Project name: Dr. Darrell Millner Building

Location: Portland

Completion: June 2024

Size: 75,504 square feet

Cost: $23,884,074

Owner/Developer: Community Development Partners in partnership with Self Enhancement Inc.

Architect: Carleton Hart

Interior Designer: Carleton Hart Architecture

Engineers: Humber Design Group, DCI Engineers, NV5

General Contractor: LMC Construction

Submitting Company: LMC Construction

Other Associates: City of Portland Bureau of Development Services/Commercial Inspections, Portland Housing Bureau

Subcontractors: 2C Building Services, AA Asphalting, ALMAR Construction, Andersen Mechanical, Astound Business Solutions, Authority Dock & Door, Building Specialties Northwest, Choice Finish Carpentry, Clair Co., Coles & Bett Environmental Consulting, Comcast Business Services, Compaction and Recycling Equipment, Dallas Glass, DE-EL Enterprises, Eagle Striping Services, Earth Advantage, Exteriors Design Contractors, Forensic Waterproofing Consultants, Frontier Metal Fabrications, Frontier Roofing & Construction, GeoTech Foundation Company West, Guardian Management, Guardian Real Estate Services, Huntco Site Furnishings, J&S Masonry, Jacobs Heating & Air Conditioning, JB Insulation, Jet Industries, Lanz Cabinet Shop, LaRusso Concrete, Lauzon Contracting, LJP Construction, Merit Contractor of Oregon, Mid Valley, Northwest Masonry Restoration, Partner Engineering and Science, Patriot Fire Protection, Paul Brothers, Pilot Development dab US Mailboxes, Point Monitor, Polaris Electric, Polygon US, Prairie Electric, Precision Countertops, Quality Cleaning Service, SDB, Sign Wizards, Standard TV & Appliance, Stephen Waldroup Construction, TerraCalc Land Surveying, TK Elevator, Union Construction, Urban Resources, VPI Quality Windows, WH Cress, Whitaker Ellis Builders, Wood Mechanix Construction

The Dr. Darrell Millner Building, located on North Interstate in the Overlook neighborhood, offers 63 apartments specifically designed for families with ties to what was once a prominent African American community. The project aligns with the Portland Housing Bureau’s N/NE Preference Policy, ensuring those with generational ties to the neighborhood can rebuild connections.

Developed through a partnership between Community Development Partners and Self Enhancement Inc. under the Alberta Alive initiative, the building prioritizes households earning 60 percent or less of the area median income – between $35,400 and $70,800 for a family of four. The development includes 15 one-bedroom, 23 two-bedroom, and 25 three-bedroom units, with 75 percent of apartments featuring multiple bedrooms to accommodate families.

Named for Dr. Darrell Millner, a pioneering scholar who championed the history of Black Oregonians, the building represents more than just housing. The ground floor features 2,500 square feet of neighborhood-serving commercial space, bike parking, car parking, and several art murals. The building’s design blends brick, glass storefronts, and custom metal panels. Special attention was given to acoustics, with modified wall construction increasing sound insulation from the busy North Interstate Avenue. A mural on the north face of the building celebrates the power of education in breaking the cycle of generational poverty, honoring Dr. Millner’s life work.

Certified Earth Advantage Gold, the development maintains high standards for energy efficiency and environmental responsibility.

The project faced several challenges during construction, requiring coordination with the Department of Environmental Quality for soil sampling and with Portland General Electric to temporarily shut down nearby power lines during exterior cladding installation.

Residents benefit from proximity to The Alberta Abbey, located about a mile away, which provides community space for activities and workshops.

Self Enhancement Inc. oversees resident services including after-school programs and adult programming in financial management, credit repair, and home ownership.

The project had a unique evolution, originally designed as an affordable home ownership development. When COVID-19 derailed those plans, the Portland Housing Bureau put out a request for proposals to transition it to affordable rental housing.

The project achieved 30.97 percent MWESB participation. LMC Construction actively fostered partnerships with the DMWESB contracting community. A key example of this was the collaboration with ALMAR Contracting, a local firm owned by Alfonso Elias, a former LMC employee. LMC engaged ALMAR for work on the project and also provided mentorship to an ALMAR foreman.

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The partnership between Self Enhancement Inc. (SEI) and Community Development Partners (CDP) has resulted in transformative projects that provide affordable housing and essential services to underserved communities in Portland. By combining SEI’s expertise in youth development and community support with CDP’s experience in real estate development, the collaboration has created sustainable, mixed-use developments that promote long-term success for residents.

A key initiative is Alberta Alive, which revitalizes historically Black neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland. Within this initiative, the Ronnie Herndon Building and the Paul and Geneva Knauls Building provide affordable housing for low-income families and veterans. Another major project, the Strong Family Apartments, is a four-story, 75-unit building set to open in 2026, honoring a longtime North Portland family while addressing critical housing needs.

Additional efforts include The Dr. Darrell Millner Building, offering 63 affordable housing units with on-site services to support displaced residents. The project reflects SEI and CDP’s shared commitment to social equity, ensuring that development goes beyond housing to create thriving communities with access to vital resources, economic opportunities, and lasting stability for residents.

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A cohort of affordable homeownership projects is emerging in Portland, Milwaukie and Gresham, funded by Metro’s affordable housing bond, that aims to give lower-income residents and people of color a starting rung on the homeownership ladder.

The program is spread among six separate projects totaling 158 units. Metro has committed to date $19 million, or less than 3 percent of the $652.8 million housing bond voters approved in 2018, to homeownership projects.

Nevertheless, it represents an effort by public officials and private developers to expand affordable housing beyond the rental market.

“This particular type of investment is really critical to addressing our region’s housing crisis,” said Patricia Rojas, regional housing director for Metro. “Homeownership is a pillar of the American dream, and it’s a tool that people have been able to use for economic mobility and for building generational wealth.”

The projects are beginning to make their way through permitting processes and into construction. Community Development Partners has submitted an early assistance request to build eight townhomes at the intersection of Northeast Alberta Street and Mallory Avenue in Portland.

The project across the street from the developer’s offices in Alberta Abbey is CDP’s first venture into the tricky world of affordable homeownership. Developers say financing affordable homeownership projects generally is more difficult, with fewer funders and more complications.

“Homeownership is harder to pull together compared to rental housing,” said Sarah Schubert, Northwest development director for CDP. “There’s fewer sources out there. There’s a lot of legal structuring.”

The projects use a variety of funding mechanisms, including Metro bonds; funds from the state Local Innovation and Fast Track Homeownership Program, or LIFT, administered by Oregon Housing and Community Services; local system development charge waivers; and construction loans.

CDP plans to make the three-story Alberta townhomes available to homebuyers at 65 percent of the area median income. Prices are expected to be around $275,000, but that is subject to change according to federal income rules.

“We’re pretty excited about this project, even though it’s small,” Schubert said. “It’ll be a learning experience and helpfully we can replicate it in other areas. We think it’s an important project for the community.”

Scott Edwards Architecture is designing the Alberta Alive townhomes project, which is being co-developed by Self-Enhancement Inc.; no general contractor has been selected.

CDP owns the property, which is currently used as a small surface parking lot. It’s part of a portfolio of socially minded housing projects from CDP and SEI called Alberta Alive that also includes rentals. Some of the projects are on land donated to the Portland Housing Bureau by the Strong family, a prominent Black family in the Alberta neighborhood.

The project originally envisioned rental and homeownership properties on the same lot. But CDP found it made sense to split the projects, which have separate funding mechanisms.

“The homeownership and rental combined didn’t pencil out,” Schubert said.

CDP is interested in building more homeownership projects, the developers said.

“This is a competitive edge we should have over our peers,” said Thomas Eldridge, a CDP development manager who is working on the townhomes project.

Local government housing agencies are increasingly asking for a homeownership component in their requests for proposals, Eldridge said. CDP is eyeing another opportunity in McMinnville that calls for a homeownership component, he said.

The Alberta lot has room for up to 20 units, but local residents made clear that they wanted a less-dense housing project, CDP officials said.

The townhomes will be awarded according to the city of Portland’s North/Northeast Housing Strategy Preference Policy, which weighs the applicant’s historic ties to the neighborhood and the effects of urban renewal and displacement.

“This is a project that’s in North-Northeast Portland, that’s in an area that had a thriving Black community that’s been gentrified,” Schubert said. “It’s pretty significant to be able to provide homeownership opportunities.”

Metro is also looking to boost homeownership by historically marginalized groups that were kept from owning homes by redlining and other barriers.

“That historic practice has had lasting impacts,” Rojas said. “It’s important that we try to reconcile that.”

Metro has awarded funding to projects in jurisdictions that have reached certain affordable housing goals, officials with the regional government said.

The projects use a community land trust model. That places limits on how much appreciation homeowners can realize, providing some protection against a new owner reselling the property for fair-market value.

“They can’t just flip it like a market property,” said Jimmy Oporta, housing coordinator for Metro. “It is intended to maintain its affordability and pass it on to the next homeowner, or maybe even to the next generation of people within that same family.”

The other projects are:

• Carey Boulevard, 53 townhomes from Habitat for Humanity in the University Park neighborhood. Just over half the homes will be for owners at or below 60 percent area median income, and the rest will be pegged to between 61 percent and 80 percent AMI.
• Shortstack Milwaukie is focused on “missing middle” housing, including duplexes, triplexes and cottage courts. The 15-unit project in Milwaukie’s Ardenwald neighborhood will use mass timber to construct two-story homes.
• In Gresham, West Coast Homes and Habitat for Humanity are building 11 two-bedroom townhomes at a mix of income levels. The project is in the Rockwood town center area.
• Twenty affordable homes at Myrtlewood Way, formerly known as Glisan Townhomes, at 17640 N.E. Glisan St. The units range in size, including 13 three-bedroom homes of 1,237 square feet; 5 four-bedrooms of 1,550 square feet; and 2 five-bedroom units of 1,655 square feet.
• In the Hillsdale neighborhood, Gooseberry Trails will have 52 units from Habitat for Humanity ranging from two to five bedrooms. The 5-acre development will feature shared green space, a playground and potentially a community garden. Construction began in July.

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A four-story affordable housing proposal has underwhelmed Portland Design Commissioners.

The approximately 85,000-square-foot building, developed by Community Development Partners and Self Enhancement Inc. (SEI), would be located on the corner of North Alberta Street and Williams Avenue in Portland’s Humboldt neighborhood. It would provide 75 affordable homes in a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units.

It is fourth affordable housing project that SEI is codeveloping with Community Development Partners, along with 5020 N. Interstate that is under construction in North/Northeast Portland.

The Holst Architecture designed project is valued at $24 million by the Bureau of Development Services. A central courtyard is planned for the development along with ground floor residential services, a community room and lobby, and 32 surface parking spaces.

While commissioners liked aspects of the project, like the material quality, a lot left to be desired, they said during Thursday’s meeting.

“What I am I think having problem with is that you (the team) are touching on all of these issues that are related to the guidelines,” Commissioner Zuri Santner said. “But they are in a sort of minuscule ways – they’re not generous.”

For example, due to the building being recessed for ground floor residential units along Alberta Street, the team is requesting a modification to not include street trees with the overhanging roof. However, Santner said, in the void of trees, there needs to be adequate landscaping in a variety of sizes, not just the groundscape proposed.

Commissioner Chandra Robinson said for those ground floor units it needs to feel like someone cannot just reach in. Typically, what makes a successful ground floor residential unit is that it is lifted up many feet and pushed back with there being some kind of guardrail or handrail and landscape screening with it, so residents feel they can keep their curtains open.

“But as (the units) are right now,” she added, “windows will be locked and the curtains will be drawn 24/7 and just be a little bit blank.”

As proposed Thursday, the building’s exterior design would be a combination of dark brick, light and grey fiber cement siding with metal accent panels, which commissioners said made the building feel “introverted” and not residential. The development’s corner on Alberta and Williams bridges two heavily commercial zones with residential behind.

Commissioners encouraged the team to add balconies or Juliet balconies to give the building more of a residential feel. Chair Commissioner Brian McCarter said, “that would just soften this building a little bit into that realm of a residential building and not an institutional building.”

The development aimed at African-American families would bring much-needed housing to the Humboldt area. Sahaan Mckelvey, director of community and family programs at SEI, said that affordable housing in the community is scarce.

“We know that a number of individuals from the African-American community cannot afford to live in this geographic space because of the lack of affordable housing available here,” he added.

Thursday’s meeting was a design advice hearing meant to provide initial guidance. The project is expected to proceed to a Type II design review, which would be overseen by Bureau of Development Services staff.

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The winning proposal to develop Portland’s Williams-Russell block calls for affordable rental and ownership housing, low-cost retail and office space, and a central plaza and garden.

How the project team gets there is perhaps as interesting as the development itself. The effort is led by Black-owned firms, including an experienced local developer who recently went out on her own.

The project team is largely composed of firms based in North and Northeast Portland. They will answer to a newly created nonprofit corporation made up of local community leaders, most of whom are Black.

All the $71 million project must do is offer restorative justice to a Black community torn apart by decades of displacement, gentrification and neglect, provide affordable housing in an increasingly expensive urban environment, and reactivate a keystone block that was left vacant for decades by the same organizations whose wrongs are now being righted.

Enter Anyeley Hallova, who is coordinating the project team.

Hallova, founder of Adre, is leading the project alongside two affordable housing developers – Community Development Partners and Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives. Many of the principals involved have worked with each other before, but it is Hallova who must bring them all together.

According to her admirers, she’s uniquely suited to that task.

“She’s kind of masterful at coalescing disparate groups of people and galvanizing people around a vision,” said Tom Cody, managing partner at Project^. “She’s an incredibly good manager and coordinator, and she’ll bring those skills to something so collaborative and vision-based.”

Hallova founded Adre last year after 12 years as a partner at Project^. There, she earned a reputation for socially driven development projects, often with sustainable elements such as cross-laminated timber construction and strict energy performance goals. Hallova led development of the Meyer Memorial Trust headquarters project, and was part of the team that delivered the Oregon Conservation Center for The Nature Conservancy.

The Williams-Russell project, also known as the Hill Block development, is part of Hallova’s mission to develop projects that benefit the wider community.

“I specifically started this company with mission-oriented projects in mind,” she said.

Hallova is quick to deflect attention to other project team members – housing developers CDP and PCRI, Colas Construction, LEVER Architecture and Hood Design Studio. Only Hood Design Studio – a Black-owned landscape architecture firm in Oakland, California – is not based in North-Northeast Portland. That means most of the project team is within walking distance of each other’s offices, and they share a sense of place.

“This is also our community, too,” Hallova said.

The vision for the development is set out in the project team’s response to a request for proposals from Prosper Portland and the project working group. The Adre-led team is proposing affordable rental and ownership housing, office and commercial space, and a public plaza and garden.

The project team’s plan calls for a five-story, 94-unit multifamily building. Rents would be restricted to levels affordable at 30 percent to 80 percent of area median income. The project team is also looking into state funding for a possible early education center on the building’s ground floor.

Separately, 22 for-sale homes would be available in attached one-, two- and three-bedroom configurations. Homebuyers would be required to complete education and counseling.

The housing developers plan to seek out persons who were displaced by the construction of Interstate 5 and what is now a sprawling Legacy Health campus.

“The goal of the preference policy is really trying to reach out to the community that was impacted by the local policy,” said Jessica Woodruff, director of development for Community Development Partners.

Gap financing from the Portland Housing Bureau and affordable-housing tax credits are expected to help finance the project, Woodruff said.

The commercial building would comprise approximately 41,000 square feet, conceptualized as a “communal office,” Hallova said. The building would function as a business incubator, with workforce training also possibly included.

“What’s great about this project is that we can create a beautiful new building, Class-A office space, but figure out a way to have affordable rents,” Hallova said.

The aim is to “create an ecosystem” for emerging businesses – particularly those owned by people of color and other historically marginalized groups, Hallova said.

“We see this not just as a place for established businesses to be in, but for new businesses to incubate and grow,” she said.

A measure of restorative justice is being sought for the Black community in North-Northeast Portland, where 171 families – 74 percent of whom were Black – were displaced by urban renewal projects in the early 1970s. Those projects were led by the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) and Emanuel Hospital (now Legacy Health), according to a Prosper Portland history.

The Hill Block site held a commercial center for the surrounding Black community during the mid-20th century before it was condemned and demolished. In the decades since, the 1.7-acre block has sat empty.

In 2017, Prosper Portland officials rediscovered a 1980 deed provision requiring Legacy to develop the site. That kick-started discussions on what should be done with the block.

Prosper Portland continues to provide support to the project working group and the project team. Legacy has agreed to convey the property to the Williams-Russell Community Development Corporation at no cost. The CDC will serve as the project team’s client.

“The powers that be have recognized this historic injustice and are giving the land back to the community and supported development on the site,” Hallova said.

The firms involved with the project are keen to right past wrongs.

The project team is “dedicated and poised to honor and represent those individuals that had land, property and generational wealth-building opportunities taken away from them when the development of the hospital and the interstate corridor occurred in the areas,” said Kymberly Horner, executive director of PCRI. “It is our mission and our goal to try to restore those injustices that occurred, and that is why we put our name in the ring to develop the site to honor the past and secure the future for those individuals and families to have a place to come back to and call home.”

The project team is aiming to create a model for restorative-justice development not just in Portland, but in other American cities where Black neighborhoods were displaced.

“If you came to the city of Portland to visit, you might want to come and visit and learn the history,” Hallova said.

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Mamook Tokatee may seem like an odd name for a new affordable housing structure rising in Northeast Portland. But its meaning – “make beautiful” in Chinook Wawa – will surely be important to its future residents.

Community Development Partners and the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) have joined forces for their second housing project in the Cully neighborhood. Carleton Hart Architecture designed the project, and it’s being built by LMC Construction.

The four-story, 56-unit building is being constructed at 4636 N.E. 42nd Avenue, at the intersection with Northeast Going Street. By the end of this week, the long shoring pillars supporting the recently poured concrete deck will be removed, marking completion of the four-month concrete phase.

Currently, rods upon rods are laid out, waiting for construction crews to come by to posttension the concrete. Forty truckloads of concrete were used to fill the deck, LMC Construction Senior Project Manager Ken Bello said.

The structure will be three stories of stick framing over concrete. Timeframe Inc. is doing the wood framing. Crews plan to begin in early March, and finish in three months – one month per floor.

The building will feature studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units as well as a community room and an art studio.

LMC Construction is using an old bakery storefront as its on-site office. Afterward, the plan is to turn the space into an art gallery for the residents to display their artwork.

Mamook Tokatee is one of three affordable housing projects that Community Development Partners and NAYA are bringing to the neighborhood. The first was Nesika Illahee, at 6370 N.E. 42nd Ave. Work on a third building, Hayu Tilixam, is expected to begin in mid-March near the intersection of Northeast Prescott Street and Cully Boulevard.

The team’s focus is to house the urban Native American population in Portland, “which has been an underserved community for years,” Bello said.

The goal, Community Development Partners Development Manager Lucy Corbett said, was to locate the buildings near each other and the NAYA campus so residents can easily access services there.

The new housing will provide affordable options in Cully, where home prices have risen to around $400,000.

“I think Cully used to be one of the more affordable neighborhoods close to the core of Portland,” NAYA Director of Community Development Oscar Arana said. “(It’s) no longer affordable to the average Native American … just because the prices are so high.”

Creation of affordable housing has become really important to NAYA, Arana added, so Native Americans aren’t pushed out of the city.

Bello has witnessed a demographic change in Cully. He moved to the neighborhood in 1994, when it was inhabited mostly by working-class people, but has since seen it become more gentrified. He has focused his career on affordable housing projects, he said, and by chance was selected to work on these three projects near his home.

“(I) consider it a privilege and absolute joy to be part of the neighborhood,” Bello said.

LMC Construction is working with Zavala Corporation (concrete), Solid Form (structural steel), Union Drywall, MSI (plumbing), Andersen (HVAC systems) and Cox Electrical. The site was excavated by Lauzon Contracting.

The project team broke ground in August 2020 and is expected to finish in December.

Financing was provided from the sale of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and $2.36 million from Oregon Housing and Community Services. The Siletz Tribe contributed a $1 million Indian Housing Block Grant, which will secure 20 of the building’s units for Native households. Also, Metro provided a $300,000 Transit-Oriented Development grant.

“(It’s) really important for the Native American community to have housing that’s designed and created by and for them because that’s how we will effectively reach the population that we’re trying to serve and that’s tailored for their needs,” Arana said.

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, a three-story, 59-unit affordable housing building in Northeast Portland, recently received a high honor from the Urban Land Institute‘s Terwilliger Center for Housing.

The project won the Chairman’s Award as part of the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Awards for 2020. The award recognizes particularly creative projects designed to address a unique affordable housing challenge, according to a press release.

Nesika Illahee opened earlier this year at 6370 N.E. 42nd Ave. It was produced via a combined effort of Community Development Partners, the Native American Youth and Family Center, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz and the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest.

The development was designed by Carleton Hart Architecture and built by LMC Construction.

“ULI has long been recognized as one of the world’s most respected and widely quoted sources of objective information on urban planning, growth, and development so this award is an amazing honor,” Community Development Partners CEO Eric Paine stated. “We undertook this innovative project with our partners to address barriers to affordable housing for Native Americans, especially homeless and low-income families. This is the first time a Tribe has allocated its Indian Housing Block Grant Funds through a sub-recipient agreement in partnership with a Native organization, and established tribal preference on what would have been a traditional low-income housing tax credit project. Nesika Illahee is a project of which all the involved partners and the greater community can be extremely proud.”

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In the Portland-metro area, housing developments are continuing to rise. One that is advancing in Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood may not look much like others when it’s finished.

General contractor LMC Construction is building Rockwood 10 – a six-building, 224-unit complex – slightly north of Southeast Yamhill Street at 186th Avenue. The project is being developed by Community Development Partners, a certified B Corporation with a Portland office on Northeast Alberta Street. Hacienda CDC is a co-developer and co-general partner. Waechter Architecture provided the design.

Low-income housing tax credits are being used for the project, so a portion of the apartments will be affordable housing units.

“It’s always been envisioned as an affordable housing project,” said Jessica Woodruff, CDP’s director of development for Oregon. “But we were always looking for ways to provide community benefit.”

Those benefits are twofold. First, Rockwood 10 will provide a highly diverse collection of units: 14 four-bedroom, 89 three-bedroom, 74 two-bedroom and 47 one-bedroom apartments – a mix virtually unheard of in today’s market. The residential buildings also will be unusual in that the ground-floor units will feature front entrances, rather than typical loaded corridors.

“This was really envisioned as family housing, so there are lots of larger units,” said Wendy Klein, CDP’s development manager for Oregon.

Second, the entire development will wrap around a large central park area and community building. The park will provide amenities ranging from play structures for kids to a large field suitable for sports. The community building, meanwhile, will feature a kitchen and an area for food carts. The structure will be used for events, classes and even small conferences. An existing grove of evergreen trees on the 7.4-acre site will remain and become host to a picnic area and walking paths.

A new stretch of Southeast 186th Avenue, meanwhile, will bisect the site north to south and create easy access between Yamhill and Stark streets. The park area will be open to the public and accessible not only from the new street, but also from apartment complexes to the east and the Knova Learning public charter school to the west.

“It’s really opening up that street to invite the public in,” Klein said.

LMC Construction Superintendent Reed Ledbetter noted the development will have a sustainable stormwater system.

“All site water is trapped and reintroduced (to) the site,” he said. “Drainage for the parking areas is done with a PaveDrain system that will basically take all the surface water from the paved areas and let them into a permeable paver system, and then there is basically a drywell system underneath.”

The new street, he added, will feature a series of vegetated drainage areas that direct street runoff into a series of drywells.

“Basically this has a net-zero impact to the existing storm infrastructure,” Ledbetter said. “It is purely just reintroduction to the soil.”

The project team also is focusing on hiring minority-owned, woman-owned and disadvantaged subcontractors as well as many east Multnomah County firms, said Richard Reese, LMC Construction vice president of construction.

“We have quite a few of these subcontractors who are local to the Gresham area,” he said.

Major subcontractors include: Time Frame Construction, Jet Electrical, Jet Mechanical, Jet Fire, Atlas Plumbing, LaRusso Concrete, Van Lom Concrete, Gresham Roofing, KO Contracting and Westside Drywall.

Rockwood 10 also will have public art throughout, Klein said. CDP has issued a request for proposals from parties interested in handling some of the remaining installations. Overall, the art will include a bright orange structural post, murals, custom light fixtures, metal sculptures and even custom fabrics for the furniture in the community building and other parts of the complex.

“We are actually on the search for local artists to do it,” Klein sad. “There are a host of opportunities for art that we’re trying to solicit artists for.”

Rockwood 10 is poised to become one of the most unique housing complexes of its type in the metro area.

“In my development experience, you often are trying to develop toward something, so this one is very interesting,” Woodruff said. “It’s more looking inward, but we’re excited to have a development that looks and feels different.”

The first of the five residential buildings is scheduled for completion in April 2021, with the remainder set to open in intervals ranging from one to two months thereafter.

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The first project funded with money from Metro‘s $652.8 million affordable housing bond, approved by voters in 2018, is steadily nearing the construction phase.

Community Development Partners and the Housing Authority of Washington County are developing the project, dubbed 72nd and Baylor, on a one-acre parcel within the so-called Tigard Triangle bordered by Interstate 5 on the east, Oregon Route 217 from west to south and Oregon Route 99W from west to north. The six-story, 81-unit building will be near the intersection of Southwest 72nd Avenue and Baylor Street.

“When Community Development Partners had the opportunity to get a site under control in this neighborhood,” said Jessica Woodruff, the certified B corporation’s director of development, “we were excited about what was possible there, given all that is coming together with both the city’s urban renewal area and broader policy changes in what voters have done to give people at lower income levels affordable housing.

“We’re feeling pretty fortunate to be part of that whole process.”

Scott | Edwards Architecture designed the project, which will be constructed by general contractor Bremik Construction. Ground is expected to be broken in June 2020.

Dave Mojica, an associate with Scott | Edwards Architecture, is the project manager for 72nd and Baylor. Budgetary demands, he said, drove some of the efficient design choices. The building massing, for example, will feature two interlocking wings laid out in a simple L-shape with a flat roof. Along the same lines, each of the 25 one-bedroom, 46 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom units will have identical floor plans for efficiency of construction.

But instead of cheap fiber-cement or metal panels on the exterior, 72nd and Baylor will have some panels of higher quality. Also, natural wood siding will be used at the building’s entrance and lobby.

“We’re highlighting it as a warm area and giving it a lot of glass and warming up that corner with wood,” Mojica said.

Earth Advantage gold certification will be sought for the project.

A ground-level concrete podium will be used to support five stories of wood framing.

“The concept here is with affordable projects we need to have large efficiencies to make them happen,” Mojica said. “So the decision we came to was we don’t want to put 30 materials on this building and super articulate it. Instead, we focused on the entry corner on 72nd and how we can make this corner dynamic.”

On the interior, each of the six floors will have a laundry room attached to a community room.

In addition, a computer study room, a game room and lounge space will be included on the ground floor, while an elevated outdoor courtyard will be added between the two wings and provide cover for at-grade vehicle parking below.

Programming will be entirely residential, Community Development Partners project manager Wendy Klein said. As many as eight apartments could be reserved for veterans in partnership with Veterans Affairs, but some details remain to be worked out.

“We are hopeful that that will come through,” she said.

Thirty-three units may be reserved for households making no more than 30 percent of the median family income, and 48 more for households making no more than 60 percent of the MFI, Klein said. However, those figures are not final, she added.

The project will be built in an underdeveloped section of Tigard that eventually will be served by the Southwest Corridor MAX light-rail line. A grocery store already operates near the site.

“It’s in an interesting area,” Mojica said. “Because it’s affordable housing, the hope is the future MAX line extension bridges the gap between Tigard and Portland proper. Within walking distance are other amenities already, which provided a driver for site selection.”

Metro is supplying $11.4 million of the roughly $31 million project budget. Federal low-income housing tax credits are providing $12.1 million and private sources are providing $7.7 million.

“It’s pretty exciting that voters approved this,” Woodruff said. “That really allows us to do this work to leverage those federal funds that are available waiting for us if we could figure it out. So, it’s made a lot possible and it will be a game changer for the metro region.”

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A new affordable housing project rising in Northeast Portland is being built to serve the region’s Native American population.

Nesika Illahee, meaning “Our Place” in the Chinook language, is a collaborative development effort by the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest (NARA), Community Development Partners, and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

The historic project marks the first time these groups have partnered to construct affordable housing for tribal members in Portland. The building is being funded in large part through the Siletz Tribe’s Indian Housing Block Grant, which has traditionally been used to build housing within reservation lands.

The three-story, wood-framed building was designed by Carleton Hart Architecture and is being constructed by LMC Construction on a 0.64-acre parcel at the corner of Northeast Holman Street and 42^nd Avenue.

Currently, crews with the Muirlands Corp. and Juan Luis Morales Construction are framing the ground floor atop a slab-on-grade concrete foundation. The building is being outfitted with prefabricated panels from Pacific Wall Systems.

The soils on the property have proved challenging, according to LMC Construction superintendent Tim Williams, forcing crews to employ three feet of over-excavation below each concrete footer.

The 59-unit building will contain 13 studio apartments, 30 one-bedrooms, nine two-bedrooms, and seven three-bedroom units. An exterior plaza and large community room are intended to bring together residents and the surrounding neighborhood, while on-site counseling services will be provided for those in NARA’s rehabilitation program.

Large folding doors and a prominent wood trellis are intended to transition the interior community room to the hardscaped plaza outside. There, curvilinear benches and radial concrete scoring will decorate the space.

Exterior materials are intended to lend a more residential feel to the building with board and batten along neighborhood side streets and wood panels along 42nd Avenue. Elsewhere, carved wood columns, painted murals and additional Native artwork will decorate the building, while designers envision both the lobby and community room as storytelling spaces.

Outside, the plaza will look to fill that same role, while on-site amenities such as a garden, a community room with kitchen and an exterior plaza with bench seating will also be included.

The project is slated for substantial completion this November.

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