Completion is finally in sight for Multnomah County’s Central Courthouse project.

With delivery scheduled for spring 2020, the three-year process to erect a new 17-story, $325 million courthouse building on Portland’s waterfront is entering the home stretch as the number of craft workers on site starts to ramp down significantly. From a high three months ago of some 350 workers on site each day, that figure is now down to just over 200 as rough-in has been completed and finish work accelerates.

“The biggest period was about three or four months ago because you had everything happening,” said Justin Paterson, project manager for construction manager/general contractor Hoffman Construction. “You were still doing rough-in on the upper floors, but now the wet-side mechanical guys are pulling out and the dry-side mechanical guys are pulling out from the rough in, and they’re down to a couple of people.”

Architecture firms SRG Partnership and CGL RicciGreene designed the 461,000 square foot building, which will feature 44 total courtrooms on floors eight through 17. Additional small claims, traffic and other high-volume court functions will be located in the renovated historic Jefferson Station building at the southwest corner of the project site on Southwest First Avenue and Jefferson Street.

The project is aiming for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold rating. The new facility will replace the old county courthouse on Southwest Fourth Avenue, which was completed in 1914 and is considered by the county to be functionally obsolete. The older building does not meet modern seismic codes, and is considered at high risk in case of an earthquake.

The new courthouse will be an estimated 46 percent more efficient than a conventional code building, and will use energy saving strategies that include radiant slab heating and cooling, a high-efficiency chiller plant, displacement ventilation, radiant panel heating and cooling, thermal storage in fire and rainwater tanks and chilled beams. A rooftop solar array will help generate power for the building.

Another notable feature is the limestone cladding used on the building exterior and on the interior walls of the main lobby. The cladding was fabricated by Columbia Stone and is being installed by the company’s own personnel.

Further, because the building is designed to withstand a significant earthquake, viscous dampers akin to shock absorbers have been placed throughout floors eight through 17, while outsized concrete and steel structural members anchor its framework.

This is most evident in the main entry, where massive octagonal structural columns serve both a functional and aesthetic purpose.

“It’s not hollow on the inside, it’s solid concrete and it’s poured exactly like that,” Paterson said. “It’s got a wide-flange beam on the inside of it and then a rebar cage and basically a steel shell goes around that. We build that in two halves, board form line it, stand it up, bolt it together and then the concrete is pumped in from the bottom.”

Once the head pressure falls too low, he added, which is right around the 40-foot mark, crews quickly switch over and start pouring from the top. “You’re trying to make the gap, the seam, disappear,” Paterson said. “So they have to move pretty quickly.”

There’s the new, and there’s also the tried and true. The renovation of the historic, three-story Jefferson Station building falls squarely in the latter category. The first reinforced concrete structure built in Portland, the old building is being refurbished for use as high-traffic courtroom space, but because of its historic designation the original façade has been retained even as the building has been physically connected with the new courthouse tower.

Another original touch, however, is purely for show.

A 20-ton-capacity gantry crane dating to 1909 will remain on its original track on the top level of Jefferson Station, still able to roll back and forth smoothly on its track. That discovery, however, took a bit of work.

“It (the crane) was actually still sitting on a little stub of rail that was still there,” Paterson said. “We do a lot of work for Sound Transit in Washington, so we called them up and said ‘Hey, where do we buy railroad track?’ And they said ‘Oh, no problem, we’ve got a railroad track company,’ and he sent me a name.”

A Hoffman engineer sent the firm a profile of the needed track and a photo of the Jefferson Station crane. The response was somewhat unexpected.

“One of our engineers sent them a profile of it and a picture of it and the guy said ‘You know what? We actually have some of that in our yard.’ So they shipped it down here, it was actually pretty cheap, and we installed it ourselves.”

As it turns out, the century-old crane was built to last.

“We just connected the rail together and some guys got up there and unlocked the wheels and the damn thing still rolls,” Paterson said. “It’s got a chain fall on it and they started pulling on the chain and it traveled on its own.”

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A celebration was held Friday to mark the topping out of the Multnomah County Central Courthouse project in downtown Portland. The final structural beam was placed atop the 17-story tower by ironworkers with Local 29 working for Alliance Industrial Group.

The project’s groundbreaking was held in October 2016, and construction manager/general contractor Hoffman Construction began major work on the $324.5 million project in spring 2017. Ongoing façade work is expected to last through next April, and interiors and finishes will be completed near the end of 2019. Commissioning will begin next summer and run through early 2020, and a grand opening is scheduled for that spring.

The project’s design team includes SRG Partnership, the prime architect, and CGL RicciGreene, which is handling courts programming and design. Day CPM is the owner’s representative for Multnomah County.

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Despite its design not yet being approved and construction months away from beginning, a groundbreaking was held Tuesday for the Multnomah County Central Courthouse. Major work on the project is slated to begin in the spring of 2017; in the meantime, the demolition of the Veritable Quandary building and tree removal will begin next month, and the new building’s design will be reviewed for the second time by the Historic Landmarks Commission on Oct. 24.

The planned courthouse, designed by SRG Partnership and CGL RicciGreene, will have 17 stories and reach 325 feet in height. It will contain a total of about 440,000 square feet that will include courtrooms, offices for district attorneys, public defenders, and sheriffs. The building will connect to the historic Jefferson Station office condominium building at Southwest First Avenue and Jefferson Street, triggering review of the project by the Historic Landmarks Commission.

Multnomah County has so far acquired all but two of the nine units at Jefferson Station, which will undergo renovations and be used as high-volume courts dealing with traffic and parking infractions, small claims, and landlord-tenant disputes.

Hoffman Construction will serve as the construction manager/general contractor on the project, and DAY CPM will serve as the owner’s representative. The building is slated for completion in 2020.

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Four finalists are vying to design the new Multnomah County Courthouse in Portland.

The teams still in the running to design the $250 million courthouse are: DLR Group, a national firm with a Portland office, in partnership with Portland-based THA Architecture; Portland-based SERA Architects with Seattle-based NBBJ; SRG Partnership, which has offices in Portland and Seattle, with New York-based RicciGreene Associates, and Portland-based ZGF Architects with Heery International, which has a Portland office.

Finalist interviews are scheduled to take place on June 15, and a design team will be hired shortly thereafter, county spokesman David Austin said in an email.

The county’s request for proposals seeking a general contractor for the project closed Monday. Five firms – Hoffman Construction, Howard S. Wright, Skanska USA Building, Sundt Construction and Turner Construction – responded.

County commissioners in April selected a vacant county-owned site near the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge for the new courthouse over an alternative location on a parking lot between the KOIN Center and the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront hotel. County officials issued a request for proposals seeking architects for the project shortly after this decision with the expectation of the design process kicking off by this fall.

Initial plans for the new courthouse call for an L-shaped building with approximately 17 stories that would wrap around the nearby Veritable Quandary restaurant and the historic Jefferson Station building.

The state- and county-funded project is scheduled to be complete by 2020.

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