Simple, an online bank founded in Portland, plans to sublease two floors of its Central Eastside offices at Clay Creative.

The decision to put the office space, totaling 30,000 square feet, back out to market comes as the company prepares to move into a second office building, Clay Pavilion, in spring 2018.

Clay Creative was completed in 2016 at 240 S.E. Clay St. The building has approximately 60,000 square feet of office space.

The adjacent second building, Clay Pavilion, is under construction at 120 S.E. Clay St. The three-story office building will have 75,000 square feet. The office space in Clay Pavilion was designed to Simple’s specifications, Simple spokeswoman Shauna Causey said.

The move comes amid cutbacks at the company, which laid off 38 employees, or about 10 percent of its workforce, earlier this summer.

Subleasing the Clay Creative space is not related to the layoffs, Causey said.

Simple still plans to occupy Clay Pavilion during the second quarter of 2018, Causey said. “Since we are moving into the new office, we do have space available in our current office,” she said.

Both Clay Creative and Clay Pavilion come from developer Killian Pacific of Vancouver, Washington.

Simple was founded in Portland in 2009. The online banking startup was acquired in 2014 by a Spanish bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.

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A new industrial office building is on the rise in the Central Eastside Industrial District at the site of the old Rexel/Taylor Electric Supply Co. warehouse, which became popular site for graffiti artists after a 2006 fire reduced it to a concrete shell. Killian Pacific purchased the property in 2012, and is building five stories of creative office space over a floor of tuck-under parking.

Turner Construction began work on the Mackenzie-designed project in early May of this year. Some removal of contaminated soil was required, and footings were installed under the cast walls of the existing structure, much of which was left in place as a design element and a nod to the location’s recent history as a canvas for graffiti artists.

Clay Creative is being constructed with steel moment frames and exposed glulam beams. The building’s second floor is a post-tensioned concrete deck, while the upper floor decks are being constructed of 2×6 timber on edge. The floors will be raised to allow for concealment of ducting and electrical and communications wiring.

The project totals approximately 90,000 square feet, including tuck-under and surface parking spaces. A small gym, shower area, and bicycle commuter amenities will occupy space on the ground floor. Five solar photovoltaic trees are being installed in the parking lot, and the building is targeting a LEED Gold rating. The project is slated for completion in May 2016.

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Apex Real Estate has been awarded leasing rights to a new five-story Class A office building under construction at 240 S.E. Clay St. in the Central Eastside Industrial District.

Leading the leasing efforts for Apex will be Mark Friel, Rennie Dunn and Nathan Sasaki.

Friel said he is already talking with representatives of several businesses that might become anchor tenants for the building. Space will become available to lease in spring 2016.

“Our biggest selling point is sustainability, and we will be LEED platinum,” Friel said. “We also have larger floor space for bigger tenants.”

The building will also offer parking, with 1.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet of office space, Friel said.

“It’s also the quality (of the building) with timber-beam construction and operable windows,” he said. “It’s really just a brand new building that will fit into the neighborhood.”

The building will also have a fitness room, showers and bike storage, Friel said.

Killian Pacific, which has several other projects under way in the Central Eastside, is the building’s developer.

The 72,000-square-foot building will have open floor plans and flexible spaces, Friel said, and interest is already high.

“We’re looking for creative users like software and technology and have been talking to several (potential) anchor tenants,” he said. “Interest is really good, but nothing is signed yet.”

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A Southeast Portland property destroyed by fire could have new tenants by the end of 2015.

Vancouver, Wash.-based Killian Pacific will construct a 60,000-square-foot industrial office building at the site of the former Rexel/Taylor Electric Supply Co. at Southeast Third Ave. and Clay St.

Kelly Thelen of Mackenzie on Dec. 1 submitted a building permit application to the Portland Bureau of Development Services.

Noel Johnson, vice president at Killian Pacific, said they’d like to start construction just after the first of the year and deliver by Dec. 2015.

“We’ve been calling it Clay Creative, but some people are calling it 240 Clay and that’s fine too,” Johnson said. “It’s really a creative-class office building built for an intelligence-based economy.”

The supply company building was destroyed by a late-night fire in 2006, but some of the original concrete walls survived erect. Johnson said the new construction will retain about half of the remaining walls.

“Those walls have a cool history with all the graffiti on them,” Johnson said. “We’re saving them because that site has become kind of an urban art park.”

Clay Creative will take up less than half of the full block site, Johnson said. The rest of the ground-level space will be surface parking. The plans also call for parking that will “tuck under” the new building, Johnson said.

Each floor plate is 16,000 square feet, according to Adam Tyler, project manager with Killian Pacific. The plans allow for each floor to be partitioned into office spaces as small as 900 square feet, allowing for an array of possible tenants.

Plans call for a five-story, timber-framed structure resembling a warehouse from the early 20^th century. The interior will feature concrete floors, open floor plans, high ceilings and exposed timber beams.

“The structure is truly like a 100-year-old warehouse with big, giant windows,” Johnson said. “We’ve also included raised floors, as opposed to having exposed Internet, electrical and ducting.”

The floors at Clay Creative are designed to hide the building’s infrastructure, keeping the look clean while also allowing for maximum flexibility, Johnson explained.

“Let’s say you like a warmer work space. You can just pick up and move your work station to an area near one of the heating ducts,” he said. “And when you want to change work station locations you don’t have to call an electrician.”

Johnson said the below-floor wiring will be accessible via lifting floor panels, allowing tenants to configure their office space in a way that works best for their needs.

The open floor plan encourages communal work and collaboration, Johnson said. The building will also feature a kitchen on the rooftop level, as well as a meeting space and a deck lounge with views of downtown.

In June, Killian Pacific entered into a contract to purchase the lot due west of the Rexel/Taylor Electrical Supply Co. site. Johnson said they haven’t figured out what to do with that site, as they’re focusing their efforts on Clay Creative; a development getting under way in Vancouver, Wash.; and the Goat Blocks development in Southeast Portland.

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A property devastated by a fire nearly seven years ago soon could rise from the ashes.

Vancouver, Wash.-based Killian Pacific is planning to construct a five-story, 60,000-square-foot office building on the site of the former Rexel/Taylor Electric Supply Co. warehouse at Southeast Third Avenue and Clay Street. The structure went up in flames late one night in 2006, and the hollowed-out walls left behind have since attracted graffiti artists and photographers.

For the project, Killian Pacific is looking to the past for architectural styles, but also to the future as it considers technological needs.

“Basically, we are reinventing the wheel,” said Noel Johnson, vice president of Killian Pacific. “We are figuring out how to build this building like they did 100 years ago. It turns out it’s really tough because no one has built that (way) in 100 years.”

Johnson said the plan is to construct a timber-framed structure, like a warehouse from the early 1900s. Planned accoutrements include light-colored brick, concrete floors, lofty ceilings and big timber beams. But the building also will be modern, and therein lies the challenge.

Anticipating technological advances can be difficult. Nevertheless, the building must be “future ready,” according to Johnson.

“A lot of times when you build a building, the key plumbing areas and key service areas are so buried that you can’t get access to them to upgrade in the future,” he said. “If we can’t make a living building now, we can preserve the ability to do that in the future.”

The idea is to create simple, straightforward designs. Plumbing pipes will be accessible so that when technologies like gray water treatment systems become more readily available, they can be installed easily. Similarly, Killian Pacific is building space for solar technology in anticipation of it becoming more affordable.

Fitting Internet wires, telephone lines and HVAC into an architectural space that values simplicity can be difficult too. So instead of cramming those systems behind an acoustic ceiling, the team will run them beneath the floors.

The building also will have large, operable windows and a skinny footprint so that natural light reaches every square foot. Jeff Hamilton, a principal at Ankrom Moisan Architects, the project’s designer, said those aren’t new ideas; they’re just “a lot of things that people stopped doing a long time ago.”

“People want things simple,” he said. “They want open space (and) natural light. They don’t want to be stuck at their desk all day long.”

To that end, the building will have communal work spaces. A rooftop unit will provide a kitchen and meeting space for all tenants, as well as a deck lounge that overlooks the city.

The building will come with parking for about 90 cars, hidden behind the remaining walls of the burned building. Hamilton said the team has designed an arcade feature to mirror some of the area’s older industrial warehouses, as well as a ground-floor retail space that could suit a coffee shop.

A big challenge in designing office buildings is anticipating the need for air conditioning. A system too big can be costly and inefficient. A system too small can hurt tenant comfort.

Killian Pacific is incorporating a hybrid system that supplements air conditioning with chilled water lines that circulate through the building. Johnson said the concept is similar to what the government does on a national level, in which coal and nuclear power are supplemented with wind, hydro and solar.

Pairing superior insulation with the brick and wood bones of yesteryear will help. Johnson said many old warehouse buildings can outperform newer, glass skyscrapers in terms of energy efficiency.

“The only reason some of these old warehouses are poor in efficiency is they don’t have proper insulation,” he said. “But on a fundamental level, they’re actually pretty decent.”

The site has been in limbo the last several years because of environmental concerns over hazardous materials that were released during the fire. Killian Pacific, working with the Department of Environmental Quality and the previous property owner, has patiently waded through the mess; crews will have to remove some contaminated soils.

According to PortlandMaps, Killian Pacific purchased the property in December for $1.23 million, but Johnson said the company has been working on the project for the past year. He hopes to begin construction by the end of 2013.

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