The Portland Design Commission on Thursday got a second look at plans to replace Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School with an approximately 291,000-square-foot building on the site’s south side.

The new building is planned as part of an effort to modernize the campus, at 1151 S.W. Vermont St.

The project was first presented to the Design Commission in September 2024. The biggest change from then is that the track-and-field element, previously oriented north to south, is now proposed to remain where it is due to budget constraints.

The project is valued at $349 million, according to Portland Permitting & Development. Bora Architecture & Interiors designed the project for Portland Public Schools. The project team also includes KPFF (civil and structural engineering), Rivero Design (civil engineering), NBZ Consulting Engineers (structural engineering), and Walker Macy (landscape architecture).

The existing school will remain operational during construction, because it sits upon a hill away from the buildable area.

The new school will include a theater, band and choir rooms, a cafeteria and commons, and a media center as well as classrooms and science labs, art rooms, shop spaces, a variety of specialized learning environments and administrative offices. A community health clinic may be included in the project if a service provider can be identified, the applicant’s narrative states.

Planned site improvements include a new track and field with grandstand and support buildings, new baseball, softball and soccer fields with associated site structures, new tennis courts, reconfigured parking areas, and new pedestrian pathways. The existing swimming pool, run by Portland Parks & Recreation, will remain. Facilities associated with Rieke Elementary School will also remain.

The main entrance would be on the building’s east side. Another entrance on the south side would lead to a potential health clinic. Commissioner Thomas Eldridge said the main entry does not strike him as such. Commissioners suggested adding more signage to indicate the main entry.

The site plan is extremely constrained in creating a direct north-south link by the existing locations of the track and field and pool, which push the north-south connection significantly eastward. A north-south path is thus proposed east of the pool, the city staff report states.

“The north-south connection is a really important connector,” said Tanya Paglia, a city planner for Portland Permitting & Development.

Commissioners agreed that the path should be wide. They asked the team to provide more details at the next design advice request (DAR) hearing.

Building materials and composition are still being decided, but thin brick tile in an alternating pattern is being considered as the primary cladding. Commissioners agreed that the color of the brick may be too dark, acknowledging that the shade is popular right now but may not be in the future.

“I think the kind of pathway through the building from the entry to the commons is so beautiful with the use of wood on the inside,” Commissioner Sarah Vaz said. “I love the general concept of having bark on the outside, wood on the inside. It’s just not feeling very bark-like right now.”

Vaz suggested the project team work with the school’s design advisory group and community members to determine the color of the brick, if the team hasn’t already.

Commissioner Zari Santner asked the project team to address bus and parent drop-off locations, including near the grandstand, before the next DAR hearing.

A third DAR hearing will take place on Feb. 19, 2026. The project will require a Type III conditional use review and a Type III design review. The design team plans to submit a design review application in March.

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An approximately 6,000-square-foot Multnomah County Library branch will soon receive improvements and grow to around 15,000 square feet.

Bora Architecture & Interiors designed the $28 million project for the Belmont Library, in Portland at 1038 S.E. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. It’s one of several library upgrades made possible by voters’ approval of a $387 million bond measure in 2020.

Plans call for fully renovating the original, 100-year-old brick building and constructing a two-story addition to the north, along Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. The building footprint will extend into the existing parking lot, but some short-term parking will be preserved.

The project team also includes structural engineer��Valar Consulting Engineering, civil engineer��Vega Civil Engineering and general contractor��Howard S. Wright, a Balfour Beatty company. Construction is set to begin next month.

The Belmont Library is served by public transportation and lies along a bicycle route in a greenway on Southeast Taylor Street, Bora Architecture & Interiors principal Jeanie Lai said. As part of the project, bike parking will be increased. Also, the sidewalk along Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard will be widened to 15 feet to improve pedestrian access.

The original building’s exterior will be preserved, and wood trim will be repainted. Also, the building will be seismically upgraded to current building codes with all new systems. Interiors will be refreshed in accordance with the building’s original character.

“Belmont Library is a community gem, uniquely reflecting the vibrant spirit of Southeast Portland,” reads Bora’s design concept statement for the project. “Like a geode, its coppery-textured addition harmonizes with the exterior of the original 1924 building, while the light-filled, warm interior fosters well-being, creativity, and connection.”

The addition’s exterior will have reddish-copper-colored custom metal panels, while its interior will feature engineered glulam columns and beams, as well as cross-laminated timber panels.

Currently, the library does not have a lot of seating areas and is popular for holds. The design calls for increasing both seating areas and flexible community spaces to accommodate library programming, Lai said.

The original building will house the children’s collection, with an expanded interactive play area and a middle readers annex. The building will also include a public lactation room and an all-ages restroom.

The addition’s ground floor will feature a main entry leading into an open lobby envisioned as a community “living room,” Lai said. It will include staff areas and an automated book sorting machine. The second floor will house a large, open reading room with the library’s main collection, open computer stations, flexible community rooms, study spaces, various kinds of seating and a dedicated teen area.

“The west façade will showcase window seats and perches, a design feature that was inspired by community feedback,” Lai said.

The project went through an extensive community engagement process that involved 3,000 participants, Lai said. As with other Multnomah County Library projects, the organization hired community design advocates to connect with other community members and learn how the library could represent them. Focus groups, public meetings and surveys provided community input as well.

The library will close to the public on Sept. 7 so that construction can start. While work takes place, a temporary location at 3557 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. will serve the community. Beginning Sept. 9, this branch will offer limited services, including holds/pickups, Lucky Day items, 24/7 book returns and free wireless printing.

The expanded library is scheduled to reopen in late 2025 or early 2026.

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at projects in Oregon and Southwest Washington being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact 91��Ƶ reporter Hilary Dorsey at hdorsey@djcOregon.com.

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A 335,000-square-foot redevelopment of Jefferson High School‘s buildings and campus in the Piedmont Conservation District is in the works.

The Portland Historic Landmarks Commission got its third look Monday on a proposal for alterations for the school at 5210 N. Kerby Ave.

The school is an approximately 13.56-acre site. The proposal includes the retention of the 1909 portion of the existing building and redevelopment of the remaining site.

“The proposal is essentially complete demolition and alteration of a number of the amenities on the site, including a number of the sports fields and parking and buildings, plazas and so on,” said Art Graves, a BDS staffer.

The existing track and field are to remain at their current location.

The project team includes Portland Public Schools, LEVER Architecture, Bora Architecture & Interiors, PLACE, and Colloqate Design of New Orleans.

Monday’s meeting was the project’s final design advice hearing meant to provide the project team with guidance. The first design advice hearing was held in November 2022, with a second hearing held in May.

The proposed restoration of the 1909 building has been scaled back from what was shown in previous design advice hearings due to project pricing issues and damaged historic materials that are not reparable, a commission memo states. The new building has been reduced to two stories and is shrunk on the south side, giving more space to athletic fields. The new building will relate to the 1909 building through material use with red brick, associated datums, window groupings and additional building symmetry.

Previously, the project was proposing a phased construction. The design has been reduced to be completed in one phase. Tennis courts have been added to the site, taking the place of some surface parking. A berm in front of the 1909 building will be removed to create a new public plaza.

Priorities for the 1909 renovation include seismic upgrades; replacing windows; repairing brick and mortar; repairing the roof; removing berms around the site; removing stairs on the north, east and west entries; establishing the main entry at the front entrance; and recreating a central hipped roof. Options for renovation include refurbishment only, adding a central hipped roof or adding a central hipped roof and articulation, depending on the budget.

The project team is proposing to demolish the 1928 gym, which sits in the middle of the school, as it conflicts with the new theater and gymnasium. The floor levels of the building do not match with the planned theater or new gymnasium, creating accessibility issues.

“It also needs to be seismically upgraded,” said Chandra Robinson, principal at LEVER Architecture, adding that it would be a big cost.

The new building will include the theater and gymnasium. The updated design includes more glazing with window groupings that relate better to the 1909 building, the addition of canopies and material changes at the entries with brick and metal panels, and activating the streetscape with landscape.

The east and west ground-level frontages of the new building include additional pedestrian treatments when compared to previous DAR schemes: landscaping, clear glazing and extended canopies. However, due to interior programming, large blank walls at the street level persist. Commissioners agreed that the ground level could use more fine tuning. Moreland suggested adding some greenery or artwork, such as a mural. Commission Chair Andrew Smith asked about other ways to create transparency on the ground floor other than more windows, such as a bay with a storefront advertising the shows happenings in the theater. The design team said they are looking into this.

“Keep pursuing those other ways to break up a little bit of the monotony of the façades,” Smith said. “With that said, I think the current design direction of the addition, I find it to be incredibly compatible with the 1909 building.”

Modifications and adjustments include exceeding the height requirement of 75 feet to 82 feet for the 1909 building, exceeding the minimum setback requirement of a 1-foot setback for each 2 feet of building height across from the adjacent residential on the North Kerby and North Commercial frontages (changing from 23 feet to 29 feet, 8 inches on North Kerby Avenue and from 28 feet to 32 feet on North Commercial Avenue), to raise the fence height from 8 feet to 10 feet for the athletic fields, an adjustment to reduce bike stalls from 355 to 200, and a superblock modification to provide the required plaza area but exceed the 3-to-1 ratio for the plaza area to allow connectivity from North Kerby Avenue to North Commercial Avenue.

The Portland Bureau of Development Services values the project at $21 million.

The team plans to submit a Type II Historic Resource Review application in January.

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Portland projects and firms were well-represented at the recent 2021 American Architecture Awards.

More than 130 buildings from a list of over 400 received the award, which recognizes the best new architecture designed and constructed by American architects and by international architects with offices in the United States. It is described as the nation’s highest public award for new architecture and urban planning.

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, along with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies presented the awards.

Oregon’s winners are:

Affordable Housing: The Louisa Flowers

LRS Architects and LEVER Architecture designed the 12-story affordable, multifamily housing for Home Forward. The building was completed in 2019 and was constructed by O’Neill/Walsh Community builders. With 240 apartments available, The Louisa Flowers is the largest, single affordable housing building constructed in Portland in 50 years.

Institutional: Oregon Conservation Center

Designed by LEVER Architecture, the Oregon Conservation Center renovation and expansion in 2019 completely reimagined the building. The exterior was replaced with steel cladding, as well as Juniper wood cladding and cedar decks that were sustainably harvested from the Nature Conservancy’s conservation sites.

Restoration and Renovation: The Portland Building

Built in 1982 as city administrative offices, The Portland Building is an award-winning icon on the National Register of Historic Places. However, it faced structural problems and needed exterior and operational system repairs. DLR Group completed renovation and restoration of the 400,000-square-foot, 15-story building, which included new exterior cladding and a seismic upgrade.

Schools and Universities: The Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, University of Oregon

Ennead Architects, based in New York, designed the two L-shaped towers for the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. The 166,000-square-foot structure is adorned with a glass curtain wall, while the inside uses cross-laminated timber in places as a connection to the surrounding environment. Bora Architecture & Interiors also worked as the architect of record for the project.

Private Homes:

• William Kaven Architecture – Royal
• Scott|Edwards Architecture – Slabtown 4

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PROJECT: New De La Salle North Catholic High School campus

LOCATION: 4300 N.E. Killingsworth St., Portland

COST:��$26 million

START DATE: July 2020

END DATE: October 2021

OWNER: De La Salle North Catholic High School

OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE: Shiels Obletz Johnsen

ARCHITECT: Bora Architecture & Interiors

ENGINEERS: Mazzetti (civil), Catena Consulting Engineers (structural), Interface Engineering (MEP)

GENERAL CONTRACTOR:��P&C Construction

OTHER ASSOCIATES/CONSULTANTS: Acoustic Design Studio (acoustical), Code Unlimited LLC (code consulting), Halliday Associates (kitchen), Kelsay Environmental Consulting (environmental), Lango Hansen Landscape Architects (landscape), NV5 (geotechnical/environmental), PSI (special inspections), Radongreen (radon)

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: De La Salle North Catholic High School offers a private, faith-based college preparatory education to urban students with limited educational opportunities, turning no one away because of an inability to pay. Since opening in 2001, the school rented two locations. Now it’s operating at the first new Catholic high school campus in Portland in more than 50 years. De La Salle North Catholic is co-locating with St. Charles Parish, which previously operated a Catholic elementary school from 1950 to 1986.

A $26 million capital fundraising campaign was led by Mary and Tim Boyle, in two phases over 30 months. Phase one included $20.5 million for renovation of an existing building to become an academic wing, and new construction of the commons, courtyard and parking lot. Phase two sought $5.5 million for a gymnasium and additional work. Phase one of the campaign was launched publicly in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. At that point $2.2 million more was needed in order for construction to start. Undeterred by uncertainty generated by the pandemic, the fundraising team successfully met its phase one goal and broke ground in July 2020. Two months later, the team raised the minimum amount required to build the gymnasium.

The new campus accommodates more than 350 students. It includes a private courtyard, a commons, state-of-the-art science labs, a specialized art classroom and the Michael Kelley Gymnasium. The science classrooms can accommodate both technology-based and hands-on learning in physics, biology and chemistry.

The school welcomed 274 students on Sept. 7, while crews finished constructing the commons and gymnasium. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 22.

“Building Blocks” spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcorprod.wpengine.com/building-blocks.

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Women of color will lead the design process for the first four Multnomah County public library projects that were approved in November 2020, county officials announced on Monday.

LEVER Architecture and Noll & Tam Architects of Berkeley, California, will spearhead the designs of the North Portland Library renovation and the new Albina Library.

Bora Architecture & Interiors, along with Colloqate Design of New Orleans, Louisiana, will design the new Holgate Library and the Midland Library renovation and addition.

LEVER’s team will be led by principal Chandra Robinson.

“Portland is my hometown and I am so proud to lead our team to envision the future of our Albina and North Portland libraries,” Robinson stated in a news release. “Authentic engagement with our community of library patrons and neighbors is critical to the design process and will help shape a space that will welcome and inspire all Portlanders.”

Bora principal Jeanie Lai and Colloqate design principal Bryan Lee Jr. will lead the other design team.

“I’m delighted to have this opportunity to lead our team to reimagine and maximize the potential of future libraries in Portland,” Lai stated. “Thinking past the library as a building for books, we will work closely with the communities of Holgate and Midland as well as leaders of the Library Capital Bond Program to create inclusive places for connections, bringing people together to grow and flourish.”

Multnomah County voters this past November passed a ballot measure authorizing $387 million in bonds to finance the library projects. The projects focus on diverse and underserved areas of the county.

“I am delighted to work with people and organizations who share the library’s commitment to creating meaningful social infrastructure with and for the people of Multnomah County,” Director of Libraries Vailey Oehlke stated. “Libraries are far more than book repositories and we now have an opportunity to demonstrate that, with spaces that will offer our community new and more forward-looking ways of using and experiencing their libraries.”

Separately, the Deschutes Public Library District Board recently selected Steele Associates Architects of Bend and The Miller Hull Partnership, a Seattle-based firm, to design a series of libraries in Central Oregon.

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Demand for healthier space is surging amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A recent report, “A New Investor Consensus: The Rising Demand for Healthy Buildings,” revealed that 92 percent of survey respondents (many of the world’s leading real estate investors) expect demand for healthy buildings to grow in the next three years.

Yet the next step of finding healthy and sustainable materials to construct the buildings is a tricky one.

Oftentimes, little information is known about a building product’s ingredients list, manufacturing process, and supply chain. It can be difficult for architects and specifiers to identify building products that are healthy, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. In many cases, no alternative to a product with an unhealthy building ingredient exists yet.

“Sometimes we’re trying to compare apples and oranges,” said Amy Running, an interior designer with Bora Architecture & Interiors.

Running and her colleague Mike Manzi, an associate principal, are immersed in the healthy building material movement. They have lobbied for more transparency in building materials.

“There’s a limit to what we do as an architecture firm as what we could do,” Manzi said. “We realized we needed to enter the marketplace.”

The initiatives range from tracking the ingredients that go into building materials to declaring their health and environmental effects. Based on the number of available transparency tools, building declarations and certifications, the movement is expanding.

The two most well-known and widely used building product declarations are Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). The HPD is an open standard format focused on disclosing a building product’s list of ingredients and health effects. The EPD looks at the environmental impact of a building’s product throughout its life cycle.

Another certification tool used is the Cradle to Cradle Certified Products Standard (C2C). It rates manufactured products based on material health, material reuse, renewable energy, water stewardship, and social fairness. If a product satisfies all of its benchmarks, it will be certified.

Building rating systems are also acknowledging building product transparency. The latest version of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED v4, has credit points available for building projects using HPDs and EPDs. Also, the International Living Future Institute requires project teams pursuing the Living Building Challenge to not use items on its red list – materials and chemicals considered “worst in class” to human health and the environment.

Adam Klauba, Walsh Construction‘s sustainability coordinator for the PAE Living Building project, said the research team had so far vetted 2,737 products that could both serve the building and meet red list requirements. Of those 2,737, only 720 were naturally compliant or already approved for the Living Building Challenge.

The International Living Future Institute even has its own inventory system, Declare, to help both manufacturers and specifiers navigate the red list. Declare works like a nutrition label on food but for building products by listing its source, its ingredients, and where it will go at the end of its life cycle.

However, a satisfactory building product doesn’t always exist yet. In this case, a letter of advocacy is written to the manufacturer to inform it of its processes. As of this month, roughly 864 materials in the PAE Living Building have needed a letter written and work-arounds approved, according to data provided by Walsh Construction Co.

“Overall, what (ILFI is) trying to do is eliminate any ingredients in the materials of the building that could be hazardous to the environment and human health not only in the building but also through the entire supply chain,” Klauba said.

A couple of groups have popped up to carry the healthy building product conversation into the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle-based Healthy Materials Collaborative and the Portland Material Transparency Collaborative represent a network of building industry professionals aiming to transform the market and implement more building material transparency into everyday practices.

Another part of the conversation is what happens behind production of materials, Running said. For example, she explained, someone might identify a product with the lowest carbon, but then learn that it’s made via slave labor.

The American Institute of Architects in October 2020 adopted a materials pledge that includes the social health and equity side, stating a preference for products from manufacturers that secure human rights in their operations and supply chain.

While the initiatives are part of a long process, “there are people on both … the manufacturer and design side that want to solve these problems,” Manzi said.

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Big changes are in store for Portland Community College’s Metropolitan Workforce Training Center in the Cully neighborhood.

Bora Architecture & Interiors has designed for PCC a new two-story, 50,000-square-foot building. Plans call for a mass-timber structure with a wood veneer panel exterior.

“We thought of the building almost like a block of wood that you’re carving into and then exposing parts of it,” Bora principal Jeanie Lai said.

The existing training center is located at 5600 N.E. 42nd Ave., on a three-acre lot in the Cully neighborhood. The new building will be built alongside the current center, which originally held a Safeway grocery store. After Andersen Construction builds the new one, the old one will be demolished.

The training center’s purpose is to provide programs to low-income families with children. The project’s main goal, Lai said, is to develop the space into an inclusive educational hub for the community.

Cully is a growing as well as racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood. Historically it was once the Neerchokikoo village home to Chinook people.

Bora’s design, Lai said, focuses on three main aspects: equity, well-being and sustainability. Trauma-informed design guided the process, she said. Trauma-informed design aims to create environments that promote a sense of calm, safety, dignity and well-being for all occupants.

Training center users are seeking self-improvement, Lai said. It’s important that the space feels nurturing to them, she added.

Natural materials will provide a greater connection to the outdoors. The existing building didn’t have any windows, but the new one will be able to let in lots of daylight. The aim is for the building to exceed the Oregon energy code baseline by 40 percent.

The goal for the interior was to create a homely and welcoming atmosphere. The design team focused on the lobby, career center and community room, Lai said, because those places will have the most foot traffic.

A mass-timber staircase built into the structure will connect the two levels, and appear as if it’s floating.

Soft, organic forms were used for the building and in the landscape, Lai said, in order to complement the natural materials. The plan is to pull the building up to the street, so that the intersection of Northeast 42nd Avenue and Killingsworth Street is defined better.

Surrounding the building will be a mix of softness and paved landscape. A long strip of land is intended to become a potential spot for the community to hold farmers’ markets or other seasonal markets.

The project budget, according to PCC, is $32.5 million. The project is being paid for with money from a $185 million bond approved by voters in 2017.

Plans call for construction to begin in early 2022 and finish in spring 2023.

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact the 91��Ƶ at 503-802-7221 or newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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