.

ODOT Blocks would be built in phases, and timing would depend on tenant interest and other market factors. Malsin suggested he would proceed cautiously.

“I’m not feeling the love for (speculative) office at the moment,” he said. “Would I do one block? Maybe. Would I do three blocks? No.”

Malsin added: “It’s a moment in time to be as responsible and cautious as you can be.”

The post ODOT blocks making slow progress appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Construction of District Office, a six-story, 90,400-square-foot mixed-use building on the rise at Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Stark Street, began in May 2018 with demolition of the former home of Portland Music Co. One year later, crews are installing cross-laminated timber elements.

The building will feature a structural framework of glulam columns and beams and CLT floor panels around a pair of concrete building cores. One level of below-grade parking is topped with a post-tensioned concrete deck, but then it’s all wood until rough-in.

“There was a lot of conversation early on about trying to do them at the same time as we do timber,” Andersen Construction project manager Katie Hoyt said. “But the cores require so much of (a) crane that you really have to dedicate the crane to them.”

Andersen Construction is building District Office for Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners. Hacker designed the building to hold five stories of creative office space above ground-floor retail space. The exterior will feature brick cladding, fiberglass windows and aluminum storefronts at the main entry fronting Southeast Martin Luther King Boulevard.

District Office is one of a growing number of mass-timber buildings in the Portland area. The structural component has continued to gain acceptance among both builders and, more importantly, the International Building Council. Its code now makes provision for mass-timber construction up to 18 stories.

One of the biggest advantages of mass-timber construction is the time saved via use of prefabricated beams, columns or panels – or all three together. In the case of District Office, DR Johnson of Riddle manufactured every single beam, column and CLT floor panel before a single piece arrived at the job site. This allowed truckloads of columns and beams to arrive on-site to be installed immediately by a small crew of carpenters from Timberland Inc. Then 42-foot-long CLT floor panels are flown into place with the tower crane.

“The whole building is fabricated, and a small part of it is here and the rest is in Riddle,” said Brad Nile, a project executive with Andersen Construction. “It’s pre-cut and ready to go.”

A three-inch concrete topping slab will add support on each floor once mass timber is in place. Gaps between CLT floor panels will facilitate other work.

“The intent is that all mechanical (systems), be it electrical or whatever, fit in those gaps to keep it clean,” Hoyt said. “It’s all open and accessible.”

This is the first mass-timber project Hoyt has managed. The biggest difference between a traditional concrete-and-steel-framed structure and a mass-timber one, she said, is the savings of time and manpower that come from prefabrication.

“Basically, it’s a whole, complete system that when it all goes and clicks together you’ve created a floor in a pretty quick time frame,” she said. “They fabricated it from the top down and put it into storage, and as they pull it out it comes out from the bottom up in order.”

Significant time was also spent modeling shipments three-dimensionally to ensure efficient delivery to the job site. Once on site, materials are lifted straight from the delivery truck to where they need to go.

“You have to strategically place materials on the truck so they come off in somewhat of an order,” Hoyt said.

The use of mass timber is only likely to grow, Nile said, but added that a maturation process is necessary.

“We need scale and efficiency and just the supply chain growing up to the point where it’s real,” he said. “It’s been a lot of work to get here. It’s all 3-D models, and every component is analyzed so you can do all this off-site fabrication very accurately. And it’s a fun way to build, but I think the supply chain needs to grow up a bit. It’s much more mature in Europe.”

Construction of District Office is expected to finish by the end of 2019.

The post Efficient construction process moving along appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

For developers keen to use cross-laminated timber, the failure in March of CLT panels at a project on Oregon State University‘s campus has been met with a widespread shrug.

CLT is being used for a number of Portland-area projects, some with material from D.R. Johnson, the Southern Oregon supplier at the heart of the OSU incident.

For its proponents, CLT offers an attractive combination of warm aesthetics, a buy-local economic story and shorter construction schedules. Developers who are using the products say they are satisfied D.R. Johnson has fixed the issues that caused the material to reportedly delaminate at Peavy Hall in Corvallis.

Key Development‘s Block 76 West project, near the Burnside Bridge‘s east end, is using CLT materials from D.R. Johnson.

“We did not have any reluctance to go with D.R. Johnson,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development. “They’ve been great to work with.”

The Block 76 West project, formerly known as SideYard, will have 23,569 square feet of space over five floors. Office users are being sought for the top floors, Flotow said. Key Development is in talks with the owners of Hood River’s Ferment Brewing Co. and Camp 1805 Distillery to open tasting rooms in the building.

Andersen Construction is building the project based on a design from Skylab Architecture.

District Office, a Central Eastside Industrial District project from Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners, will also use CLT from D.R. Johnson.

“It’s a positive connection between the urban economy and rural economy here in Oregon, and aesthetically, it’s more compelling,” said Jonathan Malsin, a principal at Beam Development.

Hacker, which designed District Office, will itself occupy 20,000 square feet in the six-floor, 110,000-square-foot building. Andersen Construction is building the project.

Beam Development was already interested in CLT, Malsin said, before a suggestion was made that it be used for District Office.

“We’ve been keen on using CLT for a while now,” he said. “When we started planning the project with Hacker (officials), they proposed it.”

The OSU incident did not dissuade the District Office project team from using D.R. Johnson’s CLT.

“We did our due diligence,” Malsin said. “We remain thrilled to be working with them and are confident in their ability to deliver.”

Brandon Brown, a Portland developer, also did not hesitate to use CLT materials on the Flatiron building. Construction of the six-floor, approximately 25,000-square-foot office project is wrapping up, with completion expected by Nov. 1.

CLT was more appropriate for the building, with its envelope reaching the triangular lot’s boundaries, Brown said.

“The wood performs in a much better way than concrete for that specific design,” he said.

Brown also favored the aesthetics of CLT.

“Part of the driver was just the warmth the wood brings to the feel of the buildings,” he said. “That’s something that concrete just doesn’t allow for.”

Works Progress Architecture designed the Flatiron building; Abbott Construction is serving as general contractor.

D.R. Johnson, based in Riddle, offers regional ties and a feel-good story for local projects looking to support Oregon’s timber industry. But the company does have competitors, such as Structurlam of British Columbia, in addition to traditional concrete-and-steel construction. Structurlam provided CLT to First Tech Federal Credit Union‘s newly opened 156,000-square-foot office building in Hillsboro.

D.R. Johnson did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Not every CLT proposal has moved forward. Most notably, Framework from Portland’s Project^ was halted in July after the 12-story proposal attracted a range of grants and months of publicity. Project^ blamed escalating construction costs, fluctuating tax-credit markets and inflation.

In August, Oregon issued new building codes for CLT structures. Known as the Statewide Alternative Method, the codes are drawn from the 2021 International Building Code and allow for tall wood construction.

The post Moving forward with structural innovation appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Beam Development is looking to build a trio of industrial office buildings to further cement the Central Eastside Industrial District‘s future as a home for creative jobs.

Beam was selected in May by Prosper Portland as preferred developer for the ODOT blocks – three parcels along Southeast Water Avenue. The Oregon Department of Transportation retains the western portion of each block.

Beam Development founder Brad Malsin and his son, fellow principal Jonathan Malsin, said they envision each block holding one building. Two would be mid-rise buildings, likely topping out at six stories. The ground floors may become hubs for light manufacturing or “maker” space, and be topped by five floors of creative office space.

Each building would include up to 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, likely for food and beverage. Each building is allowed to have up to 5,000 square feet of traditional office space, according to zoning under the proposed Central City 2035 plan; the City Council is slated to adopt the plan this week.

The middle building may include structured parking that could be owned by Prosper Portland, although plans for the ODOT blocks are in an early stage.

“We feel there’s that opportunity to work to the benefit of the city, to the benefit of the district, to the benefit of the businesses and the community at large,” Brad Malsin said.

Developers are flooding the Portland market with office space in response to strong employment growth. Construction crews were building more than 1 million square feet of offices during the first quarter of 2018, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. And new proposals keep coming, such as Platform – planned as a half-block building with seven stories of offices. That project from local developer Project^ recently received rave reviews in its debut before the Portland Design Commission. Meanwhile, Intrinsic Ventures of California envisions two potential creative-office buildings for the Lower Division neighborhood.

Rents for new construction have risen and pre-leasing has been strong. The Towne Storage building, converted into offices via an adaptive reuse project, fetched a local record $630 per square foot when it sold in April to CBRE Global Investors.

Beam Development will look to lease space in the ODOT blocks to a mix of large and small companies, the executives said. The firm hopes to lease the space to employers, and perhaps avoid adding to the surge of co-working space from fast-growing chains such as WeWork and CENTRL.

Beam seeks to differentiate from other office projects being delivered, Jonathan Malsin said. Industrial or manufacturing space could give users access to lab equipment or machinery.

Parking will play a major role in ODOT blocks development. Prosper Portland, in its request for proposals, asked for twice as much parking as office space. Beam’s proposal falls short of that, but the developer is looking to contribute a significant number of spaces.

“We are motivated to try to solve some of the parking constraints in the district at large,” Brad Malsin said. “I can’t tell you how many spots we’re going to be able to offer and what’s going to make sense, but we certainly want to address the fact that there’s a major parking shortage for the foreseeable future.”

Hacker and Mackenzie are on board to design the project. Colas Construction will serve as general contractor. It’s possible the three buildings will be built in phases, Jonathan Malsin said.

The buildings may be designed with mass-timber frames and concrete diaphragms and cores, he said.

The blocks are along Water Avenue between Taylor and Madison streets. The developable parcels are 34,809 square feet, 34,862 square feet and 25,601 square feet, respectively.

Prosper Portland paid $2.485 million for the ODOT blocks. ODOT acquired the properties decades ago as part of the right of way for Interstate 5. The state agency will retain those portions of the property for the foreseeable future, a spokesman said.

ODOT considers the site useful for managing water runoff from I-5. And it could come in handy if the agency at some later date decides to widen I-5.

“That’s always a possibility,” ODOT spokesman Don Hamilton said. “There’s nothing in the works on that right now.”

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