More than a year has passed since Kevin Cavenaugh of Guerrilla Development first proposed his “Fair-Haired Dumbbell” building for a site at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. On Thursday he finally got the Portland Design Commission‘s approval.

Cavenaugh’s design, which won a city competition, features two six-story, cantilevered buildings slightly angled away from each other and joined at every floor level by eight-foot-wide, 30-feet-long open walkways. Both buildings will be completely covered with an original design by an artist yet to be selected.

Design Commission Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser voted against approval, but commissioners Julie Livingston, Tad Savinar and Jeff Simpson all gave approval for the art-inspired project after about an hour of discussion. Commission Chairman David Wark and Commissioner Don Vallaster were absent.

Kaiser was not explicit about his reasons for voting no, but he seemed to be concerned about how the building would fare in the long term.

“We have to think about 80 or 100 years from now,” he said.

At a previous design hearing for the project earlier this month, commissioners brought up concerns about perceived insufficient glazing, whether a covering should be placed over the sixth-floor walkway and how the roof would be treated.

Kaiser said then that he thought not covering the sixth-floor walkway would be a mistake. But Savinar said Thursday that after studying a rendering of the proposed building, he decided that covering the top walkway would affect the design.

“I think a canopy won’t work and it seems stupid,” he said.

Livingston said she was satisfied with plans for the building and Simpson said he was in favor of approval. And although he voted in favor the proposal, Savinar said he still had some reservations about being able to maintain the texture of the building’s skin.

Before the vote, Joe Zody of FFA Architecture & Interiors, representing Cavenaugh, defended the percentage of windows in the building by pointing to other buildings with similar percentages of glazing. Zody added that ground-floor windows accounted for 50 percent of surface area. He also pointed out that the Regional Arts & Culture Council had approved the building.

Zody also said that covering the top walkway wouldn’t work with the design.

“We look at the exterior bridges as exactly that,” he said.

Zody added that he had requested that the RACC include the building’s roof in the design that will cover the exterior walls.

After the meeting, Zody said he was pleased with the outcome.

“It’s a milestone for us, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

The next step will be to complete documents required for a building permit, which Zody said he expected to be done by Christmas. He said construction could begin by next spring and finish in about a year.

In the meantime, Zody said the RACC can now initiate the process of selecting an artist to create a design for the building’s skin.

“We can start very quickly now with approval and really begin the process,” he said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is one of three projects at the Burnside bridgehead; the other two are already under construction.

Works Partnership Architecture designed a 10-story mixed-use building for Block 75, at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., with both office and residential space in a modular format above ground-floor retail space.

A 21-story tower designed by Skylab Architecture for Block 67 will have 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading public park at the bridge level.

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The brains behind the designs of three very different developments planned at the east end of the Burnside Bridge revealed their motivations – and even exchanged a few barbs – during a panel discussion in Northwest Portland on Monday night.

Randy Gragg, executive director of the John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies at the University of Oregon, served as moderator. Panelists included Works Partnership Architecture principals Carrie Strickland and Bill Neburka, Skylab Architecture principal Jeff Kovel and Guerrilla Development principal Kevin Cavenaugh.

Each, in turn, talked about the motivations and thought processes behind their designs.

Kovel’s firm is behind the design of a $58 million, 21-story tower under construction on Block 67. The building will hold 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading park.

“The two things at the core for me are abstraction and improvisation,” Kovel said. “There is a big musical influence in my life and my work, as well as a real fondness for abstraction, to try to look for different ways, even in the same project, to express an idea.”

Kovel said that inspired the decision to put a park atop the underground parking lot.

“We had a parking lot and thought why not make it a park and lift it up to the bridge level,” he said. “It’s a conceptual link to the wild river bank that existed before the city was formed. We used that as an amphitheater for viewing the city, for stormwater treatment and put our parking below it.”

The Works Partnership project at the Burnside bridgehead, a 10-story mixed-use building on Block 75, also is under construction. Retail space is planned for the ground floor, but Strickland said the upper floors could be used for either apartments or offices.

“It’s a 10-story building with 1,500-square-foot spaces,” Strickland said. “They are cellular spaces and anything can happen at any level.”

Neburka said his team traveled to Chicago to get ideas for the project.

“At the corner of Dearborn (Street) and Jackson (Boulevard) is the city’s tallest masonry building where the bottom walls are eight feet thick, and right across the street is Federal Plaza, the essence of free space, with ephemeral buildings above,” he said. “Our building is about these ideas, and the idea of permanence and history and modernity began to take shape.”

The project talked about most during the night was Cavenaugh’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. All panelists agreed that it will be the centerpiece of the bridgehead projects because of its conspicuous location. The project is due to receive its final design review this week.

“You got stuck in the throne site, the island in the middle of a traffic pattern in the middle of a development,” Neburka said. “You’re on the main stage and I wonder how that affected your design.”

Cavenaugh’s original design for two six-story, cantilevered buildings joined by elevated walkways raised concerns because it called for an exterior resembling brightly-colored Florentine wallpaper. That plan changed, and now the Regional Arts and Culture Council is working with Cavenaugh to find an artist to create an original design.

But Cavenaugh said he wants the building, the smallest of the three developments at the bridgehead, to pop out to passersby. The exterior design will be “a crazy color,” he said.

“I don’t want people to die, but I do want people to get in little, small fender benders driving by,” he said.

Cavenaugh said his best creativity comes when his thought processes are balanced.

“I had my ass handed to me after the recession and now I want to make sure I balance between right brain work and left brain work and, ideally, the result is something quirky,” he said.

Quirkiness is what Cavenaugh hopes will help him promote the building to design firms, which he’d like to have as tenants.

“Each floor plate is only 4,000 square feet, so it’s ideal for a 10- to 15-person office,” he said. “If my client ends up being design firms, those are design firms who shouldn’t be on the 20th floor of Big Pink, eighth door to the left. They should be in a building like this.”

All of the Burnside bridgehead designs are very different, Neburka said, because there was no master planning process as there was for the South Waterfront District.

But Strickland said that not planning ahead was the point.

“The danger is in developing a multi-block at the same time and there being too much consistency,” she said. “Breaking it down with different developers and different programs – that’s how real cities develop over time.”

After about two hours of discussion, Gragg asked the panelists how they would work together moving forward and what the neighborhood will look like.

“I think you’ll see a lot of people taking pictures of these buildings for a long time to come,” Cavenaugh said.

Gragg also asked panelists to critique each other’s designs, and Strickland obliged.

“We all really do like each other, but before we even started the building we had done so much work on the east side, and I don’t think your building is authentic east side,” Strickland said of Kovel’s design.

Kovel smiled.

“I actually like the view of your building from my building,” he replied.

Strickland also criticized Cavenaugh’s design.

“Maybe you’re putting up a building that is not as important as everyone is expecting it to be,” she said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell’s standing as the centerpiece is “the elephant in the room,” Kovel said. Neburka added that the location is “a very, very loaded site.”

But Neburka said organic growth is continually occurring in the Central Eastside and that the Fair-Haired Dumbbell may become something entirely different in 50 or 75 years.

Cavenaugh said that’s OK with him.

“We tend to take ourselves too seriously,” he said. “I think amazing ideas will follow me, and I don’t think I am the pinnacle of ideas.”

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Big things are happening at the east end of the Burnside Bridge, and developers of the Block 67 project this week talked to area real estate professionals about their experiences with marketing options, construction challenges and communication with the locals.

Jeff Pickhardt, principal of Hood River-based Key Development; Eric Jacobson, a Portland Development Commission planner; and Adrian Boly, vice president of acquisitions and development at Guardian Real Estate Services spoke at a CREW luncheon at the Multnomah Athletic Club on Thursday.

Boly said that the project had received a Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption from the Portland Housing Bureau. That means that in exchange for receiving a 10-year tax abatement, 20 percent of the studios and one- and two-bedroom units in the 21-story mixed-use tower at Block 67 will be reserved for tenants making 60 percent of the median family income or less.

“What we really like about (the MULTE program) is that it helps people who wouldn’t usually be able to afford apartments like these,” Boly said. “This project really is for the public good.”

Boly said the reserved units reduce the number of units the property managers have to lease out at market rate from 284 to about 220, and added that he doesn’t expect the Block 67 apartments to compete directly with American Assets Trust’s Hassalo on Eighth not far away.

“We feel like I-84 is kind of the dividing line and that people looking to rent at Hassalo on Eighth will mostly be looking for safe, family housing,” he said. “We put a lot of thought and effort into determining who this project will cater to, and we think it’s people who embrace the gritty feeling of the eastside.”

Boly said the team expects Block 67 to appeal to “recent college graduates, nurses and construction workers” who are part of the “maker identity of Portland.”

Pickhardt’s team has encountered several challenges during construction. One was finding a way to anchor the building without encroaching upon an easement 80 feet below ground for the “Big Pipe.” Another was keeping designs fluid enough to adapt to potential changes, such as adding a sky bridge between the two buildings.

At the Thursday luncheon, an audience member asked Pickhardt how designs planned for access to the Burnside Bridge from both buildings. He responded by showing renderings of the two buildings from a vantage point looking south down Third Avenue, with the Burnside Bridge in the distance, that showed a second-story sky bridge.

“Foot traffic would come off the Burnside Bridge at Couch Street, enter the (Block 76) building, and cross over Third via the sky bridge into the tower,” Pickhardt said.

PDC’s design standards discourage sky bridge use, claiming that it diverts foot traffic away from storefronts, but Pickhardt said he believes there is a strong case for including one in this project. Construction crews are “pursuing parallel paths” to leave the option on the table, he noted.

“It would be used to connect the smaller building to the larger building consistent with the grade of Burnside (and) Couch (streets),” he said. “We’re considering whether or not it makes sense to make application for consideration (and) approval from the city at this point.”

Pickhardt, whose company will also develop adjacent Block 76 into a three-story commercial space, said that when he was a child and his family visited from Bend, Portland’s eastside was a shadowy place.

“As we’d drive into town my mom would be rolling up the windows and locking the doors,” he said.

Pickhardt commended Portland for its efforts to clean up the eastside, and said he feels “a lot of humility” about taking on such a neighborhood-defining project while also working to retain the area’s staples, including the Burnside skate park.

“I spent a couple weekends at the skate park, and I was told I needed to talk to ‘Red,’ who was the chair of the skate park’s board of directors,” Pickhardt joked. “It was sort of like a street fight talking to him. It was pretty uncomfortable. He said, ‘this is our parking lot and you’re not taking out our skate park.’ ”

The vacant surface parking lot ‘Red’ mentioned is part of the underground parking for the tower, but the 30-year-old concrete haven for skateboarders remains intact.

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Site clearing and excavation for the $58 million Burnside bridgehead mixed-use tower began Monday.

The Portland Development Commission on Friday issued the foundation permit for a 21-story building to be constructed on block 67 in Southeast Portland. When completed, the development will feature 20,000 square feet of commercial space, 284 apartments and 200 parking spaces. The permit paperwork indicates that the project will be a 16-story tower atop a five-story podium.

Project executive Brad Nile of Andersen Construction said Skylab Architecture will submit the building permit later this week.

“The deep shoring and foundation construction will take the next two months,” he said. “In January we will start going up with the vertical structure.”

The project team – Guardian Real Estate Services and Hood River-based Key Development Corp., Skylab Architecture and Andersen Construction – has been working on the effort for the past three years.

Nile said construction of the entire development would take about 22 months.

Also, Key Development purchased Block 76W, a small piece of land on the west side of the Couch Street couplet, with plans to erect a two- to three-story commercial building that will mirror the larger tower.

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Construction of a $60 million, mixed-use tower at the Burnside bridgehead will begin in August, now that Block 67 LLC has closed on a $1.5 million land purchase.

The project has been three years in the making: A disposition and development agreement has been worked out with the Portland Development Commission and the city design process has been completed, said Jeff Pickhardt, principal of Hood River-based Key Development Corp.

The project team – including Key Development, Skylab Architecture, Andersen Construction and Guardian Real Estate Services – this week submitted foundation permits. It’s planning to build a 21-story tower with 284 apartments and 20,000 square feet of commercial space, Pickhardt said.

The tower project also will have 200 parking spaces, he said.

“We’ve all been involved in the project for some time,” he said, citing an integrated project delivery model with Andersen as the contractor, Guardian as the property manager and Skylab as the architect. All were involved in the development process from the get-go.

Construction is likely to take 20 months, Pickhardt said.

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