Portland’s oldest commercial building is receiving a major renovation intended to restore the look and feel of the original brick masonry and cast iron.

Owner John Russell has tapped Emerick Architects and Bremik Construction to conduct historically sensitive improvements to the Hallock-McMillan building at Southwest Naito Parkway and Oak Street.

The Hallock-McMillan building was completed in 1857 – two years before Oregon became a state – but hasn’t had a tenant since Peter Corvallis Productions left about 15 years ago, Russell said.

Bremik has removed the east-facing façade. Much of the original brick was salvaged and will be restored, and a moment frame will be added to bolster strength.

Russell envisions a creative-office tenant occupying the two-story, 5,000-square-foot building.

“The tenant has to want visibility and values that, and the prestige of a building of real significance,” he said.

The Hallock-McMillan building was designed and developed by architect, surveyor and engineer Absalom B. Hallock in a short-lived partnership with contractor William McMillan. The east façade used cast iron to support three large arches. The wood and glass entrance is more than 10 feet tall. Some of Portland’s earliest structural brick was used in the building. The project team is looking to protect the historic brick from moisture, possibly by using a clear coating product, said Aaron Vogel, a project manager with Bremik Construction.

After the building was completed, Hallock moved his own office into the ground floor. He rented the top floor at one time to an agent of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Hallock lived on the second floor at times, according to materials from the Oregon Historical Society.

The project team has found photos of the building from circa 1870.

“We’re going back to try to create the original look and feel of the façade,” said Keith Daily of Emerick Architects. “You’ll get the old-school warehouse look as much as we can.”

Russell, a longtime figure in Portland’s commercial real estate industry, owns five buildings on the same block. Their common ownership enables the project to link the Hallock-McMillan building to its neighbors, the Dielschneider and Fechheimer buildings.

On the south side facing Oak Street, a new glass façade and stairway will join the Hallock-McMillan building with the neighboring Dielschneider building to the west.

A second phase will involve additional seismic bracing. In the event of an earthquake, the three buildings will support each other, Vogel said.

Russell has planned the project for years after purchasing the Hallock-McMillan building in 2010. Nearby development, including Wyndham Resort Development Corp.‘s 75-unit vacation time-share project at 221 S.W. Naito Parkway, helped spur Russell to go ahead. There are also plans for numerous properties in the area owned by the Goodman family’s Downtown Development Group.

“I wish all of these blocks would be developed,” Russell said. “They will be.”

New office developments commanding about $40 per square foot are boosting rates for older office space, Russell said.

“It’s roaring and there’s what I call a price umbrella,” he said.

The Hallock-McMillan building could also host a small shop or restaurant, but the project team is moving forward with the intention of attracting a creative office tenant, Daily said.

For Russell, the project is more about preserving the history of the Victorian-era building.

“It’s more philanthropy than anything,” he said. “It’s such an important building.”

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Melody and Brian Emerick founded their design firm with the goal of doing great work in the communities where they and their employees live, work and grow. Brian is a seventh-generation Oregonian and Emerick Architects claims “local is part of our DNA.”  Of the firm’s staff of 15, 10 are women.

“To go for it and start the business, that was a big decision (for us),” Melody said. “We were young and I was nine months pregnant with our second child. We were still paying off our student loans and we were broke, but we just went for it.”

The firm has since worked on a portfolio of projects that help the city’s small business and property owners. For example, Emerick Architects worked with Civilis Consultants to help to find a new home for Korean-owned Living Color Beauty Supply when it was being displaced in 2008. They helped place the family-owned business in the Vanport Project, a public-private partnership that gave ownership opportunities to small local businesses, and assisted the family in creating a new look for the store.

With a focus on adaptive reuse, the firm cares deeply for Portland’s historical legacy, and has been a headline sponsor for the Architectural Heritage Center’s auctions for the last two years. Emerick Architects also supports Restore Oregon, the Architectural Foundation of Oregon and the John Yeon Center.

To foster the next generation of architects and remain involved in the current academic community, senior staff volunteers at design reviews at Portland State University and the University of Oregon throughout the year. Staff members also are involved with the ACE Mentor Program of America Inc., which helps mentor high school students and inspires them to pursue careers in design and construction. The firm is a frequent supporter of student architects, hosting the 2016 student symposium for PSU’s teen summer immersion program as well as the 2017 Wilson High art history class. This summer, the firm hosted at-risk youth from Hayhurst’s Summer Program.

The Emericks  raised their two daughters while growing their business. Melody has given a presentation to the American Institute of Architects on what it’s like to balance family with being a woman and business leader in today’s profession.

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A new experience is on its way to Portland. If everything goes according to plan, Outrage eSports Bar will become Portland’s first sports bar dedicated to video game enthusiasts.

Emerick Architects is the lead designer for the facility that will cater to people who prefer watching action in the form of pixels instead of linebackers.

“The model for this is a sports bar,” co-owner Justin Green said. “We will have TVs and a stage for hosting (video game) tournaments. We will show tournaments from all over the world.”

Permits will be sought soon. Project manager Keith Daily will lead Emerick Architects’ design team.

“We will submit for the permits in February and see how long the city takes,” he said. “I think they can be open sometime in the summer for sure.”

Turning the downtown space, at 424 S.W. Fourth Ave., into a bar won’t be a huge challenge, Daily said.

“Big thing is to get it transferred into a bar pub,” he said.

The team will have to add some plumbing and bathroom facilities, Daily acknowledged. Plus, a full kitchen will be created.

Like any sports bar, TVs will be a big part of patrons’ experience. Plans are for the bar to televise live gaming tournaments from around the world. Structurally, the space is already capable of handling the bar’s electricity, wiring and WiFi needs.

“The place has good bones,” Daily said. “We are going with a really simple design. When you have that many activities going on, you don’t want to have a lot of other stuff going on with the design.”

Patrons will find a stage that can be used for tournaments, along with computers at various stations around the bar for people to play games.

“We came up with this in 2015,” co-owner Jeff Hotes said. “Both of us have a love for service and gaming. This is also a chance to showcase eSports.”

Games played on electronic devices such as video game consoles, computers or tablets have become a spectator sport in recent years. Tournaments can have prize pools that total millions of dollars. The Pacific-12 Conference last year became the first college conference to allow schools to field sanctioned eSports teams.

Tournaments in Las Vegas draw thousands of spectators, and sometimes are televised. This has led to development of bars where people can play video games or watch others play them.

When Green and Hotes first came up with the idea for Outrage, they planned to work out a franchise agreement with a European eSports company. Green went to Paris and Berlin to see how such bars could be run.

“It didn’t work because of the different franchising laws between the U.S. and Europe,” Green said. “It’s also a different bar culture in Europe. So we had to look more to the U.S. bar scene for ideas.”

Neither Green nor Hotes has previous bar experience, but both believe there is a market for an eSports bar in Portland.

“A lot of it is focused to the PC games,” Green said. “The fighting game community is a big target for these kinds of tournaments, but we don’t have a set market. People will be able to play whatever games they want. It just depends on what the community wants.”

Though Outrage will serve as a tournament venue, Green and Hotes also believe it will appeal to people aren’t hard-core gamers.

“There are going to be a lot of people that play causally,” Green said. “Portland State (University) has some gaming groups. We see it as a place for people who just want to have a drink and play some games.”

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The partnership between Portland developers Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners started with Slate, a mixed-use project in the Central Eastside Industrial District with 75 luxury apartments and 45,000 square feet of commercial space.

Beam had been a player in the Central Eastside for years – mostly retrofitting large, historic buildings such as the Eastside Exchange and Water Avenue Commerce Center into creative office space. But Beam, led by Brad Malsin and his son, Jonathan, had less familiarity with other kinds of projects.

“We didn’t have experience building ground-up multifamily, so we set out to partner up with a team that had experience with that product type,” Jonathan Malsin said.

Meanwhile, Urban Development + Partners was looking to get more involved in the Central Eastside. It was a match made in heaven, or at least the Burnside bridgehead.

“We found that our firms have similar goals or values; we’re in alignment,” said Joren Bass, project manager for UDP. “Beam has a deep history of creative office space. UDP, we have pretty broad experience on the residential component. That was beneficial at Slate.”

Slate is opening to tenants this month. Yet that’s only the beginning of the Beam-UDP partnership. The companies are in the thick of developing three other projects together in the Central Eastside along Stark Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Hotel

First comes the renovation of Hotel Chamberlain, at 509 S.E. Grand Ave., which for decades housed a Shleifer Furniture store. The upper floors of the four-story building contain hotel rooms that have sat empty since the 1970s, when Shleifer Furniture ownership decided the trouble of running a hotel wasn’t worthwhile in the once-rough neighborhood.

Beam and UDP plan to transform the 36,000-square-foot property into a modern boutique hotel with about 60 guest rooms. The ground floor will become a hotel reception area, a lobby and a restaurant or coffee shop.

Features added by Shleifer Furniture over the years, such as a mezzanine and sidewalk-facing display windows, will be removed.

“Taking it back to the original storefront will bring in an amazing amount of natural light and really engage the street,” Bass said.

The developers are working closely with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office to retain the 110-year-old building’s historic characteristics. The renovation will require a full seismic upgrade.

“We’re going to preserve this as a gem,” Bass said.

It’s the first hotel development project for both firms, although UDP owns a hotel in another market. Emerick Architects is designing the hotel.

Hotel and apartments

Beam and UDP plan to build a 13-story mixed-use development with hotel space, multifamily units and ground-floor retail space at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., a half-block slightly west of Hotel Chamberlain where a parking lot sits currently. Two floors of underground parking are planned, along with a rooftop deck.

The mix of uses has not been finalized, Jonathan Malsin said.

“We’re still determining that,” he said. “We anticipate having a hospitality component and multifamily.”

Works Partnership Architecture is designing the project.

Creative offices

At 531 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., the developers plan a mid-rise creative office building of approximately six stories on a parking lot now used by Portland Music Co. Retail space will occupy the ground floor. The developers are working within the restriction of an 80-foot height limit.

Beam and UDP are pursuing the creative office market that has proved lucrative for other Central Eastside projects such as Eastside Exchange.

“We will be targeting the same type of tenant, but every project is so different, especially if it’s adaptive reuse versus new construction,” Malsin said. “We try to deliver a similarly high quality, unique product.”

Portland architecture firm Hacker is designing the office project.

Beam and UDP hope to break ground on all three projects next year, Malsin said. He declined to reveal a total project cost for all three developments, but it will be substantial.

“It’s going to be quite the node of activity here with the three sites,” he said.

Hotel construction has boomed in Portland, but Malsin said Hotel Chamberlain and the hospitality project next door will differentiate themselves in the market.

“There’s definitely a lot of supply coming online,” he said. “It’s definitely something we’re cognizant of. But I don’t lump together the (Central Business District) and the Pearl (District) and the Central Eastside. A cool boutique hotel on the Central Eastside? Yeah, there’s a market for that.”

A potential expansion of the Jupiter Hotel is the only competing project in view, Malsin said.

For Beam, it makes sense to continue investing in the Central Eastside on the heels of the firm’s earlier projects in the area, Malsin said.

“We’ve had a lot of holdings down here for years, so all of our projects are bolstered, and it’s a phenomenal neighborhood,” he said. “We love the grittiness. We love the character.”

The developments by Beam and UDP fit the city’s long-term plans for the Central Eastside, said Debbie Kitchin, who served as co-chairwoman of the stakeholder advisory committee for Southeast Portland.

The neighborhood’s future is guided by the city’s Southeast Quadrant plan, part of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The plan calls for activating the area’s major corridors, while preserving the rest for industrial uses.

“We focused on keeping mixed-use development in the corridor and on the bridgehead streets,” said Kitchin, who is also past president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council and principal of general contractor InterWorks LLC. “That’s been allowed for 30 years, and it’s just now coming to fruition. I think activating those corridors is great.”

These projects started with a relationship that Beam founder Brad Malsin developed with Shleifer Furniture owner Stuart Shleifer. Malsin told Shleifer that if he were ever interested in selling, Beam would be interested in buying.

“This is where we have our network,” Jonathan Malsin said of the Central Eastside. “We’re able to identify properties off-market.”
For a clue as to what Beam and UDP will do together, look at what they’ve done. Slate has a distinctive 10-story design. There are 1.5 floors of retail space and 2.5 floors of office space topped by six floors of apartments. In addition, there is one level of underground parking.

Tenants include surfboard and coffee shop Cosube as well as a restaurant that has inked a letter of intent. CENTRL Office, a co-working company, has taken a space. Two more retail spaces along Third Avenue have not yet been leased.

Slate’s apartment units primarily have two bedrooms, “mostly as a way of differentiating our product,” Malsin said.

The interior has concrete floors, an approach favored by UDP. Bass said the polished concrete blends beauty and durability, is friendly to pets and allergy sufferers, and is resistant to flooding.

“We really won’t build anything that doesn’t have a concrete floor in a residential building like this,” Bass said.

Slate is a linchpin for a fast-developing area; it’s neighbored by Yard and the under-construction Fair-Haired Dumbbell from Kevin Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development. Gerding Edlen is developing a 17-story mixed-use building at the Burnside bridgehead.

Slate’s distinctive design by Works Partnership Architecture (now Works Progress Architecture) and built by Yorke & Curtis is reminiscent of stacked boxes, with apertures protruding from the building.

“It was an aesthetic decision,” Malsin said. “We first started looking at this building as an expression of an industrial neighborhood. We were enamored of the idea. It’s not the easiest detail to construct, but we’re really pleased. I think the design has been really well received.”

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Brian Emerick opened with his wife and business partner, Melody, 17 years ago. His first client, the late Art DeMuro, founder of Venerable Properties, urged him to join the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission.

Since then, in addition to participating in his own firm’s projects, Emerick has served two four-year terms on the landmarks group, including as chairman, a position from which he stepped down recently.

His tenure ran the gamut, from the recession to the recent building boom, making his task one of balancing the practical consideration of the economics involved in preservation and restoration with the interests of private and public development. He worked to create policies and direction for preserving historical buildings in and around Portland. While on the commission, he helped produce final drafts of plans for the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District as well as a final draft of a plan for the Old Town Chinatown Historic District.

His departure from the landmarks commission doesn’t mean he has stepped away from helping shape how Portland preserves its older buildings. He will continue to provide advice for planning in Portland as a member of a city task force on unreinforced masonry buildings.

“Of the 1,800 masonry buildings in and around Portland, 400 are historic – over 100 years old,” Emerick said. “I’m on the policy committee for unreinforced seismic retrofitting. My work with the Landmarks Commission led to a natural fit on that committee. We want to create policy on one hand, but balance it with historic preservation.”

Emerick’s addition to the unreinforced masonry buildings committee comes at a time when people are starting to pay more attention to the importance of securing Portland’s buildings against the devastation of future seismic activities.

People are more educated about seismic risk and they’re eager to move forward on it,” he added. “There’s an interest, a public will to preserve these buildings for the next generation. At its core, it’s about saving lives. We don’t want buildings collapsing on people if a big quake hits, so it makes sense from a public safety perspective. Beyond that, people have shown a great interest in preserving the history and culture of Portland by keeping as many of these buildings as we can. This city has a wealth of people willing to give their time and be engaged. That makes Portland the great city that it is.”

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Designing a restoration for a building older than a century is never a totally predictable job. Brian Emerick of Emerick Architects learned that when he scoped out an 1890s-era warehouse at 205 N.W. Fourth Ave. in Old Town Chinatown.

The three-story building, built by the Overland Warehouse Company, had sat empty for decades except when a couple of strip clubs had occupied ground-floor space, Emerick said. But he and Joren Bass, development manager at Urban Development + Partners, made plans to restore the building and convert the top two floors into open office space and the ground floor into restaurant and retail space.

The team looked to add an elevator, perform total seismic upgrades and restore elements as close to the original design as possible. But after checking out the attic, Emerick said, the design changed. That was because massive wooden beams and trusses were overhead.

“It was all enclosed – (we) couldn’t see any of it,” he said. “We crawled around in the attic and said, ‘Wow. This is really neat up here.’ And it was all hidden.”

The old beams and trusses will be sandblasted to bring back the original color, Emerick said. Also, a large skylight will be constructed above an opening around a staircase to the floor below.

“Adding a big skylight and cutting floor out in a section between levels two and three … will give real connectivity,” he said. “And it has heavy timber, old wood floors.”

Another surprise for the project team came from a 1912 renovation to turn the warehouse into a tenement house, Emerick said. As walls were added on the upper floors, many of the dozens of floor-to-ceiling beams that dot the structure – each almost two feet wide and at least 12 feet tall – were moved to make way for tiny rooms. Some of the beams, many of them load-bearing, were missing, so the project team had exact replicas made. Replacing and moving the beams was no small feat: Heavy equipment couldn’t be used because of tight space requirements, Emerick said.

“A lot of it is old wood and has been put back where it’s supposed to be, and that took a lot of ‘Egyptians,’ ” he said. “We can’t drop a crane through the roof, so it’s muscle and primitive techniques.”

Joe Sheets, project manager for contractor Todd Hess Building Co., clarified the effort.

“It was a lot of young, strong carpenters,” he said.

Emerick, Sheets and Bass earlier this week sat around a makeshift table on the first floor as they planned their next steps. Emerick said the major work should be done by June and then interior finishes will require a couple of months.

Planning for the unexpected is part of any job involving an aged building, Sheets said.

“You always uncover things you don’t know and it’s always a bit of a mystery,” he said. “So you have to come up with a good plan.”

A restoration will transform the Overland Warehouse into creative office space above retail and restaurant space on the ground floor. Work is scheduled to finish this summer.

Without elaborating, Bass said there were some “unforeseen … existing footing conditions.”

“The (missing) column scenario affected the levels of the floors over time, so we’re moving those back in place and kind of leveling the building again,” Sheets said. “A lot of work was putting the structure back the way it was built and then putting in the seismic upgrades. It was a big effort just returning the structure to the way it was intended to be.”

The building will retain many of its unique features, including the outlines of where the tenement room walls once stood on the old wooden floors upstairs, Emerick said. While walking on the second floor, he pointed to discolorations marking former tenement rooms, some as narrow as four feet. The rooms were too small to be useful so walls were removed, he said, but the outlines provide more of a sense of history.

Restoration also required a “special energy path” because the building had been empty for so many years, Emerick said.

“It had to be full energy code to install heating and we had to add a whole bunch of insulation in the roof and a whole lot of higher-quality mechanical systems,” he said. “It made it a lot more complicated to be able to have it look simple.”

In trying to restore the building to its original look, Emerick said he had only a few photographs of part of the building’s exterior for reference. And although the windows could not be saved, replicas will be installed.

As Emerick climbed down into the basement, he pointed out the foundation’s rock walls.

“It was before concrete was really used here, so they have a heavy stone foundation with gigantic brick piers with actual stone caps and the columns on top,” he said.

The low-ceiling basement will primarily be used for storage, Emerick said, but also for bike parking and showers.

Emerick added that many brick walls will be exposed.

“We did a special kind of engineering path for the energy code so we were able to keep all the brick walls,” he said.

Overland Warehouse restoration

Location: 205 N.W. Fourth Ave.

Anticipated construction completion date: summer 2016

Owner/developer: Urban Development + Partners

Architect: Emerick Architects

Structural engineer: Grummel Engineering

Civil engineer: Humber Design Group

Energy code analyst: Glumac

General contractor: Todd Hess Building Co.

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Seven historic preservation projects, including six designed by Portland architects, received a DeMuro Award last month. Restore Oregon hands out the awards to recognize outstanding examples of preservation and adaptive reuse.

The awards are named for late architect and historic preservation leader Art DeMuro, Restore Oregon executive director Peggy Moretti said.

“Art truly set a standard for his ability to envision the potential for a run-down historic place,” she said. “He could envision what it could be, and we honor him with his example and leadership as a board member of Restore Oregon.”

Portland-sited projects that received the DeMuro Award were: the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, the Erickson Fritz Apartments and Washington High School.

Out-of-town projects that received the award were: the Block House Café in Dayton, the Julian Hotel Apartments in Corvallis, the Old Salty beach house in Seaside and the Sparta Building in Medford.

The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design project was developed by Gerding Edlen, designed by Allied Works Architecture and built by Howard S. Wright Construction. The center, , “was brought back to its historic glory and expanded into a world-class educational facility.”

To create the Erickson Fritz Apartments on Northwest Second Avenue, two long-neglected buildings – the Erickson Saloon and the Fritz Hotel – were “restored and converted into much-needed mixed-income housing,” according to Restore Oregon. Innovative Housing Inc. was the developer, LRS Architects and ORANGEWALLstudios provided the design and Silco Commercial Construction served as the general contractor.

The Washington High School restoration was developed by Venerable Properties and Pacific Realty Associates, designed by SERA Architects and built by Bremik Construction. After standing vacant for more than 20 years, the school now holds retail and creative office space. The former auditorium is now Revolution Hall, a performing arts venue.

The Block House Café in Dayton had been a long-empty historic church that Restore Oregon said was “respectfully repurposed” and became an anchor destination in downtown Dayton. The developer was Twin Towers LLC of Tualatin, the designer was Paul M. Falsetto Architect and the general contractor was Fackler Construction of McMinnville.

Before being renovated, the Julian Hotel Apartments building, constructed in 1892, was run-down and used for Section 8 housing. It’s still used for low-income housing, but restoration brought it to “a state of grace and dignity for its residents and neighbors, demonstrating that preservation can serve the under-served,” Restore Oregon stated. The developer was Northwest Housing Alternatives, the designer was by Carleton Hart Architecture and the general contractor was Walsh Construction Co.

In Seaside, Old Salty is a 1910 beach house that was “saved, restored on a budget and furnished with salvage and garage sale treasures,” according to Restore Oregon. Reconstruction was designed by Emerick Architects. Hazen & Johnson Inc. of Seaside was the general contractor.

The Sparta Building in Medford was constructed in 1911 in the American Renaissance style. The restored structure is bringing “new life” to downtown Medford, according to Restore Oregon. Tater Rental LLC of Oregon City developed the project, Kramer & Co. of Ashland designed it and Norway Construction of Oregon City served as the general contractor.

The honored projects demonstrate what is possible through preservation, Moretti said.

“The DeMuro Award is for projects that represent a particularly exceptional standard for preservation and adaptive reuse and for challenging or creative preservation projects,” she said. “They set an example for historic preservation and reuse.”

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Architect Brian Emerick may be stepping down as chairman of Portland’s Historic Landmarks Commission this month, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stop advising city officials.

Emerick has served two four-year terms on the commission that weighs in on development in the city’s dozen or so historic districts. His tenure has run the gamut of economic cycles, from before the Great Recession to the building boom today.

Now he’ll take that experience in a somewhat different direction – one less time-consuming – as a member of a city task force charged with setting policy for Portland’s 1,800 unreinforced masonry buildings. He also will spend more time serving as a principal at Emerick Architects, which he co-founded with his wife, Melody Emerick.

Brian Emerick is looking forward to seeing the continuation of efforts that his leadership at the Historic Landmarks Commission has put in motion, as detailed in the State of the City Preservation Report that was presented to Portland City Council last week.

Among the goals set forth for 2016 for the Historic Landmarks Commission is the hire of a full-time senior preservation planner, which the city has needed for some time, Emerick said.

“We’ve got some incredibly dedicated volunteers that are high performers, but at the same time there’s only so much you can do as a volunteer,” he said. “You have to have staff to write the guidelines you really need, or if we had a dedicated city planner that has the bandwidth for that.”

Emerick said Seattle has “a number of preservation planner positions,” but Portland probably has more historic structures – many built in the early 1900s.

“Portland has the same if not more historic resources than Seattle,” he said. “After the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905 we had a huge growth spurt here and we kind of eclipsed Seattle at that point.”

Another recommendation in the city preservation report is to establish design guidelines for the Skidmore / Old Town Historic District – something the Historic Landmarks Commission has tried to do for years.

“About seven years ago we engaged in a pretty public process to rewrite the Skidmore / Old Town guidelines (for) a pretty big important area – our most historic area downtown,” Emerick said. “But it got really waylaid for political reasons and has been sitting in a manner of stasis for a number of years.”

With a different City Council now in place, a final draft of the Skidmore / Old Town guidelines will go before the council for adoption in February, Emerick said. Plans also are under way for development of a final draft of Old Town Chinatown Historic District guidelines by the end of next year.

The way city code is written right now, Emerick said, each historic district needs to have its own guidelines because each one is unique.

“But it also kind of puts a burden on the city because then (officials) have to write specific guidelines for each district,” he said. “But I think that definitely having two done for the most important (historic districts) will really help to set a standard to make the others easier to create. That would be the idea.”

The Historic Landmarks Commission is concerned with historic preservation, but is pro-development in that it wants to see historic districts and places active and thriving, Emerick said. That includes infill efforts.

“But at the same time we’re trying to plan for the landmarks of tomorrow,” he said. “The city says these are really important places and we want to make sure they will last another 100 years and really strengthen rather than take away from it.”

Another priority listed in the city preservation report is to update the city’s Historic Resource Inventory. That hasn’t happened since the late 1980s, Emerick said, and hasn’t included eastern parts of the city.

The city preservation report also states the need to secure funding and public support for retrofits of the many unreinforced masonry buildings, particularly in the downtown area, and also recommends seeking a balance between preservation and density.

City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the work of the Historic Landmarks Commission, said Emerick’s work has been essential.

“Brian has done an outstanding job and it’s a job that takes up a lot of spare time,” Saltzman said. “I appreciate the work that he and other members have done – like the issues around Mount Tabor and the Washington Park reservoirs, advice that was well-heeded by us. He’s done a great job.”

Emerick also received high praise from Jessica Engeman, a preservationist with Venerable Properties who also serves on the Landmarks Commission.

“He’s been a fabulous commissioner, a very gifted architect, a great moderator and facilitator,” Engeman said. “He really understands how buildings come together and the kinds of details that take a building from ordinary to outstanding.”

Many people think the Historic Landmarks Commission is primarily concerned with historic buildings, Engeman said, but most of its work concerns new construction in historic districts.

“Brian has taken it to the next level in terms of his expertise,” she said. “He provides feedback on new construction that responds to the DNA of the historic district.”

Serving on the Historic Landmarks Commission has been an honor, Emerick said. He became involved at the urging of late Venerable Properties founder Art DeMuro, a good friend who also was Emerick Architects’ first client 16 years ago.

“Art passed away a few years ago, but he was a great mentor and helped me when I became chair,” Emerick said. “He set a good precedent and helped strengthen the commission, and I’ve tried to do my best to carry that ball forward and make it even stronger than I found it.”

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As buildings age, so do their windows. Owners of historic buildings sometimes face a difficult decision: should they repair those windows, or replace them?

Here, such decisions must account for the Historic Landmarks Commission, which “provides leadership and expertise on maintaining and enhancing Portland’s historic and architectural heritage,” according to its website. The commission’s approval is not required for window restoration on historic buildings; however, replacement projects are another matter.

Brian Emerick, chairman of the Historic Landmarks Commission, said that it has very specific requirements for window replacements.

“What we’ve done in the past with the (Historic) Landmarks Commission is say that there has to be a good reason that you need to replace them – not just energy code upgrades,” he said. “Essentially, you have to do your homework and show that they’re not reparable. That’s pretty standard in the historical world.”

The commission also must approve materials used for replacements.

“If the replacement is allowed, then we’re pretty darn specific about matching profiles,” Emerick said. “If it was a wood, double-hung coming out, then it would need to be a wood, double hung going back in. Basically, it needs to not be distinguishable to most people. It’s going to look the same.”

One historic building with windows targeted for replacement is the 103-year-old Hotel deLuxe (formerly the Hotel Mallory), at 729 S.W. 15th Ave. Phil Sydnor of Integrate Architecture & Planning earlier this month applied for a pre-application conference regarding plans to replace all of the building’s windows on the second through eighth floors.

Sydnor couldn’t comment on why the building’s owner, Provenance Hotels, chose to pursue window replacements rather than restorations, but he did say that Integrate Architecture & Planning is going about the process very carefully. The firm is considering three main factors: a balance of the building’s original aesthetics, the windows’ functionality and their cost.

“We’re really into research and choosing the right component for the building,” Sydnor said. “It’s one of these ones where there’s probably going to be a lot of interest of somebody proposing a particular window for this project. We’re trying to find the most objective way to go about it. … At this time, we’re trying to do this in-house study and define what the parameters are that we’re looking for and sort of figure it out on our own.

“We have to go through the original drawings from the building and see what was there from a detail standpoint. And then look at what is in place currently, how was it put there, how can we take it out. And then there’s extensive research as far as satisfying the city’s process for the review. Then there’s time researching what product you’re going to use for the new windows.”

Meanwhile, some people in the industry believe restorations of historic buildings’ windows are far better than replacements. Vern Forrest, president of Chosen Wood Window Maintenance, is one of those advocates. His firm has repaired windows in structures including the Benson Hotel and the 511 Federal Building.

“You shouldn’t be replacing them,” he said. “These old windows are very good windows. They’ve lasted a lot of years and nothing today is going to last that long. Restoration is always the best thing to do for them and keep the old windows.”

But Emerick acknowledged that sometimes windows simply cannot be replaced. His company, Emerick Architects, recently decided to replace windows in two historic buildings: the Sovereign Hotel and the Overland Warehouse. For the Sovereign Hotel, only windows on the interior façade were replaced; the others were preserved.

“The windows at the Overland Warehouse had to be replaced because they were completely trashed,” Emerick said. “Half the windows were missing.”

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Emerick Architects recently moved into a new office, a 2,500-square-foot space comprising the entire second floor of the Title & Trust building in downtown Portland.

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