A Portland startup is aiming to turn commercial real estate into the next field for crowdfunding investment.

BuildingBits allows customers to invest as little as $1,000 in a commercial building. The company evaluates and selects individual buildings to present to investors to purchase. Investors can then purchase a share. Once a fundraising goal equal to the purchase price is reached, a property passes into escrow.

BuildingBits’ platform is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. BuildingBits received SEC approval in September, and founder Alex Aginsky is now moving quickly to launch the business.

“That was a very long, complicated, arduous and expensive process,” Aginsky said of SEC registration.

Investors purchase a share of a limited liability company that will own a particular building. The LLC is formed at the time of closing.

The idea of using multiple small investors to build or purchase real estate is not unprecedented. The closest local comparison may be Kevin Cavenaugh‘s Guerrilla Development, which used a crowdfunding model to back development of the Fair-Haired Dumbbell building.

Aginsky said his model has some similarities to Cavenaugh’s, with a few key differences. Cavenaugh’s investments were limited to Oregon residents, while Aginsky is casting a wider net. And Aginsky is looking to replicate the crowdfunding model repeatedly.

Aginsky’s pitch is that many small-scale investors such as schoolteachers could come up with $1,000 to invest in a building.

“This is an opportunity for them to dip their toe in the water and try this out and to receive regularly occurring dividends,” he said.

BuildingBits has 12 employees, and headquarters in the Pearl District. Aginsky said he conducted a successful round of fundraising in late 2016 and is embarking on another round now. Aginsky said he was heading to Silicon Valley shortly for a series of meetings with potential funders.

Aginsky said he plans to launch a trading platform next year where investors could buy or sell the building shares.

“In theory, we envision someone could buy a share of the Walgreens down the street and trade and sell those whenever they want,” he said.

Users can essentially create their own real estate investment trusts by focusing on a particular area of interest in the market, he said.

Aginsky previously founded Aginsky Capital Group, a boutique property investment firm for wealthy investors outside the U.S.

The post Opportunity calls for small-scale commercial real estate investors appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell has begun to attract a mix of hip retail shops and creative agencies drawn to the two colorful, connected buildings that were constructed in 2017.

Fifty percent of the 56,000 square feet of speculative office space is leased, Kevin Cavenaugh, principal of Guerrilla Development, stated in an email message.

The buildings opened for leasing amid strong competition in the Portland office market, and in particular the Central Eastside submarket, where developers are rushing to deliver projects.

Plastic Sunshine, a creative agency that offers brand, digital and activation services, has taken 2,000 square feet on the sixth floor of the north building.

TenPod, a co-working company, is taking the second floor of both buildings and will open in early June, Cavenaugh said. Fuzzco, another branding agency, also is an office tenant.

On the ground floor, Crema Coffee plans to open soon. And 11:11, a new retailer of modern office furnishings, is also working toward opening.

The sixth floor of the south building and the fourth floor of both buildings are taken by tenants that Cavenaugh could not yet disclose.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell has attracted outsized attention in part due to the exterior mural of vibrant, abstract paint designed by Los Angeles artist James Jean. Cavenaugh also became the first developer in Oregon to use an innovative crowdfunding model to attract small investors.

Several of the office spaces are being built out to suit tenants.

“While the Dumbbell looks slow and empty now, we have crews in there building out the office spaces as fast as we can,” Cavenaugh stated. “Tenants are ready and I’m trying to keep up.”

Plastic Sunshine moved into its space in January after searching for something suitable in a newly constructed building, said Danica Wilson, co-founder of the agency. Most of the available office space in Portland was arriving via adaptive reuse, she said.

“Everything looked like it was in the old, dark, converted warehouse-y buildings,” she said.

Wilson was attracted to the lighter, modern look of the Fair-Haired Dumbbell.

“For us, the building looked really odd from the outside, but from the inside the building is beautiful and full of light, which is key to our creative inspiration,” she said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell’s seismic resiliency was another strong selling point, Wilson said.

The building has no vehicle parking. Wilson said that hasn’t been an issue because of street parking existing nearby, employees commuting by bicycle and easy access from the Portland Streetcar.

11:11 started with a successful pop-up at The Cleaners – the Ace Hotel‘s rentable space. Plans call for the new store at the Fair-Haired Dumbbell to softly open May 31, with a grand opening June 21.

Paloma Medina, the store’s proprietor, said she looked for seven or eight months before finding the right spot for 11:11 in the Fair-Haired Dumbbell. She drove by the building several times and grew to enjoy the colorful exterior.

“I really wanted to hate the building, but I kind of love it,” she said.

The building was built by Andersen Construction, with a design by FFA Architecture and Interiors.

The post Fair-Haired Dumbbell leasing moves ahead appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell was built to evoke a reaction, so Guerrilla Development‘s Kevin Cavenaugh welcomes criticism of its unique design.

“It’s okay if you don’t like it, that’s the idea. It’s a what-the-[expletive] building,” Cavenaugh said last week, while leading a tour of the project.

Andersen Construction has reached substantial completion on the $17.5 million project, which features five stories of heavy timber-framed creative office space over ground-floor retail. Painting of the building’s defining feature, a custom façade designed by Los Angeles-based artist James Jean, is slated for completion next month. Because the Dumbbell is shorter than surrounding structures at the Burnside bridgehead, the design will also be painted on the building’s roof.

The building consists of two towers connected on the upper floors by a sky bridge. Each office floor has a footprint of around 4,000 square feet, intended to meet demand for small creative firms with less than 15 employees. The building’s three commercial tenants will be Crema Coffee, a restaurant run by an unnamed James Beard Award-winning chef, and an “art bar” that will be repainted every few months by different international artists.

The building is unique not only in design, but in funding, as well – it was the first in the country to use Regulation A funding, which allows non-accredited investors to put in a minimum of $3,000 in the project. A total of $1.5 million was raised through 111 different Regulation A investors, the bulk of whom contributed the minimum amount.

The post All opinions welcome on Fair-Haired Dumbbell appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Oh, the thinks Kevin Cavenaugh can think.

If you see what looks like a page out of a Dr. Seuss book going up on a building east of the Burnside Bridge, that’s just the painting of the Fair-Haired Dumbbell, the latest and largest building from Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development.

Crews began painting the under-construction mixed-use office building Tuesday. The colorful, swirling design came about from a design competition won by Los Angeles artist James Jean.

A team of painters from Dan Cohen Creative Labs is painting the building with Keim silicate mineral paint, Cavenaugh said. The paint is designed to chemically bond to the synthetic stucco exterior surface and carries a lifetime color saturation warranty. It also costs up to $900 per gallon, depending on the color.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is likely to become one of Portland’s most colorful and recognizable buildings, standing in contrast to its prominent and darkly clad neighbor, Yard. Cavenaugh has likened the Dumbbell’s appearance to two gift-wrapped boxes.

The 54,932-square-foot building at 11 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. consists of five floors of offices over ground-floor retail, including a forthcoming bar and a barbershop.

Painting the building will take an estimated four to five months, depending on weather, said Dan Cohen, owner of Dan Cohen Creative Labs. Painting is under way on the west-facing wall. On June 20, a second crew will begin working simultaneously. The second crew is holding off for now because of the Rose Festival parade route, Cohen said. The site also remains busy with construction activity.

“It’s still a live construction site, so we’re working around everyone else as well,” he said.

During design review, commissioners expressed concern about the mural’s durability. The building passed design review on its fourth hearing.

Cohen said the mural should not deteriorate with time. The exterior surface of the building is Dryvit synthetic stucco that will bond with the paint.

“It not only mechanically adheres to the surface, as most paints do, but it also chemically adheres,” Cohen said. “It basically bonds to the wall and becomes part of the wall. Because of that, it will never peel.”

The building gained notice from the start given its daring appearance and an unusual crowd-funding campaign that raised $1.5 million of the building’s approximately $18 million cost. It was featured in The New York Times, among other media outlets.

Cavenaugh recently unveiled another idiosyncratic idea: Tree Farm, an office building proposed for a parcel next to the Morrison Bridge which would have approximately 64 trees growing out of all four sides of the building.

The Lorax, who speaks for the trees, could not be reached for comment.

The post A splash of color for the Fair-Haired Dumbbell appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Developer Kevin Cavenaugh, via his firm Guerrilla Development, is embarking on a novel approach to provide workforce housing in fast-gentrifying Northeast Portland.

He’s planning to construct an apartment building with some units renting for less than $600 per month – without government subsidies.

To make the project’s financials work, Cavenaugh is asking investors to accept a diminished return – only 4 percent. He is seeking to prove that for-profit developers can build affordable workforce housing.

“It’s a weird concept,” he said. “I’m asking (investors) to just not be greedy.”

Cavenaugh said he has secured three significant private investments for the mixed-income multifamily project dubbed the Atomic Orchard Experiment. He purchased the 29,000-square-foot parcel at 2510 N.E. Sandy Blvd., home to an auto repair shop, for $3.2 million in November.

The Atomic Orchard Experiment represents a radical approach to providing workforce housing in Portland. The planned 88-unit development is uniquely structured. Sixty percent of the units will be market rate, at around $1,650 per month. Twenty percent of the units will be affordable at 80 percent of median family income, a level set by housing regulators at $1,100 per month, earning a 10-year property tax abatement through Portland’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption (MULTE) program.

And in an unprecedented twist, approximately 16 units would be pushed far below market rate to less than $600 a month. Cavenaugh is targeting rents of $582 a month.

Each unit in the approximately 75,000-square-foot building will be substantially similar in design, featuring spiral staircases leading to lofted sleeping spaces that blur the definition of studio and one-bedroom.

The units are only 600 square feet, but include roomy 18-foot ceilings.

“It’s more about volume than square footage,” Cavenaugh said.

Five micro-retail spaces will occupy the ground floor along Sandy Boulevard.

Brett Schulz Architect is designing the project.

No other for-profit developer in Portland is building apartments priced at far below market rates without the benefit of government subsidies. To do so, Cavenaugh is offering investors a 4 percent preferred return. Typically, he offers investors an 8 percent preferred return.

“By getting a smaller dividend, that allows me to offer aggressively lower rents,” he said. “So that’s the social impact. I just need to find investors that have a long-term goal.”

Investors can expect additional returns when the property is eventually refinanced or sold, he said.

Cavenaugh is driven in part by a desire to prove to other developers that it can be done.

“The reputation of commercial real estate investors is that we’re greedy,” he said.

Cavenaugh’s concept – voluntary, subsidy-free affordable housing by a for-profit developer – appears to be unprecedented in Portland.

“Kevin Cavenaugh’s known for being innovative and trying to push the envelope, and that’s good,” said Dan Valliere, chief executive of nonprofit housing developer REACH Community Development.

The Atomic Orchard Experiment would be welcome in Portland, where close-in housing is in high demand, Valliere said.

Cavenaugh said he’s pursuing below-market rents to give people who serve the community – for example, those who work for nonprofits dedicated to homelessness outreach – the ability to live in close-in Portland. He plans to exercise a preference for nonprofit workers who apply for the deeply affordable units.

Property owners are not allowed to discriminate by certain protected classes – for example, race, religion or sex. But Cavenaugh said there’s nothing to prevent him from discriminating in favor of nonprofit workers.

“I can discriminate by profession, so that’s what I’m going to do at Atomic Orchard,” he said. “It’s about supporting you and making the city better.”

Oregon law says landlords cannot discriminate based on source of income – for example, a landlord cannot ban recipients of federal housing subsidies. But the state statute specifies that that provision does not refer to occupation.

Several local nonprofit organizations work on getting the homeless into homes, but there’s less emphasis on workforce housing for nonprofit employees challenged by Portland’s market-rate rents, which have ballooned in the past two years.

Some Portland nonprofit organizations struggle to find housing for their employees.

“That has been a big concern for nonprofits,” said Jim White, executive director of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon.

Meanwhile, the Atomic Orchard Experiment is an experiment for Cavenaugh in more ways than one. It’s easily his largest multifamily project, although he’s built apartments before – most recently in the 2/3rds project in St. Johns.

Currently, Cavenaugh is building the Fair-Haired Dumbbell, an office-over-retail project in the Central Eastside that attracted widespread publicity, including an article in The New York Times, for using crowdfunding. The campaign raised $1.5 million – a substantial amount, but only a fraction of the project’s $18 million total cost. The rest was supplied was M & T Bank’s Lake Oswego office and individual, long-term investors.

Atomic Orchard Experiment will not use crowdfunding. Cavenaugh said he didn’t want to undergo the time-consuming process for the new project.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is on track for completion in June 2017, he said. Tenants on board include a bar from a local operator and a barber shop.

Cavenaugh has also developed commercial projects such as Burnside Rocket, The Zipper and The Ocean. He’s nearly finished building New New Crusher Court, a retail and office project on Sandy Boulevard. New New Crusher Court is fully leased, and the first tenants will move in by the end of December, he said.

Cavenaugh has focused on Sandy Boulevard for several of his recent projects. That’s no accident. The four-lane boulevard, historically part of U.S. Route 30, allows for lower costs.

“In everything I do, I tend to go into fringe neighborhoods where the growth potential is high,” he said.

Cavenaugh is in escrow for another Sandy Boulevard property that could be the location of his next project. After that, he may look to fringier neighborhoods, he said.

“I’ve probably priced myself out of the market on Sandy,” he said.

The post A ‘weird concept’ for Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

More than a year has passed since Kevin Cavenaugh of Guerrilla Development first proposed his “Fair-Haired Dumbbell” building for a site at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. On Thursday he finally got the Portland Design Commission‘s approval.

Cavenaugh’s design, which won a city competition, features two six-story, cantilevered buildings slightly angled away from each other and joined at every floor level by eight-foot-wide, 30-feet-long open walkways. Both buildings will be completely covered with an original design by an artist yet to be selected.

Design Commission Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser voted against approval, but commissioners Julie Livingston, Tad Savinar and Jeff Simpson all gave approval for the art-inspired project after about an hour of discussion. Commission Chairman David Wark and Commissioner Don Vallaster were absent.

Kaiser was not explicit about his reasons for voting no, but he seemed to be concerned about how the building would fare in the long term.

“We have to think about 80 or 100 years from now,” he said.

At a previous design hearing for the project earlier this month, commissioners brought up concerns about perceived insufficient glazing, whether a covering should be placed over the sixth-floor walkway and how the roof would be treated.

Kaiser said then that he thought not covering the sixth-floor walkway would be a mistake. But Savinar said Thursday that after studying a rendering of the proposed building, he decided that covering the top walkway would affect the design.

“I think a canopy won’t work and it seems stupid,” he said.

Livingston said she was satisfied with plans for the building and Simpson said he was in favor of approval. And although he voted in favor the proposal, Savinar said he still had some reservations about being able to maintain the texture of the building’s skin.

Before the vote, Joe Zody of FFA Architecture & Interiors, representing Cavenaugh, defended the percentage of windows in the building by pointing to other buildings with similar percentages of glazing. Zody added that ground-floor windows accounted for 50 percent of surface area. He also pointed out that the Regional Arts & Culture Council had approved the building.

Zody also said that covering the top walkway wouldn’t work with the design.

“We look at the exterior bridges as exactly that,” he said.

Zody added that he had requested that the RACC include the building’s roof in the design that will cover the exterior walls.

After the meeting, Zody said he was pleased with the outcome.

“It’s a milestone for us, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

The next step will be to complete documents required for a building permit, which Zody said he expected to be done by Christmas. He said construction could begin by next spring and finish in about a year.

In the meantime, Zody said the RACC can now initiate the process of selecting an artist to create a design for the building’s skin.

“We can start very quickly now with approval and really begin the process,” he said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is one of three projects at the Burnside bridgehead; the other two are already under construction.

Works Partnership Architecture designed a 10-story mixed-use building for Block 75, at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., with both office and residential space in a modular format above ground-floor retail space.

A 21-story tower designed by Skylab Architecture for Block 67 will have 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading public park at the bridge level.

The post Fair-Haired Dumbbell’s design approved appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The brains behind the designs of three very different developments planned at the east end of the Burnside Bridge revealed their motivations – and even exchanged a few barbs – during a panel discussion in Northwest Portland on Monday night.

Randy Gragg, executive director of the John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies at the University of Oregon, served as moderator. Panelists included Works Partnership Architecture principals Carrie Strickland and Bill Neburka, Skylab Architecture principal Jeff Kovel and Guerrilla Development principal Kevin Cavenaugh.

Each, in turn, talked about the motivations and thought processes behind their designs.

Kovel’s firm is behind the design of a $58 million, 21-story tower under construction on Block 67. The building will hold 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading park.

“The two things at the core for me are abstraction and improvisation,” Kovel said. “There is a big musical influence in my life and my work, as well as a real fondness for abstraction, to try to look for different ways, even in the same project, to express an idea.”

Kovel said that inspired the decision to put a park atop the underground parking lot.

“We had a parking lot and thought why not make it a park and lift it up to the bridge level,” he said. “It’s a conceptual link to the wild river bank that existed before the city was formed. We used that as an amphitheater for viewing the city, for stormwater treatment and put our parking below it.”

The Works Partnership project at the Burnside bridgehead, a 10-story mixed-use building on Block 75, also is under construction. Retail space is planned for the ground floor, but Strickland said the upper floors could be used for either apartments or offices.

“It’s a 10-story building with 1,500-square-foot spaces,” Strickland said. “They are cellular spaces and anything can happen at any level.”

Neburka said his team traveled to Chicago to get ideas for the project.

“At the corner of Dearborn (Street) and Jackson (Boulevard) is the city’s tallest masonry building where the bottom walls are eight feet thick, and right across the street is Federal Plaza, the essence of free space, with ephemeral buildings above,” he said. “Our building is about these ideas, and the idea of permanence and history and modernity began to take shape.”

The project talked about most during the night was Cavenaugh’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. All panelists agreed that it will be the centerpiece of the bridgehead projects because of its conspicuous location. The project is due to receive its final design review this week.

“You got stuck in the throne site, the island in the middle of a traffic pattern in the middle of a development,” Neburka said. “You’re on the main stage and I wonder how that affected your design.”

Cavenaugh’s original design for two six-story, cantilevered buildings joined by elevated walkways raised concerns because it called for an exterior resembling brightly-colored Florentine wallpaper. That plan changed, and now the Regional Arts and Culture Council is working with Cavenaugh to find an artist to create an original design.

But Cavenaugh said he wants the building, the smallest of the three developments at the bridgehead, to pop out to passersby. The exterior design will be “a crazy color,” he said.

“I don’t want people to die, but I do want people to get in little, small fender benders driving by,” he said.

Cavenaugh said his best creativity comes when his thought processes are balanced.

“I had my ass handed to me after the recession and now I want to make sure I balance between right brain work and left brain work and, ideally, the result is something quirky,” he said.

Quirkiness is what Cavenaugh hopes will help him promote the building to design firms, which he’d like to have as tenants.

“Each floor plate is only 4,000 square feet, so it’s ideal for a 10- to 15-person office,” he said. “If my client ends up being design firms, those are design firms who shouldn’t be on the 20th floor of Big Pink, eighth door to the left. They should be in a building like this.”

All of the Burnside bridgehead designs are very different, Neburka said, because there was no master planning process as there was for the South Waterfront District.

But Strickland said that not planning ahead was the point.

“The danger is in developing a multi-block at the same time and there being too much consistency,” she said. “Breaking it down with different developers and different programs – that’s how real cities develop over time.”

After about two hours of discussion, Gragg asked the panelists how they would work together moving forward and what the neighborhood will look like.

“I think you’ll see a lot of people taking pictures of these buildings for a long time to come,” Cavenaugh said.

Gragg also asked panelists to critique each other’s designs, and Strickland obliged.

“We all really do like each other, but before we even started the building we had done so much work on the east side, and I don’t think your building is authentic east side,” Strickland said of Kovel’s design.

Kovel smiled.

“I actually like the view of your building from my building,” he replied.

Strickland also criticized Cavenaugh’s design.

“Maybe you’re putting up a building that is not as important as everyone is expecting it to be,” she said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell’s standing as the centerpiece is “the elephant in the room,” Kovel said. Neburka added that the location is “a very, very loaded site.”

But Neburka said organic growth is continually occurring in the Central Eastside and that the Fair-Haired Dumbbell may become something entirely different in 50 or 75 years.

Cavenaugh said that’s OK with him.

“We tend to take ourselves too seriously,” he said. “I think amazing ideas will follow me, and I don’t think I am the pinnacle of ideas.”

The post Burnside bridgehead designers converge appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The design for developer Kevin Cavenaugh‘s art-inspired “Fair-Haired Dumbbell” buildings at the Burnside bridgehead wasn’t approved at Thursday’s meeting of the Portland Design Commission, but it wasn’t rejected either.

FFA Architecture + Interiors‘ design received its third review, when projects are usually approved or denied by the commission. But after a spirited discussion, the commission was split and decided to continue the final review on Oct. 15.

Only four members of the six-member commission were present. After two hours of discussion, Chairman David Wark and Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser were still on the fence whether to approve the project that will hold an iconic place at an entrance to downtown Portland.

Commissioner Julie Livingston, however, indicated that she was ready to give her approval and Commissioner Jeff Simpson said he was leaning in that direction as well.

One thing quickly became clear at the meeting, however: The Florentine design that Cavenaugh had copyrighted to use for the building’s skin could not be used. Because it’s copyrighted it qualifies as a sign, which is prohibited by city code, city planner Jeff Mitchem said.

“The city attorney said the Florentine pattern was a sign, and we threw it out the window,” he said.

Instead, FFA will work with the Regional Arts and Culture Council to find an artist to design an original mural to entirely cover the buildings.

Mitchem said city staffers met last month with RACC’s public art advisory council and approved the acrylic stucco finish over which the mural will be applied.

“RACC will approve the mural after (the Design Commission) approves the building,” he said.

The project’s design, which won a city competition, calls for two six-story, cantilevered buildings, slightly angled away from each other and joined at every floor level by eight-foot-wide, 30-foot-long open walkways.

The absence of a covering for the top walkway bothered Kaiser.

“You’ll have to shovel snow at times, and I think it’s a misstep on Kevin’s part in terms of tenants’ happiness and maintenance,” he said.

Karl Refi of FFA told commissioners that the design had received several minor adjustments since its last review, including removal of exterior exposed columns below the lower bridge.

“We took a different strategy in how we are binding the bridge to the building and found we could do away with them,” he said.

Refi said FFA also decided to use clear safety glass instead of perforated metal panels on the sides of the walkways and changed the roof panel from an all-around louvre to a flat metal panel.

“That’s so we can extend the artwork,” he said.

Commissioners expressed concern about exterior maintenance of a building that will be a work of art, and FFA senior associate Joe Zody said that was also a concern for his firm.

“Kevin is on board and will work with the city and RACC to create a maintenance fund,” Refi said. “He is also very open to working with an artist and going through the process.”

That process could involve a nationwide search for an artist, he added.

Livingston asked if the art would cover all of the walls plus the roof, and Zody responded that it would.

Kaiser then brought up the percentage of glass in the building’s windows and asked why it seemed to be less than 50 percent.

Zody said he wasn’t sure about the total percentage, but that at the ground level, it’s greater than 50 percent.

“We have 421 windows and the floor plates are 60 (feet) by 60 (feet), which is only 3,500 or 3,600 square feet,” he said. “The depth there is not huge.”

Kaiser also criticized the open walkways because of Portland’s rainy winter weather, but Zody said adding a roof over the top walkway would interfere with Cavenaugh’s artistic vision.

“As a sculptural image, and putting on a rain cap would interfere with the imagery,” Zody said. “It is Portland, and people are used to the rain.”

Zody added that the cantilevered walls will provide a deeper recess at the upper level.

Kaiser asked whether a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating would be pursued, and Zody said it wouldn’t.

“It’s not LEED certified, but we will make it as energy efficient as possible,” he said. “The two (foot) by six (foot) exterior wall is beyond code,” he said.

But Kaiser pressed.

“We are known for leading in green conservation and this is at the gateway to Portland,” he said. “We would ask that a lot be wrapped in that box, but I’m not quite seeing that.”

Livingston said she was not concerned about the inoperable windows and other issues. She liked that the process was being RACC-driven and that Cavenaugh was being flexible, she said.

“We should all look forward to an art project at the Burnside bridgehead,” she said.

Simpson said looking at drawings of the building without art was like looking at a blank canvas, but he favored conditional approval.

“I’m prepared to vote on the conditions crafted by Jeff (Mitchem),” he said.

Those conditions, Mitchem said, include RACC’s approval of the pattern, which will be selected through a public project, and covenants for maintenance of the artwork.

Wark said the project is a first for the city.

“It’s unprecedented – a surreal project,” he said. “Things keep clashing, but we are breaking new ground. There is no clear precedent to what it’s going to become over time.”

After more discussion, Zody agreed to return to finish the review on Oct. 15.

“It sounds like if you voted today it would be in a dead heat and we’d lose,” he said.

The post Original mural to cover Fair-Haired Dumbbell appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The exterior of the “Fair-Haired Dumbbell” project proposed at the Burnside Bridgehead just won’t work if it’s left a solid color, said planner Jeff Mitchem of the city of Portland Bureau of Development Services.

The artist-designed painted exterior mural of birds, flowers and butterflies proposed for the 67,500-square-foot development at 11 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. raised concerns at a Portland Design Commission meeting last month, and commissioners requested to see drawings of the building without the artwork.

That rendering was presented at an Aug. 6 second design review for the project. The general sense among the commission members, according to Mitchen, was that without the exterior pattern, the project doesn’t work.

“This project is unlike any other in the history of the city,” Mitchem said. “It touches on the boundary between art and architecture. Left blank, it will look like blank finishes, but would not be able to stand alone as a significant contribution to the architecture of the city.”

Mitchem said the Design Commission has asked the Regional Arts and Culture Council to assess the artwork design that covers the building and provide feedback, Mitchem said.

“It will be very interesting as to what extent RACC is willing and able to reach toward that design,” he said. “It’s unprecedented.”

The Design Commission during the Aug. 6 meeting did seem satisfied with several other changes it requested at a previous hearing for the project, Mitchem said. Those changes included moving elevators to a central lobby location and addressing details on the design of public spaces.

Overall, he said, the commission seemed satisfied with the design, but were concerned about the application process and durability of the exterior art, which latest plans have extending onto the roof as well.

The two-building project is proposed for a rounded lot bounded by Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Burnside and Northeast Couch streets. Plans call for a 2,000-square-foot central courtyard with a sculptural stormwater planter between the structures, ground-floor retail space. Suspended pedestrian bridges will connect floors of the buildings.

Troy Ainsworth, principal at FFA Architecture and Interiors Inc., the project architect for the Dumbbell, said the project has undergone significant revisions since the concept was initially created last year by Kevin Cavenaugh of Guerrilla Development.

The post For ‘Dumbbell’ project, beauty is skin deep appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

It’s hard to not be distracted by the flowery wrapping paper pattern on the façade of the proposed Fair-Haired Dumbbell project near the east end of the Burnside Bridge.

That’s why seeing Portland-based Guerilla Development Co.’s planned office and retail building without that bold move might be just what the Portland Design Commission needs to approve the architecture, commissioners noted on Thursday during a design review hearing for the project.

“I think we have to consider the building without its coating,” Commissioner Guenevere Millius ��said. “Will the building underneath the paint be worthy?”

Portland city planners recommended the Design Commission deny approval of the unconventional, 67,500-square-foot development, at 11 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., in its current iteration because of several concerns. These included worries about the durability and maintenance of the proposed stucco façade with a mural of flowers, birds and butterflies wrapping around all four sides of the development’s two, six-story buildings.

Commissioners agreed and asked the Portland-based FFA Architecture + Interiors Inc. design team to return on Aug. 6 for a second design review hearing to address a range of lingering issues with the project. Among the commission’s requests of the designers was to bring back a plain rendering of the project without the flowery pattern.

“Our job is to respond to the architecture,” Millius said. “To me, it would be useful. It’s very hard to see what’s going on.”

The project is proposed for a rounded lot bounded by Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, East Burnside Street and Northeast Couch Street. Plans call for a 2,000-square-foot central courtyard with a sculptural stormwater planter between the structures, ground floor retail space and suspended pedestrian bridges connecting each floor of the buildings.

FFA principal Troy Ainsworth told the commission the project has undergone some significant revisions since the concept was initially created by Guerilla Development owner Kevin Cavenaugh and first shared with commissioners in a design advice hearing early last year. Changes to the design included eliminating a podium level to extend the mural façade to the ground and scrapping plans to include on-site parking.

Initial plans for executing the flowery skin of the building, inspired by wrapping paper, called for using painted metal panels, but hiring a muralist to paint the pattern onto stucco turned out to be a more feasible choice, Ainsworth said. Portland artist Dan Cohen, owner of Dan Cohen Creative Labs, told the commission that he would use techniques similar to what he’s done in the past to hand paint large-scale billboards onto the sides of buildings. He also proposed using a type of silicone-based paint that he said wouldn’t deteriorate, peel or fade.

Like last year’s design advice request hearing for project, the Dumbbell concept inspired a lively discussion on Thursday amongst commissioners. The proposed façade pattern dominated much of the conversation.

Commissioner Tad Savinar criticized the quality of the painting on a full-scale façade mock-up the design team brought to the hearing calling it “crude.” The sample, which was not painted by Cohen, made Savinar worry that the project would be poorly executed.

“This thing has to sparkle like an incredible jewel and it’s not,” Savinar said. “I think it’s got to really sing … You can’t just rely on the wackiness of it. You have to step up to the plate.”

Another commission concern was that extending the mural to the ground weakened the design concept Cavenaugh described during the design advice request of the buildings appearing like two gift wrapped boxes. Commissioners suggested using a different façade material for the ground floor.

“I think it’s lost some of its elegant-ness from the simple idea of the boxes,” Commissioner Jeff Simpson said. “Now it has legs.”

Several commissioners also noted the ground floor retail spaces could use some revisions to become more vibrant. Savinar said the storefronts felt like an afterthought.

“There seems to be a bit of a disconnect (with) the playfulness of the windows on top,” he said. “The storefronts look kind of clunky in response. I’m not sure that it’s all working together.”

The proposed development also lacked a prominent main entrance and lobby, Commission Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser said.

“I think we can definitely make this a better, safer, more celebratory entry,” he said. “It’s missing that formality.”

Commissioner Julie Livingston suggested the design team take another crack at the roofs and possibly consider green roofs since the top of the buildings would be visible from the Burnside Bridge.

“There are going to be so many people looking at this roof,” she said. “I think it needs a little more addressing.”

Millius said she still wasn’t entirely sold on the whole concept of having such a loud pattern on the building facades.

“I’ve been thinking about this building for 18 months,” she said. “(The pattern) to me felt so much like a random decision and almost like a practical joke on the neighborhood.”

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