Redevelopment of a church campus is in the works in Northeast Portland. The Western Dominican Province, on behalf of Holy Rosary Church, has requested early assistance with the city to discuss options for four blocks of underutilized property in the Lloyd District.

The property’s management group, the Dominican Friars, has operated in the Lloyd District since 1893. The group envisions a multiphase project – including both affordable and market-rate housing – to improve its parish campus while contributing to the broader effort to reinvigorate investment in the people and infrastructure of Portland, the church stated in a press release.

In 2024, a request for qualifications was issued for the redevelopment of the land. The church and affiliated organizations proffered to prospective developers the land it owns within blocks 62 and 67 for affordable and market-rate housing. From this process, Cairn Pacific was selected to develop the market-rate housing and Gorman & Company was selected to develop the affordable housing.

The conceptual plan also includes the improvement of church facilities on blocks 68 and 211. Urbanist Housing Solutions LLC of Vancouver, Washington is the owner’s representative working on behalf of the Western Dominican Province. The organization, based in Oakland, California, is a faith formation and financial partner with each local Dominican parish, Kurt Creager, Urbanist Housing Solutions LLC’s president and founder, stated in an email. Friars are assigned to preach and administer in each parish. When financial support is needed, the group provides necessary assistance.

In 2022, Father Corwin Low (a former tech entrepreneur) recommended the church and the Western Dominican Province be more proactive in managing their commercial real estate assets, Creager stated. The goal was to maximize value to the community and create a sustainable financial endowment to support and enhance local church activities. The church established a property steering committee in 2022, with parishioners in the design, finance, construction and development professions to advise on strategy and industry best practices, Creager stated.

“Strategically, we plan on leading with affordable housing,” Creager stated in regard to plans for the site. “T��� affordable housing financing path, while never easy, is less fraught than market-rate housing, presently.”

The land, with one owner, allows for a “consolidated building” approach, according to Creager, in which the affordable units provided by Gorman & Company on Block 62 will satisfy the city’s inclusionary housing obligation for Cairn Pacific’s work on Block 67. By starting with affordable housing, there will be time for the market to recover and interest rates to moderate, enabling market-rate housing to proceed later, according to Creager.

For the first phase – affordable housing on Block 62 – two options will be presented to the city. The first is for a four-story building with ground-floor amenity/lobby space and both tuck-under and surface parking. The second option is for a seven-story building with ground-floor amenity/lobby space, ground-floor housing units and an adjacent parking structure with ground-floor retail space and top-floor amenity space.

The Miracles Central Apartments, on the southwest corner of the block, is not owned by the Western Dominican Province and will remain.

The project’s second phase would be replacement of the church’s educational, gathering and office spaces, adjoining the church sanctuary, on Block 68. A new three-story building and private courtyard would be constructed in their place.

The third phase – market-rate housing on Block 67 – would come in a 12-story building with ground-floor amenity/lobby space and above-grade structured parking.

The fourth and final phase would target Block 211. Plans call for construction of a seven-story building with ground-floor amenity/retail space and structured parking.

A 7-11 convenience store and associated parking, on the northwest corner of the block, are not owned by the Western Dominican Province and will remain.

Holst Architecture has worked with the church organization on the conceptual design of each phase. Gorman & Company and Cairn Pacific will need to select their preferred architect of record to take their respective sites forward into schematic design, construction documents and plan sets. No decisions have been made in that regard.

Walsh Construction is providing some preconstruction services to Gorman & Company for the affordable housing project. Both developers will need to select their preferred contractor.

Construction is scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2027 for the affordable housing on Block 62 with completion in 2028 and then start in 2030 for the market-rate housing on Block 67 with completion in 2032. Factors such as system development charge waivers offered by Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Gov. Tina Kotek could accelerate the market-rate schedule, Creager stated.

The Western Dominican Province applied for early assistance on Sept. 3; a meeting has not been scheduled yet.

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The Con-way Master Plan is looking to gain a 194,274-square-foot 6- to 7-story residential building in Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood after receiving design advice from the Portland Design Commission on Thursday.

This was the first design advice request for the project. The site is in the Northwest Plan District and Con-way Master Plan area, bordered by NW Raleigh and Savier, and Northwest 20th Avenue. In total, the master plan includes 12 buildings, three of which are under construction: Freewell, Slabtown Square and Slabtown Savier.

The proposal on Block 292 East, designed by SERA Architects for owner Preg NW Portland LLC of San Mateo, California, would have approximately 166 units.

“This is our 10th block in the neighborhood,” Cairn Pacific Principal James Santana said.

It will be Cairn Pacific’s seventh block with partner Prometheus Real Estate Group.

The U-shaped building will have a courtyard that opens toward the pedestrian accessway. Half of the pedestrian way has been built out already; the rest will be built out with this project.

Katherine Sheie, landscape architect at Lango Hansen Landscape Architects, said that with the other blocks, the design pushed the idea of movement and activity. With Block 292 East, the goal was to make it feel more residential and garden-like.

“T��� really important part that differentiates this block – 292E – from other blocks is the courtyard opening to the pedway,” Sheie said.

Saltwood South, Freewell and Saltwood North all have primary openings to the south, while Block 292 East has a primary access directly from the courtyard. The design includes a meandering design with paths crisscrossing. The landscape team plans to put a signature tree at the intersection of the courtyard and pedestrian accessway.

Its lobby will be in the southwest corner of the site, facing south on to NW Raleigh Street.

The building features a large amount of red brick. It is the primary cladding for the building’s five-story massing and wraps to all four sides of the building.

The design includes a penthouse and gable roof. The gabled two-story townhouses will be on levels 6 and 7 and will be set back from the building’s edge. The material being considered for the penthouse level is currently a wood-looking siding product called Knotwood or other material such as metal siding.

“T��� other thing we’re able to do is we’re able to carve out mechanical wells inside those gabled roofs so we’re able to hide mechanical equipment,” SERA Architects Principal Kurt Schultz said.

The bottom five stories would be made primarily of red brick, with a glassy lobby and two glazed live/work units on two corners of the ground floor. The ground floor would include some residential units on one side of the building, accessed by stairs and raised stoops.

Below-grade parking will have about 128 parking spots and be accessed from NW Savier Street on the north side of the site.

A modification is requested to add a height increase of 19 feet from the allowed 67 feet to a building height of 86 feet. An alternate design meets the 67-foot height limit. Without the two-level gabled penthouse element, the building would meet the 67-foot height limit.

Options discussed for the roof included the gable roof, a flat roof or a lower-pitch roof. The lower-pitch roof would be the same height as the gable roof but would be consistent on all sides of the building.

Several commissioners were in favor of the height modification, assuming there would be modifications to the ground floor activation and public realm. The building has three street frontages and one pedestrian accessway frontage. Commissioners also encouraged the design team to explore the idea of planters in front of the ground floor residential unit stoop entrances.

The project is valued at $60 million, according to the Bureau of Development Services.

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Construction of one of the final projects within the Con-way master plan has begun in the Slabtown neighborhood of Northwest Portland.

Freewell, a 265,000-square-foot development, is being brought to market by Cairn Pacific LLC and Prometheus Real Estate Group. A seven-story building will host 192 apartments, ground-floor retail space and underground parking. A bridge will connect to a two-story pavilion building with amenities.

The project site is Block 291 East, at 2030 N.W. Raleigh St. Freewell will front a future park to be developed by the city of Portland.

The Portland Bureau of Development Services last week issued a $44 million construction permit for Freewell. However, construction costs have increased so much since a permit was sought nearly a year ago that they’re expected to be around $60 million, Cairn Pacific principal Tom DiChiara said.

Freewell is the eighth project for Cairn Pacific in Slabtown. SERA Architects designed the development – the firm’s third for Cairn Pacific in the neighborhood; Saltwood and Saltwood North are the others.

SERA also designed Greystar‘s Slabtown Savier, which was approved by the Design Commission in December 2021. That project will occupy blocks 261 and 262.

“T��� Con-way master plan provided a blank slate to design and develop an entire neighborhood from the ground up,” SERA Architects principal Kurt Schultz stated in a press release. “Our approach when designing at neighborhood scale is to design buildings that are unique but also in harmony with the surrounding context.”

Freewell will feature brick, wood and natural materials, and the pavilion building will be constructed of mass-timber. Materials were chosen as an ode to the neighborhood’s past, when it was filled with warehouses, Schultz stated.

The 20-acre neighborhood previously was owned by the Con-way trucking company. The master plan called for creation of a 24-7, mixed-use area for people to live, work and play.

There are 17 development parcels within the Con-way master plan, and projects for 16 of them are completed or in development. The remaining block, 292 East, is a Prometheus Real Estate Group property. At this point there is no project planned for 292 East, DiChiara said, but developers are hoping it will become senior housing or something other than multifamily.

Over the past nine years, Cairn Pacific and Prometheus Real Estate Group have partnered on five mixed-use projects in the neighborhood. Freewell, their sixth joint venture, will “add a finishing touch to the district,” DiChiara stated.

R&H Construction is the general contractor. Construction is expected to finish in spring 2024.

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Capstone Partners and Cairn Pacific have sold L.L. Hawkins and Slabtown Marketplace for $78 million to an institutional investment company, unloading the multifamily and retail assets that pioneered redevelopment in Northwest Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood.

L.L. Hawkins, 1515 NW 21st Ave., has 113 apartments in studio, one- and two-bedroom floor plans, along with 11,087 square feet of ground-floor retail spaces. Completed in 2015, the six-story project was the first apartment building in the area.

Slabtown Marketplace, which shares a block with L.L. Hawkins, is a renovated freight warehouse that was built in 1952 and made into a retail redevelopment, also in 2015. The 36,000-square-foot building at 2170 N.W. Raleigh St. hosts a New Seasons grocery store, Breakside Brewery and YogaSix.

L.L. Hawkins and Slabtown Marketplace were sold in a single transaction. The buyer declined to be identified, and the information was not yet available in Multnomah County records. Chris Nelson, principal of Capstone Partners, said the buyer was a “large institutional investor.”

The sale represents a successful exit for Capstone and Cairn Pacific, both local developers. “It was a good outcome, for sure,” Nelson said.

The projects jump-started the transformation of the Slabtown area from an industrial zone into a mixed-use neighborhood.

“It was kind of the first step in the evolution of a great neighborhood,” Nelson said.

Developers including Cairn, Prometheus and Guardian Real Estate Services have followed up with more projects that have begun to fill out the neighborhood. Greystar recently gained planning approval to build two multifamily structures totaling 363 apartments on Northwest Savier Street.

Capstone and Cairn Pacific partnered with a venture capital investor, who was not identified, on L.L. Hawkins and Slabtown Marketplace.

“It is bittersweet to sell this project,” Nelson added in an email. “T��� project was certainly a catalyst for the neighborhood, but we decided it was a good time to sell with the strong investor interest for core multifamily and grocery-anchored retail investments in A-plus locations.”

CBRE represented the sellers.

“L.L. Hawkins was the first multifamily property built in Slabtown and truly compliments one of the most desired locations within Portland,” Joe Nydahl, first vice president at CBRE’s Portland office, stated in a news release. “LL Hawkins is one of the highest-quality projects to trade in the Portland market, featuring desirable ground-floor retail as well as a pedestrian thoroughfare connecting Slabtown Marketplace, offering residents convenient access to high-quality retail including New Seasons Market.”

Nydahl, Phil Oester and Josh McDonald of CBRE’s Pacific Northwest Multifamily group and Philip Voorhees, Jimmy Slusher and Joseph Blatner of CBRE’s National Retail Partners – West group represented the seller in the transaction.

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Developed and built through a pandemic, new regulatory obstacles and a swift and severe economic downturn, Greystar‘s Sawbuck is nearing completion with 182 apartment units in Goose Hollow.

Crews are finishing apartments, installing mailboxes and laying brick on the podium patio deck in anticipation of residents. Apartments are available for preleasing. The eight-story building is on track to apply for a temporary certificate of occupancy in mid-to-late July, said Doug Burges, Greystar’s director of development for the region.

Sawbuck will also be one of the first large multifamily projects to offer inclusionary zoning units required by the city of Portland.

“We proved it by getting this project to go that we can attract investment at this scale and deliver affordable units,” Burges said.

Sawbuck, 1725 S.W. Salmon St., takes its place in an increasingly dense Goose Hollow. Providence Park is across the street on Eighteenth Avenue. On the building’s south side, across Salmon Street, is the massive under-construction edifice of Lincoln High School. Nearby, other office, commercial and residential projects are in various stages of development and construction, while others have stalled.

Portland’s multifamily market has been buffeted by the Covid-19 pandemic, increased regulations such as inclusionary zoning that make projects less profitable and perceptions about the city’s out-of-control homelessness and sometimes-violent protests. Sawbuck is one of a handful of sizable multifamily buildings that are due to be completed this year.

Sawbuck’s completion is more like an echo of past economic conditions than a sign of current market robustness, said Noel Johnson, principal with developer Cairn Pacific, who is not involved in the project.

“This project, and there are a few others that are still yet to finish, are examples of the market which is a distant memory at this point,” Johnson said. “That doesn’t take anything away from the project – we’re lucky to have new housing units – but it doesn’t say anything about today’s market.”

Sawbuck was backed financially by a major insurance company and received a construction loan from City National Bank.

Greystar is interested in building more projects in the city of Portland, Burges said. “We want to do business in the city of Portland because we believe in the long-term,” he said. “We know the challenges, but I think things are going in a positive direction.”

Greystar, which is based in Charleston, S.C., opted to meet its affordable housing obligations by providing 10 percent of units affordable at the level of 60 percent of area median income. The developer also used an option to provide an equivalent number of bedrooms rather than units. The result is 10 two-bedroom units offered at restricted rents.

In return for the inclusionary units, Greystar receives a 100 percent property tax abatement on all residential units for 10 years. Burges said the tax break “barely makes it work” financially to build the project.

Sawbuck was designed by SERA Architects and built by Hoffman Construction serving as general contractor. (Hoffman is also taking the lead at Lincoln High next door, making Goose Hollow a nexus of activity for the local contractor).

Construction continued despite the pandemic. When positive COVID-19 tests arose, crews were quarantined while others continued working, Burges said. “Hoffman did a very good job of dealing with it,” he said.

Construction and design were complicated by the subterranean presence of Tanner Creek, located about 40 feet below ground. Crews replaced a brick aqueduct dating from the early 20th century with structural steel. The building essentially straddles the creek, with no structural elements placed atop the waterway.

The creek also made it impossible to build a conventional below-grade parking garage. Sawbuck instead uses mechanized stackers for which steel was imported from China. The stackers can accommodate 86 vehicles.

Greystar purchased the property, a former parking lot, from TriMet for $6.5 million in 2019, according to public records.

Burges said Greystar was attracted by Portland’s market fundamentals and some perks of the Goose Hollow site: It’s on the MAX line and surrounded by long-term institutional properties including Providence Park, the Multnomah Athletic Club, Lincoln High and Zion Lutheran Church.

“It was not easy,” Burges said. “But it’s a project that’s built right. It’s attractive. And if you’re going to be among these institutions, you better build something to last.”

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For a seven-story, 134-unit multifamily project planned in North Portland, Ethos Development implemented a version of the city’s inclusionary housing requirements by offering three-bedroom apartments that are smaller than the one-bedrooms in the same building.

In Analog PDX, a 134-unit project planned for a North Portland site, the five rent-restricted, three-bedroom apartments will average 772 square feet. The building also would have four market-rate, one-bedroom apartments averaging 810 square feet.

The City Council hated the proposal.

In two meetings in late April, city commissioners grilled developer Paul Del Vecchio, founding principal of Portland’s Ethos Development, regarding the unusually small three-bedroom apartments. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty called them “outrageous and egregious” and said that they didn’t meet the “sniff test” of the city’s inclusionary housing program.

Commissioner Dan Ryan, who oversees the Bureau of Development Services, said the project doesn’t satisfy the city’s goals for providing affordable housing for Portland families.

“This just isn’t high-quality family low-income housing,” he said. “This project does fall short.”

In the end, only Hardesty voted against the project’s tax exemption, and it was approved. Del Vecchio said he’ll move toward obtaining building permits with the aim of breaking ground at 1871 N. Flint Ave. in August or September.

But Portland developers said they and their investors were spooked by the council’s last-minute dive into the minutia of bedroom sizes. For developers, elected politicians meddling in floor layouts after a project had been in the city’s land-use approval pipeline for almost two years was a near worst-case scenario.

“This event today made it all the way to Boston, San Francisco and L.A.,” said Sam Rodriguez, senior managing director for Mill Creek Residential Trust, one of the most prolific multifamily developers in Portland, during the City Council’s April 21 meeting. “I had three investors call me freaking out. ‘What’s going on? Are we going to have our projects approved or not?’”

Noel Johnson, a principal with local developer Cairn Pacific, said the 11th-hour opposition to Analog PDX has already done damage, causing investors to wonder whether the council will be “playing politics with the individual project in front of them.”

“That’s just the best way to shut off new investment just as people are maybe thinking about it,” Johnson said in an interview.

Johnson also testified before commissioners on behalf of Analog PDX.

The debate regarding Analog PDX was the latest twist in the saga of Portland’s inclusionary housing policy, which was enacted in 2016 to require developers of multifamily projects of 20 units or more in certain parts of the city to offer affordable units with restricted rents or pay a fee in lieu.

In exchange, developers may apply for the city’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption (MULTE) program. MULTE gives developers a 10-year property-tax break. City councils are empowered by state law to approve MULTE exemptions, making them the last step in the process before developers apply for building permits. (The program has a rolling cap on the exemptions to ensure that tax revenue doesn’t a hit too large in any given budget year).

Developers fear commissioners will use their power to approve or deny MULTE exemptions as an opportunity to meddle in multifamily building projects late in the process – after they’ve been designed, engineered and approved by the Portland Design Commission or Bureau of Development Services staff.

“T���y’re basically suggesting the MULTE program is a discretionary checkpoint,” Del Vecchio said in an interview.

That is not something that was part of the inclusionary housing program when it was promulgated in 2016, Housing Bureau Director Shannon Callahan said.

“We had not contemplated when we drafted the original housing code a situation where an individual MULTE would be denied,” Callahan told commissioners. “But we did contemplate at some point we would reach the overall cap,” she said, referring to the agreement on tax exemptions with Multnomah County.

Hardesty’s and Ryan’s offices did not respond to interview requests. But in council meetings, the commissioners suggested Del Vecchio was doing an end-run around inclusionary housing rules.

“I just want to know if any of you would live in those bedrooms – a three-bedroom unit that is smaller than a studio,” Hardesty said.

Del Vecchio expressed frustration that he was hauled before commissioners to defend the project. He said the meeting cost him thousands of dollars to compensate his project team experts who testified – Allison Reynolds, a land-use attorney at Stoel Rives, and Carrie Strickland, founding principal of Works Progress Architecture.

Analog PDX meets inclusionary housing requirements via what is known as the reconfiguration option. Essentially, developers may provide an equivalent number of affordable bedrooms rather than units. Former Commissioner Steve Novick pushed for the option to encourage developers to build affordable family-size apartments rather than just studios or one-bedrooms.

“Our strategy to reconfigure to three bedrooms was a genuine attempt to provide what we believe to be the most needed affordable housing type,” Del Vecchio wrote to the City Council.

Ethos isn’t the only developer to propose small multi-bedroom apartments, Callahan said in an interview.

“We’ve been seeing some units that are smaller than a unit of lesser bedrooms,” she said. “It was one of the more extreme examples.”

The MULTE approval process has given the City Council a deep familiarity with the multifamily housing pipeline, Callahan said.

“Council is able to see – because they have approval over the MULTE – at a very granular level what is being produced in the market,” she said.

Part of the push and pull between developers and commissioners is over the council’s goal to provide affordable housing for low-income families. Commissioners said such small three-bedroom units could be filled by groups of singles, and not families.

Del Vecchio said he has no control over who rents his apartments, and isn’t even allowed to ask because of Fair Housing rules.

“You’re just creating caricatures of people,” he said. “Who knows who’s going to move into anything? You just don’t.”

The inclusionary housing program has had a series of unintended consequences during the past five years. Among them: developers building many 19-unit apartment buildings to remain just below the threshold required to provide affordable units.

As a result of Analog PDX and other projects, the City Council instructed the Portland Housing Bureau to regulate bedroom sizes in inclusionary housing projects. New administrative rules, which became effective April 23, require reconfigured units to be larger than the average size of each of the unit types with fewer bedrooms.

The Housing Bureau will also issue a request for proposals, probably this summer, for a consultant to evaluate the city’s inclusionary housing program, Callahan said.

Meanwhile, Ethos Development is selling off its land holdings in Portland, Del Vecchio said. After Analog PDX is completed, Ethos will do no new multifamily projects in the city for the foreseeable future, he said.

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A new apartment complex weaves into the Con-way master-planned area of Northwest Portland. The seven-story apartment building, planned for Block 291 east, will live adjacent to the neighborhood park.

“This park is meant to be the heart of the neighborhood,” Kurt Schultz, principal at SERA Architects, said.

Prometheus Real Estate Group and Cairn Pacific are the property owners. SERA Architects is the designer and R&H Construction Co. is the contractor.

Project Freewell‘s site has two buildings on it designed to respond to the park next to it. The stand-alone two-story pavilion building lends as a step stool for the 192-unit apartment complex down to the park.

The pavilion building will be constructed out of mass-timber wood and host a fitness studio, community room and a maker’s studio. It’ll also have an art gallery, which will be open to the public on the first Thursday of each month.

The design’s goal is to “let the park roll into the buildings,” Schultz said.

The apartment complex is a 5-2 with wood framing over concrete — the seventh-floor sets-back to open up to the park. The building is 235,000 square feet, including a 120-lot basement parking garage.

The complex’s ground floor will have retail spaces, a lobby, building amenities, and a few residential units. Live-work units will also be available facing the park.

Schultz said the challenge was creating a building that meshed with the park and addressed the neighborhood association’s needs.

The neighborhood association suggested that the two-story amenities building would give the park light and help keep the space open.

Construction on the project plans to start in December 2021 and will be finished by 2023.

“It’s really hard to create a new neighborhood from scratch but it’s a great opportunity,” Schultz said.

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 Alex Jensen at ajensen@djcoregon.com.

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Commercial landlords in the Portland-metro area are enduring the ongoing shutdowns along with their tenants, but also pointing to reasons for optimism.

Different commercial real estate sectors have been affected by varying degrees. Retailers have experienced tremendous stress because of pandemic-driven closures; some have worked with building owners to have portions of their rent delayed or forgiven. Other sectors, such as grocery, have seen little negative impact.

Restaurants have been hit particularly hard by losses of sit-in dining and alcohol revenues.

“It’s the restaurants and bars that are the lion’s share of the impact,” said Tom DiChiara, principal at Cairn Pacific, a developer that has invested heavily in Northwest Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood.

Some restaurants were immediately in a dire financial situation when stay-at-home orders were given, DiChiara said. That may impact how Cairn Pacific chooses tenants for its buildings in the future, he added.

“Some of that was surprising and warrants further study as far as the financials of tenants,” he said.

Beam Development also has a substantial tenant portfolio of local restaurants and shops such as Bunk Sandwiches and Water Avenue Coffee. Some of those tenants have kept money flowing in with “fairly robust” to-go service, Beam Development principal Jonathan Malsin said.

“Public-facing businesses continue to be at least initially the hardest hit,” he said. “It hasn’t been some kind of catastrophic fall-off in collections. But businesses that are suffering, we’re working with them and helping to maintain occupancy.”

Cairn Pacific has reduced or deferred rents to keep commercial tenants in place. But such concessions can’t be extended indefinitely, DiChiara said.

“We’re working with them where we can,” he said. “But there’s going to be a limit. There’s going to be a limit at some point.”

Additional economic ramifications are expected to materialize as the coronavirus crisis drags on, Malsin said.

“It’ll start affecting all businesses, but a lot of those office types of businesses that are not publicly facing may be hit later,” he said.

JLL recently released a study of how Portland’s commercial real estate sector performed in past recessions. The overall takeaway was positive, particularly for office.

“What we did tend to, in terms of rents, was bottom out faster than the national average, and we tended to rebound faster than the national average,” said Tim Harrison, research manager at JLL in Portland.

Coming out of past recessions, Portland experienced strong population growth from young people moving for employment.

“I don’t think there’s a reason to think the same thing isn’t going to happen again,” Harrison said. “I can certainly see another wave of in-migration coming our way.”

Most of Beam’s tenants have relatively small footprints. That’s proven a boon in past recessions, Malsin said.

“Having a rent roll with a lot of smaller tenants is not a bad way to get through a recession,” he said. “If a 1,500-square-foot tenant doesn’t make it in the middle of a recession, it’s easier for us to pivot and re-rent at a lower cost,” he said.

Commercial rent collections have remained strong for Menashe Properties, CEO and principal Jordan Menashe said.

“It’s a mixed bag, but collections for April and May were 97 or 98 (percent),” he said. “June, as of (Monday) morning, is looking good.”

Nevertheless, Portland now is being affected by both the pandemic and the upheaval of nationwide protests.

“Our community has taken a one-two blow, but my gut tells me that we’ll get through the other side of this,” Menashe said. “My positivity radar has gone up.”

But the extent of the downturn remains to be seen, DiChiara said.

“It depends on how long things play out,” he said. “June is still a little too early to see. We have engaged with our tenants and have plans with them that will get us through the summer months.”

Multnomah County will be the last jurisdiction in Oregon to apply for Phase 1 reopening procedures. County officials have said the target to begin the first phase is June 12.

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Portland developer Cairn Pacific is moving forward with plans to construct eight small multifamily buildings near Forest Park in Northwest Portland.

The Northbound Collective development would feature cutting-edge architecture and building materials in a unique checkerboard site plan to maximize open space and corner units.

The buildings would be constructed of mass timber – either cross-laminated timber or mass-plywood panels – and range from 15 to 19 units. In total, the development would have approximately 144 units.

The concept is for something better than a typical apartment box, Cairn Pacific principal Noel Johnson said.

“In a post-COVID world, people will value their home even more,” he said.

The proposed development is part of a roughly 3-acre group of properties Cairn Pacific has collected in the area of Northwest 29th Avenue and Roosevelt Street. Nearby, the firm is proposing to build 14 East Coast-style attached row houses. Those are being designed by local architect Richard Potestio.

For Northbound Collective, Johnson invited Waechter Architecture and Jones Architecture to split the design task. Each firm is designing four of the buildings. Each building is unique – similar to, but not quite like any other.

Johnson described the idea as “variations on a theme,” as in classical music.

Each lot in the checkerboard layout will have no-build easement to create implied property lines and space for window openings on adjacent buildings.

“What’s cool is that the combination of a scheme we worked on jointly – and then we each went our own direction in architecture – has resulted in something that’s much richer than we would have come up with collaboratively,” said – Alan Jones, principal at Jones Architecture.

About 70 percent of the units will sit on building corners, far more than in a typical apartment building, providing more natural light and views.

“We’re able to put window openings on that property line façade,” said Ben Waechter, principal of Waechter Architecture. “Even though these are zero-lot-line buildings, we’re essentially able to put windows on all four sides on all of our buildings.”

The buildings will be different than most. The Waechter-designed structures are arranged in a donut shape, with a central landing or atrium on each floor. That enables the apartments to have no hallways.

Johnson, who previously lived next to the site for about 10 years, said he’s eager to provide housing in a growing neighborhood near Forest Park and employment centers such as Montgomery Park.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this totally underutilized area into something cool since about 2004,” Johnson said.

It’s a different approach for Cairn Pacific: The developer, with Johnson and founding principals Tom DiChiara and Rob Hinnen, has been a major force in transforming the Slabtown neighborhood with large-scale mixed-use projects including the L.L. Hawkins and Leland James buildings.

Northbound Collective appears likely to become one of the largest multifamily projects to avoid Portland’s inclusionary housing ordinance. It requires developers of buildings with at least 20 multifamily units to designate a portion of them as rent-restricted or pay a fee in lieu.

“T���re’s no inclusionary housing encumbrance,” Johnson said. “T��� unit count was driven by design considerations that are unique to each building.”

Mechanical parking will be provided in a ratio of 0.45 spaces per unit.

On Monday, the Portland Bureau of Development Services sent other city bureaus a request for responses to the developer’s proposal.

For now, the project team is waiting on permission to extend roads in the area. Cairn Pacific plans to build portions of Northwest 30th Avenue, Roosevelt Street and Wilson Street around the development.

The streets were supposed to have been built out after a 1982 City Council resolution, but the Portland Bureau of Transportation simply never built them, Johnson said. Cairn Pacific must record plats for the new development, but can’t do so until the roads are built, he said.

The project team is in discussions with general contractors experienced in building with mass timber. The developer and architects are aiming to bring the efficiency, visual warmth and environmental benefits that mass timber has given large office projects to a residential scale.

“We think there can be quite a bit of efficiency using CLT in a smaller footprint,” Jones said.

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Multifamily projects are continuing to pop up in the Slabtown area of Northwest Portland, including one at 2222 N.W. Raleigh St.

General contractor R&H Construction is building Raleigh Slabtown, a six-story mixed-use development that will cover three-quarters of a standard city block at the corner of Northwest 22nd Avenue and Raleigh Street. The project, designed by SERA Architects, is technically just outside of the Con-way Master Plan area. But the development from Cairn Pacific and Prometheus Real Estate Group will complement buildings being constructed within the area.

Raleigh Slabtown will have a total of 173 residential units, including a select few on the ground floor that will be accessible only from a landscaped courtyard.

The project team is employing the typical top-down construction for wood-framed buildings of this type. And right now, drywall installers and other interior tradespeople are dominating the job site.

The use of prefabricated wall panels and other strategies have combined to accelerate construction.

“Pretty much all trades are on site,” said Ted Rhodes, a project manager with R&H Construction. “We’ve got at least 100 guys here every day right now, and with 173 (residential) units you walk around and it seems sparse in some places. But yeah, there are over 100 guys here each day.”

More than 60 of those are drywall installers from Westside Drywall and Insulation. But the site also is populated at present with HVAC technicians with American Heating, sprinkler fitters with Delta Fire Protection, and ironworkers with Refa Steel Erectors who are erecting the steel canopies on ground-floor units. Another subcontractor with a large presence is B&B Masonry; its workers are busy laying brick masonry for the exterior.

Five wood-framed stories are atop a concrete podium and two levels of below-grade parking.

Builders broke ground in late 2018, and the first slab pour followed in January 2019. Now, completion isn’t far off.

“T��� project is going really well,” Rhodes said. “We’re on schedule and slated to finish at the end of July. We’re going to start our site concrete in the courtyard, where it wraps around. And then we have a west courtyard where there’s a mail room, but mostly it’s private patios for the ground-floor units.”

A Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating is being targeted for the project.

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