Andersen Construction has long been busy at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. It built Key Development‘s Yard and then Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. Now the contractor is tackling Block 76 West – formerly known as SideYard – at 365 N.E. Couch St.

The five-story mixed-use building, designed by Skylab Architecture, will have 23,569 square feet. It will feature cross-laminated timber flooring, glulam structural beams and wooden columns. Two concrete cores holding staircases will be built with mass-plywood panels.

“It’s all exposed beams and columns,” said Ådne Tonning, senior project manager with general contractor Andersen Construction.

The project is Key Development’s first to feature CLT, according to the firm’s chief operating officer, Claudia Munk-von Flotow. Riddle-based D.R. Johnson is supplying the CLT.

Ground was broken on Block 76 West in May 2018 after several delays. Use of wood has made a significant difference in construction, Tonning said.

“It was faster,” he said. “We started with the footings and then the retaining wall. And then for the installation was basically they shipped up the wood and we just popped them in.”

Columns and beams are connected with Knapp hardware, while the glulam beams and columns are bolted together.

“It was just like Legos filling it up,” Tonning said.

The time savings amounts to several months, he added.

The roof is in place and almost all the brick cladding has been installed. Glaziers are busy installing a complex curtain wall system designed to flood the interior of the building with natural light. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors are working their way through the building.

“Right now the roof is done and the brickies just finished except for those two little spring walls,” Tonning said. “Culver Glass is installing frames, glazing and punched openings, and we had to wait until the brickies were done until we could do the canopy work; it’s a very tight site.”

The project team is shooting for a temporary certificate of occupancy by May.

Office users are being sought for the top floors, with Key Development in talks with the owners of Hood River’s Ferment Brewing Co. and Camp 1805 Distillery to open tasting rooms on the lower floors.

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Key Development‘s follow-up to Yard will have little in common with the controversial Burnside bridgehead tower.

Instead of an imposing building envelope and black exterior panels, Yard‘s sibling will be much smaller and feature warm, reddish-brown bricks.

“We’re trying to make it more of a classic Central Eastside building than a striking, contemporary project, which we’ve kind of already done with Yard,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development, the developer of Yard and the new project on Block 76 West. “It’s really not the little sister to Yard as we once concepted it to be.”

The mixed-use project was known in planning as SideYard – a play on it being a smaller neighbor to the 21-story project built first. Now that Yard has sold to an institutional buyer – the largely residential building was snapped up by a Thailand-based investor for $126.68 million in December 2016 – the SideYard name no longer made sense, Flotow said.

The Block 76 West building will rise to five stories and include 23,569 square feet. It’s being designed by Skylab Architecture, which also designed Yard. Andersen Construction, which previously built Yard and Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell nearby, recently broke ground on the new project.

The program for Key’s building at 365 N.E. Couch St. hasn’t been finalized, but it’s likely to be two floors of retail space and three floors of office space, Flotow said. The retail spaces will likely face Northeast Couch Street and Third Avenue.

No vehicle parking will be provided. However, the development will include bicycle-friendly features such as “rolling curbs.”

Key Development, based in Hood River, has a lead on a potential ground-floor tenant: Ferment, a brewery that is opening a production facility and small taproom in Hood River. The company may be interested in a Portland location, Flotow said. Ferment is led by Dan Peterson, a former head brewer at Hood River brewery pFriem.

Block 76 West’s structure will set it apart: Key opted to use cross-laminated timber. The structure will be a CLT diaphragm with brick cladding. The CLT materials will be provided by D.R. Johnson, a timber manufacturer based in Riddle.

“We have done lots of conventionally framed, heavy-timber buildings,” Flotow said. “We’ve never done a CLT project. For us it’s both an aesthetic thing and time efficiency, especially with such a heavy building push and a labor market that’s not super available to do heavy-timber construction projects.”

Using CLT materials with precut holes and connections accelerates the building schedule, Flotow said.

“It makes for a really efficient construction process,” Flotow said. “You can just fly your structure a lot quicker.”

Flotow said she is not concerned by the recent delamination of CLT subflooring during construction of a building at Oregon State University in Corvallis. CLT is a proven technology with an established safety record in Europe and Canada, she said.

“There’s piles of literature of test results from both a structural and a fire-protection point of view that is giving us some confidence,” she said. “I don’t think we’re putting ourselves at a huge risk by going for a CLT diaphragm.”

Andersen Construction even sent a manager to Germany to learn about CLT, Flotow said. Andersen’s experience building in the cramped Burnside bridgehead area factored into its selection as general contractor, she said.

“They have efficient ways of staging and scheduling to stay on schedule and on budget,” she said.

The building is on track to open in spring 2019.

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A geyser of construction activity is about to erupt at the east end of the Burnside Bridge, and one final development is bubbling to the surface.

Hood River-based Key Development is purchasing from the Portland Development Commission the tiny spit of land (Block 76W) on the west side of the Couch Street couplet, and planning to build a two- to three-story commercial building. The firm already is preparing to break ground in August on a 21-story mixed-use tower on Block 67, due west of Block 76W, and other developers are hot on its heels with projects.

PDC commissioners on Wednesday unanimously approved Key Development’s offer for the 8,414-square-foot sister site. Given its small size, sharp slope and the presence of submerged support structures for the Burnside Bridge, the property was not expected to draw an offer.

“When I looked at this plan I never thought that piece of property would get developed,” PDC Board Chairman and Melvin Mark President Scott Andrews said during the hearing. “It’s got a 20 percent slope (and) it’s holding up Couch Street … God bless Key Development.”

Development of the small site wasn’t initially part of Key Development’s plan, principal Jeff Pickhardt acknowledged, but was instead born out of a need to create a stronger pedestrian connection with the bridge.

Key Development’s original plan was to make that connection via Block 67, but Pickhardt said that fizzled when his team learned that the railing on the Burnside Bridge is historically significant – and therefore untouchable. Then, during a design assistance meeting with the city, team members shifted their attention to the grassy island.

“I have to give credit to Skylab (Architecture) in coming up with the design,” Pickhardt said. “They took it upon themselves to create the first run at the design, and then reintroduced it as part of the larger project.”

The proposed 20,000-square-foot building looks like a miniature version of the nearby tower’s podium structure. A large, glass storefront system, triangular frame and green roof suggest a mountain or steep hillside.

The Block 76W development is estimated to cost $6.4 million; Andersen Construction is Key Development’s general contractor for both that project and Block 67.

The PDC is selling the property to Key Development (via Block 76 LLC) for a July 2013 fair market value of $336,000, but the true price will be the cost to perform “extraordinary” geotechnical work – estimated at $361,000. As the development firm pays for that work, the PDC will reimburse it the purchase price.

Key Development also is required to make a $33,600 earnest payment that will be nonrefundable following a 30-day due diligence period. The deal is scheduled to close within 90 days, and the development firm must begin work within three years or the PDC can buy the property back for the original purchase price. The PDC also would gain a 10 percent interest in any resulting sale of the developed site within five years of completion.

Block 76W was the PDC’s last property at the east end of the Burnside Bridge. A planning effort for the bridgehead began some 15 years ago. In 2004, the PDC selected Opus Northwest to develop all of the properties at once; however, that plan dissolved during the recession.

Momentum picked back up in 2009, when the PDC tweaked its framework plan to attract smaller projects in lieu of a larger one. Beam Development got the ball rolling with its redevelopment of the Eastside Exchange building.

Many other projects are planned in the area. Guerrilla Development has a six-story commercial building on tap for Block 76E (the other two-thirds of the block divided by Couch Street); Beam Development and Urban Development Partners are planning a mixed-use project at Block 75 (due north of Block 76); the Seattle office of Texas-based Trinsic Residential Group is preparing to begin a 159-unit mixed-use project on the block due east of Block 76E; and NFN Investments and Arthur Mutal are remodeling the R.J. Templeton Building on the south side of the bridge.

All of those projects are expected to be under way by early 2015.

“We expect that to be a pretty serious construction zone starting in about two months,” said Eric Jacobson, a senior project manager for the PDC.

He added that the tiny commercial building proposed for Block 76W will play an especially important role for the Burnside bridgehead.

“Our design objective was to treat this as a gateway to the entire Burnside Bridge,” he said. “This is – especially for (bicyclists) and pedestrians coming to the bridge – this is the first property they’re going to encounter. So it was really important for us for it to be activated.”

For Pickhardt, the project has been a long time coming. His company has been working on the Burnside bridgehead development since responding to a PDC inquiry in July 2010.

Pickhardt and Jeff Kovel, a Skylab Architecture principal, first presented drawings of the 21-story tower to the Portland Design Commission in April 2013, to mixed reviews. They received the commission’s approval in December.

“It’s been a really interesting project for us,” Pickhardt said. “And it’s certainly rewarding getting to a point where we’re actually ready to come out of the ground.”

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