It’s no easy task to transform a 105-year-old building into a modern health center focused on providing services to the homeless.

It’s even harder to make it sustainable.

Yet the proposed Multnomah County Behavioral Health Center is on track to be rated Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold, according to members of the project team.

A number of trade-offs and compromises were made for the sake of functionality. The lowest-flow toilets, for example, were a no-go. The county’s experience with other homeless shelters was that clients would use the toilets to wash items, or flush items that would cause plumbing problems.

Carleton Hart Architecture and Multnomah County also wanted to use showerheads with timers to save water; however, the timers weren’t available in the lowest-flow showerheads. The timers won out, paired with strong air pressure.

Those examples underline the trade-offs architects and other team members routinely wrestle with in complex projects in which an environmental certification is being pursued.

“The county has been very focused on we need this to work,” said Corey Morris, a Carleton Hart Architecture senior associate who is designing the project. “Let’s not compromise something (functional) for the sake of saying this is more sustainable.”

The Behavioral Health Center, which is still in the design phase, is meant to bridge the gap between homeless shelters and facilities such as the Unity Center for Behavioral Health, which provides acute care for patients in crisis.

“There hasn’t been anything sort of in between,” Morris said.

Multnomah County acquired the building at 333 S.W. Park Ave. in April 2019 from developer Tom Cody for $4.34 million. The county also purchased an adjacent parking lot for $1.5 million. In September 2019, the county’s Board of Commissioners approved plans for the project. The projected cost is $15 million to $20 million, including the property purchases.

The project will be subject to a Type III design review process before the Portland Design Commission. Mortenson Construction will be the general contractor.

The building presents a number of challenges that would be absent in ground-up construction.

“When you have this dilapidated existing building, how sustainable can you make it?” said Summer Fowler, president of ecoREAL Solutions, an environmental consultant on the project. “We focused on making it a super tight, super insulated envelope.”

With a tight envelope, air exchange becomes necessary. The building will have “way more ventilation than you would typically have,” Fowler said.

The building will have a 30-ton air handling unit providing 100 percent outdoor air.

Daylighting and photometric sensors will reduce the need for artificial light. In making design and equipment choices, the project team is trying to accommodate building users.

“It’s going to be a sensitive environment for people under high stress, or who have mental issues,” Fowler said.

EcoREAL Solutions has developed sheets that point contractors and others on the project team toward eco-friendly materials such as paints and finish materials low in volatile organic compounds and PVC-free furniture.

The project team studied but rejected installation of a solar array on the roof. The available area was too small and poorly oriented for solar, Morris said.

Instead, a green roof designed by NNA Landscape Architecture will be made solar ready in case an installation makes sense in the future.

The main floor and second floor are designed as a drop-in day center where users can shower, use restroom facilities, speak with staff and access additional services. The building will have 26 bathrooms and 17 showers.

The third floor’s group shelter space will be geared to serve users with persistent mental and behavioral health issues. The fourth floor will be dedicated to transitional housing.

A full seismic retrofit will take place to brace the building.

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Multnomah County is seeking a builder to renovate the Bushong & Co. building, in downtown Portland, so it can be used as a social service center.

Officials on Tuesday issued a request for qualifications for the project, estimated to cost $12 million to $15 million. The competitive bidding process will be expedited with compressed administrative procedures, according to the county. The goal is for the facility to open as soon as summer 2021.

The builder will join Carleton Hart Architecture, which is providing design and preconstruction services.

The planned four-story Behavioral Health Resource Center will provide approximately 27,000 square feet with a day center “living room” space, laundry and shower facilities, a social service resource center, a mail room and a computer lab. The upper floors will provide shelter beds and transitional housing.

The original structure at 333 S.W. Park Ave. was completed in 1907.

The county purchased the building for $4.34 million in April from Portland developer Project^. The developer had earlier allowed the county to use the building as an emergency homeless shelter.

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A downtown Portland building will serve as a temporary homeless shelter through the upcoming cold months before undergoing an adaptive reuse to become a mixed-use office building. Officials with the City of Portland, Multnomah County, housing nonprofit Transition Projects, and building owner project^ announced Friday that the shelter, which will house about 100 people for around six months, will open in mid-November.

The four-story office building, at 333 S.W. Park Ave., was built in 1907 and sold last month to project^ for $2.95 million, according to city records. It formerly housed a nightclub on the ground floor and artist spaces on the upper three floors. Rather than allow it to remain empty while renovation plans are finalized and permitted, project^ managing partner Tom Cody decided to make the building available as a temporary shelter to help with the city’s ongoing homeless problem. The move is similar to one that Menashe Properties did early this year with one if its vacant buildings.

“If you are a participant in civics in our city, you can’t help but be exposed to this issue,” Cody said. “And we own a lot of property in and around downtown, and so I think it’s incumbent on everybody, to the extent you can, to play a role to try and figure it out.”

Cody was an opponent of the now-defunct Terminal 1 homeless shelter plan, which was proposed for a Northwest Portland industrial property near the site of Field Office, a $100 million project^ development that began construction this past summer. In speaking with homeless experts about solutions to the issue, Cody became convinced that smaller and geographically distributed homeless shelters are most effective. With a newly purchased building that was code-compliant and safe, he decided to make it available as a shelter.

“There are a lot of people a lot smarter than I am figuring out long-term solutions, but in the interim we need temporary emergency shelter,” Cody said. “Because it’s going to take years until we have the housing stock we need to solve the problem on a long-term basis.”

Contractor Yorke & Curtis has begun interior demolition on the building, removing demising walls and stripping it down to its shell, in preparation for shelter and subsequent renovation work. The shelter will be operated by the nonprofit organization Transition Projects and will be restricted to the building’s ground floor. A full renovation will begin on the building when the shelter closes next spring. Project^ has enlisted Beebe Skidmore Architects to design the improvements.

The building has been known as both the Bushong & Company Building and the Modish Building. Project^ plans to convert the upper three floors to office space, possibly adding another floor, and build a restaurant space on the ground floor. According to Cody, the renovation work is expected to last six to eight months.

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