Portland’s largest single-building affordable housing project in 50 years is rising quickly in Lloyd, where it is sure to stand out.

Designed by Lever Architecture and LRS Architects, the 12-story, 240-unit Grand Avenue Apartments (also known as ) project is owned by Home Forward. Crews broke ground late last year and are expected to finish by October 2019. And as the city continues to suffer a serious housing crunch, the building will provide low-income inner eastside residents with the most new affordable units since the 286-unit Hollywood East building opened in 1969.

Oregon’s tax code led Home Forward to devote the entire project to affordable housing.

“When we first conceptualized this building we thought we would likely develop a mixed-income building, and we could not make it pencil,” Home Forward senior project manager Julie Livingston said. “And the thing about affordable housing units is they do not pay property taxes.”

That, she said, is “a huge benefit to the operations budget.”

The decision to designate all units affordable “in no way changed what the building looks like,” said Jonathan Trutt, director of development and community services for Home Forward. “It didn’t change the interiors at all, but it changed the rents we were going to charge.”

217 units in the building will be reserved for households with incomes at or below 60 percent of median family income, and 23 will be reserved for households with incomes at or below 50 percent of median family income. Of the latter units, 20 will be assigned Section 8 project-based vouchers to assist with rental subsidy for individuals recovering from domestic violence. Service partners include the Multnomah County Domestic and Sexual Violence Coordination Office (DSVCO), the Gateway Center, Raphael House and YWCA.

Plans call for 88 studios, 109 one-bedroom units and 43 two-bedroom units in the building, which is rising on the western half of a block bound by Northeast Grand and Sixth avenues, and Hassalo and Holladay streets. The property has seen three previous development proposals fail – most recently a bid in 2012 to build a 28-story, 321-foot-tall hotel.

The current $74 million project is being funded through a mix of public and private sources – primarily $28.7 million worth of federal low-income housing tax credits. An additional $18 million is coming from bond funding, and $5.1 million more is coming from the city of Portland.

The project is being constructed by O’Neill-Walsh Community Builders, a formal partnership between two general contracting firms. The partnership allows O’Neill, a registered MWESB (minority-owned, woman-owned or emerging small business) contractor, to gain experience on larger projects that also require the general contractor to employ certain percentages of minority and female tradespeople.

“We have a long history of really enriching the pool for both our subcontractors in the city and working with nonprofits to build these kinds of buildings that are desperately needed in the community,” Walsh project manager Meghan Herteg said recently as she looked out over the concrete deck that will become the building’s second floor. There, workers from RDF Concrete, Western Rebar, Aluma and others prepared the deck for further concrete.

It’s a fairly standard concrete post-tensioned structure, Herteg said, with an exterior skin consisting of sheet metal and thin brick sourced from Mutual Materials of Clackamas.

Look beyond the tower’s appearance, however, and it’s clear that the design aims to accommodate pedestrian traffic and draw residents into Lloyd.

Lever Architecture principal Thomas Robinson said his firm is excited to see the final product and how it serves the district.

“We were really interested in creating a great home for residents that leverages connections with the vibrant local economy,” he said. “It has proximity to transit and it’s close to downtown.”

The ground floor will provide convenience for pedestrians. An open-air courtyard, named Jim Smith Garden in honor of Home Forward’s former board chairman, is designed to draw in people from all directions. That central space will connect with the building’s lobby, commercial spaces – including property management offices – and the building’s north and south sides via covered walkways. Along Grand Avenue, the building’s façade will gently curve away from the sidewalk on either side of the entrance to embrace pedestrians and give them more space.

“If you look at the plan, the corners are day-lit, which is really nice,” Robinson said. “I think the units are going to be really great, so we’re excited about how the building combines retail and outdoor space and the connections to transit. The building creates opportunity both for people and for the city.”

A LEED for Homes gold rating will be pursued for the project.

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The O’Neill-Walsh Community Builders partnership is the general contractor on the fast-rising Grand Avenue Apartments, the largest single-building affordable housing project in Portland since 1969. The developer and owner, , is Multnomah County’s public housing authority. Home Forward also operates the 14-story, 286-unit Hollywood East tower block in northeast Portland, which opened in 1969 amid a boom in public housing construction.

In this video, Project Manager Meghan Herteg talks about the Grand Avenue project, which does not yet have an official name, as well as about project participants, which include KPFF Consulting Engineers, Lever Architecture and LRS Architects and numerous subcontractors. Finally, Herteg addresses the company’s reputation for involving itself in affordable housing and other projects that benefit the wider community.

You can also view a photo gallery from the job site by clicking this link. And don’t forget to check back with us for the complete story both online and in print.

The post VIDEO: Lloyd District affordable housing project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The O’Neill-Walsh Community Builders partnership is constructing a 12-story mixed-use tower for Home Forward, which is Multnomah County‘s public housing authority. The building will have 244 affordable housing units along with ground floor retail and a public courtyard accessible from sidewalks. The $74 million project was made possible in part because of a property tax loophole that gives relief to operators of affordable housing.

This gallery of photos was taken on the job site last week and shows trades workers installing rebar and an aluminum concrete shoring system in preparation for pouring the next concrete deck. Project completion is scheduled for October 2019. Don’t forget to check back for the complete story on this project, but in the meantime, there’s a video of the project site to watch.

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Beneath a canvas tent illuminated by strings of light bulbs, nonprofit advocates, lenders and elected officials gathered on a chilly January day to break ground on Portland’s largest affordable apartment building in decades.

The building on Block 45, in the Lloyd District, will tower 12 stories, offering 240 rent-restricted units in a fast-developing neighborhood.

Amid rhetorical pats on the back and ceremonial shoveling, the event gave Mayor Ted Wheeler the chance to showcase a project that will offer far more affordable units, and for a lower investment of city taxpayer dollars, than other high-profile projects that have attracted media scrutiny.

Home Forward‘s Lloyd District project was originally conceived as a roughly equal mix of market-rate and affordable units. But when the public agency’s development staffers took a close look at the numbers, they changed their strategy. All 240 apartments would be affordable, primarily using low-income tax credits.

“It’s an amazing change that we’re very excited about,” said Shannon Callahan, interim director of the Portland Housing Bureau.

The change in scheme comes as financing for affordable housing projects faces a number of hurdles, including declining values of tax credits and scant federal support. As Wheeler embarks on spending the city’s $258.4 million housing bond, he’s under pressure to build as many units as possible. The City Council has set a goal to build 1,300 affordable housing units by 2029.

The city’s record has given ammunition to critics. Wheeler’s November announcement that the city had awarded $6 million to Framework, a high-profile, technologically advanced and expensive timber tower in the Pearl District, to subsidize 60 affordable apartments drew media attention for offering a muted bang for the buck.

In contrast, the city is providing less to the Lloyd District project – $5.6 million – yet it will produce four times as many affordable units. As Wheeler and others have noted, the Home Forward project at 1010 N.E. Grand Ave. will be Portland’s largest single-building affordable housing development in 50 years.

At the Lloyd District ground-breaking event, Wheeler said the Block 45 project leverages the city’s contribution at 1,317 percent, with a per-unit subsidy of $23,333.

“Is there anybody here who has gotten a better rate of return on investment than that? No,” Wheeler said.

The city also donated the land, valued at about $3 million. Multnomah County is providing $5 million and Home Forward is spending $11.6 million in reserves.

Wheeler called Home Forward’s decision to make each of the 240 apartments affordable a “bold change in course.” Home Forward, the public housing authority for Multnomah County, is also involved in Framework along with developer Project^.

So what changed?

“What changed was the environment changed in terms of the housing emergency that we have here,” said Jonathan Trutt, Home Forward’s director of development and community revitalization.

Balancing affordable and market-rate apartment units in a given development is complicated, Trutt said. Market-rate units bring higher rents, but are built without tax credits.

“It’s this sliding scale series of trade-offs,” Trutt said.

The Block 45 project will ascend to 12 stories, providing 88 studios, 109 one-bedroom units and 43 two-bedroom units available to families making no more than 60 percent of the Portland area’s median income. Some of the apartments will be set aside for survivors of domestic violence. The building is projected to open in 2019, and the affordability requirement will stretch for 99 years.

The project is designed by LEVER Architecture and LRS Architects. A joint venture of O’Neill Construction Group and Walsh Construction Co. is building it.

The “lion’s share” of financing for the Block 45 project comes from low-income tax credits, Home Forward spokesman Tim Collier said.

Those tax credits have recently fallen in value in part due to the new federal tax law signed by President Trump. By lowering corporate tax rates, the law reduces the demand for tax credits.

“It’s a little topsy-turvy because of all the changes in the tax code,” Trutt said. “Low-income housing tax credit is a key financing source.”

The price per credit fluctuates with the economy and tax structure, Trutt said.

“It goes up and it goes down,” he said. “It tends to be most volatile, and it is volatile now when there’s uncertainty. It’s not a great time to have one of your key financing tools be less robust.”

Demand remains strong for low-income housing. The Albert, a 72-apartment North Portland building that includes 18 affordable units, has a waiting list of seven people for one-bedroom apartments, and another five for two-bedroom apartments, manager Yelena Ivashentsev said.

The Housing Bureau is racing to catch up. In addition to pushing Block 45 forward, the bureau in September purchased the site of the Safari Showclub, at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd., for $3.72 million. Following demolition, construction is expected to produce 100 to 300 affordable housing units.

In February 2017, the bureau bought the Ellington Apartments in Northeast Portland for $47 million, preserving 260 units, including 44 affordable ones.

Wheeler, in recent remarks to the Housing Advisory Commission, likened preserving units to “treading water.” The city must prioritize building new housing, he said.

Wheeler in December replaced Housing Bureau Director Kurt Creager with Callahan, a former policy adviser to Commissioner Dan Saltzman. The shake-up came after years of complaints that the Housing Bureau placed a low priority on unit production.

In 2015, the Housing Bureau loaned $2.4 million to Hacienda Community Development Corp. to build a new office for the nonprofit organization. The project included no housing.

The Block 45 project appears to be an attempt to make up for lost ground. The tower will rise amid a flurry of private development in the Lloyd District, from the Hotel Eastlund and Hassalo on Eighth to the Hyatt Regency hotel near the Oregon Convention Center and the proposed Oregon Square superblock project.

The affordable apartments will ensure the working class maintains a foothold in the neighborhood, advocates said.

“This city, and this neighborhood, belong to them as much as it belongs to any of us,” Home Forward Executive Director Michael Buonocore said. “And the 240 apartments that will be built here will help us make sure that that continues to be true.”

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