A new 141-unit student housing complex is now open in Southwest Portland. But first the project team – including developer College Housing Northwest, architect SERA Architects and general contractor Pavilion Construction – had to overcome a significant site challenge.

The Amy, an $18 million project, was built at 2031 S.W. 10th Ave., slightly south of Interstate 405. The property’s west side, which borders a Portland Bureau of Transportation right-of-way, has a slope with over 50 feet of elevation change.

A roughly 20-foot-tall retaining wall was constructed to hold up the hillside. But it was deemed inadequate, so engineers decided to use a soil nail system. This was accomplished by drilling holes into the exposed wall face and placing tension-resisting steel bars into the holes.

Then winter arrived in 2017, when the retaining wall actually moved beyond established tolerance.

“We had to buttress it and redesign it and go in and pour this additional shelf which goes up to the road,” College Housing Northwest development manager Ryan Sturley said.

So a second retaining wall was constructed.

“We kept the original one and we poured the new one up top,” Sturley said. “Part of the issue up there is Cardinell (Drive). Even though the original wall was 15 or 20 feet below the road, PBOT would not let us put soil nails underneath the right-of-way, or tiebacks.”

As a result of the slippage, the entire project was delayed while the shoring wall was redesigned.

“We had to put more, smaller soil nails in, and it was a definite challenge,” Sturley said. “We had to pause the project, we had to redesign, and then pour an even larger wall. It was the biggest challenge we faced and it was a big undertaking.”

The Amy, near Portland State University, is the first new development in many years for College Housing Northwest, a nonprofit. It has primarily built apartments in Portland and Corvallis, around Oregon State University. All of the housing units are open only to registered college students.

In fact, at The Amy, units are available only to students registered at least half time at an accredited institution, which includes trade schools.

“It’s been over a decade, and our last one was a partnership with OSU on their campus,” Sturley said. “It was actually a remodel of an existing apartment building, so this is our first ground-up construction since the ’90s.”

A post-tensioned concrete podium at The Amy supports five stories of wood-framed residential space. There is one level of below-grade vehicle parking. Exterior materials include metal and fiber cement panels chosen for economy as well as energy efficiency.

The building has 139 studio apartments and two one-bedroom units. Communal kitchens are featured on each floor to promote social interaction.

“One of the things we’re always thinking about is this statistic that says students that connect with one another are much more successful and have higher grades,” Sturley said. “We did that by putting in as much common space as we could.”

The building was completed in the spring and already occupancy is approaching 60 percent, site manager Josh Merrick said. He credited that statistic to the common spaces, among other things.

“We’ve only been open for three months, but we’re already seeing that manifest in students organically connecting in those spaces,” he said. “In the kitchens and elsewhere it’s a great connector.”

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Context and massing are the two issues keeping TVA Architects‘ design for the Fremont Apartments from getting the go-ahead from the Portland Design Commission.

The commission couldn’t hold a final vote during a hearing Thursday because a revised city staff report hadn’t been prepared. The previous staff report on the project, planned at 1650 N.W. Naito Parkway, was issued in September and recommended the design be rejected.

Four commissioners were in attendance Thursday. Both Don Vallaster and Andrew Clarke indicated they would vote to approve the proposed design, but Chairwoman Julie Livingston indicated she would not. Only Jessica Molinar was unsure.

“For me, I am on the fence,” she said. “I feel like there must be a solution, but we haven’t seen it yet.”

The sticking point is a portion inserted onto the eastern facade of the L-shaped structure facing the Willamette River. A push to maximize floor area ratio for developer Lincoln Property Company drove that portion of the design, according to Tim Wybenga, a TVA Architects principal.

“Our intention in that piece is we believe, and have studied it quite thoroughly, that a mid-tower piece like that gets us to the FAR that gets us to the net rentable (units) that is needed to make the project viable,” he said. “It’s less intrusive than if we put the additional floor or two back on Naito Parkway, which would still keep us under the 100-foot limit on Naito Parkway but becomes a much more imposing mass.”

As designed, the proposed structure would be 17 stories and include 309,000 square feet. It would have 275 residential units and ground-floor retail space.

Livingston said she believes the project’s design is being determined by the pro forma statement, and not city guidelines.

“The pro forma is not a guideline,” she said. “The pro forma that you have needs to be able to respond well to those guidelines.”

The dimensions of the site presented designers with a variety of logistical hurdles in their work to provide the desired number of units, they said.

Designers also had to include a public plaza between the structure and the river in order to meet greenway specifications. Meeting all of the conditions required the project team to ask for six modifications to zoning code development standards.

“The massing of the building is performing a lot of gymnastics to make the pro forma work,” Livingston said. “Those gymnastics require a long laundry list of modifications. Typically, to receive those modifications, every bucket of guidelines needs to just hit it out of the park.”

While questions about the massing were a major sticking point, the commission expressed that it believes the public plaza is designed well to give access to the Willamette River.

The design team also received praise for its use of quality materials, although some commissioners said they feared wooden canopies would be tough to maintain. Molinar also questioned whether the L-shape would be appropriate for that part of Portland.

“The L is not ideal because I don’t think it responds to the context properly,” she said. “It does benefit views from other areas in making the actual shape of the building not block as much of the bridge. It really does come down to that extra piece.”

The design team will return before the commission on Nov. 30 with modifications. A final vote could potentially take place at that time.

Also on Thursday:

11th and Clay

SERA Architects‘ plans for a new 16-story, mixed-use structure was approved by the Design Commission with a 3-1 vote. Molinar cast the lone dissenting vote.

The main sticking point for the College Housing Northwest development at 1110 S.W. Clay St. was its response to the area’s context. The new building will replace an existing six-story, brick apartment building built in 1909 that provides one of the few remaining ties to the area’s past. While Vallaster, Clark and Livingston shared Molinar’s concerns, they believed it would be unfair to impose new requirements at this point in the process.

The lone condition attached to approval was to add a canopy to a fourth retail bay on the ground floor.

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Among the housing issues facing Portland presently is the lack of affordable units for college students.

One project expected to contribute to a solution is The Amy, a development under way near Portland State University. The project is the brainchild of College Housing Northwest, a nonprofit that works to make housing more affordable for Oregon college students.

One aspect that will set The Amy apart from similar buildings is that its residents will be exclusively students. Managers of many “student” complexes give preference to students, but may allow nonstudents to rent units.

“Our organization is committed to renting to college students,” College Housing Northwest Executive Director David Garnand said. “You have to go to a public or not-for-profit institution.”

The five-story building will be constructed at 2031 S.W. 10th Ave., where a 30-unit, decades-old, wood-framed complex sat previously. The Amy will include 139 studio apartments, two one-bedroom apartments, 32 vehicle parking spaces, 230 bike parking spaces and 3,000 square feet of community space.

One of the biggest challenges for the project team surfaced in the permitting process: how to hold the hillside up. The slope of the lot caused problems with the planned retaining wall. The lot has more than 50 feet of elevation change and borders a Portland Bureau of Transportation right-of-way. Also, a 115,000-volt power line crosses a corner of the lot.

“There were some challenges with the shoring system to hold the hillside up across the PBOT right-of-way,” said Joshua Lupkin, a project architect with SERA Architects. “We had to redesign that system a couple times to where we aren’t encroaching on their right-of-way.”

The engineers devised a way to use a soil nail system to help stabilize the hillside. The system involves drilling holes into the exposed wall face. Then, tension-resisting steel bars are inserted into the holes and grouted.

“The city planners were skeptical of our system working,” Lupkin said. “We had to do continuous inspections and have a geotechnical engineer on site.”

The permitting issues delayed the project near the beginning of construction.

“Permitting took about 10 weeks longer than we thought,” Garnand said.

SERA Architects and Pavilion Construction helped straighten out those design issues. Each unit will average just 300 square feet – bigger than a so-called tiny house, but smaller than most studio apartments. Each unit will be furnished, and include a bathroom and a small kitchenette featuring a sink and a microwave. One of the major goals is to give residents a sense of privacy not found in other student housing environments.

Durability became a major factor in choosing everything from décor to building materials.

“When you are designing for students, you want everything to be more durable,” said Ryan Sturley, internal development manager at College Housing Northwest. “Being nonprofit, we want it to be as affordable as we can, but we want something that we are going to be able to hold for 20 years or more and be able to stand up to the abuse of college students.”

“Door frames and the quality of the paint was considered,” Lupkin added. “We wanted to make it easier to patch and paint.”

Accomplishing those goals while keeping within the price target for a nonprofit organization hoping to provide affordable student housing was another challenge.

The $18 million project was funded through bonds that were arranged by the Oregon Facilities Authority. Funding such facilities is often a difficult endeavor.

“That was a complex process, but (Oregon Facilities Authority) really helped us and made a complex process go really well,” Garnand said.

While the apartments will not meet Portland’s technical definition of affordable housing, the group is aiming to keep rents 15 percent below market rate. The median rent for a studio apartment near the PSU campus was $1,655, according to a February 2016 study by the Scion Group. A one-bedroom unit went for $1,571, according to the study.

“At the core of our mission, it is to provide more affordable housing,” Garnand said, “and make it really close to campus.”

College Housing Northwest manages developments totaling 725 housing units throughout Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood and in Corvallis, near Oregon State University.

“The rents are going up, up, up,” Garnand said. “It is tough to find any place at all. You have a lot of new housing, but it is mostly market-rate housing.”

The nonprofit’s hope is that The Amy will make living in Portland a little easier for its studious residents – presumably sophomores through grad students. Despite the hurdles, the building is expected to be completed in time for students to move in for the 2017 fall term.

“Other than the permitting hiccup, we are really excited about this project,” Garnand said. “It is going to be great for the students.”

The Amy

Location: 2031 S.W. 10th Ave.

Cost: $18 million

Owner: College Housing Northwest

Architect: SERA Architects

General contractor: Pavilion Construction

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