The idea for a park in North Portland’s Cully neighborhood goes back nearly 20 years. In early 2000, Portland Parks and Recreation acquired a 25 acre former landfill in the heart of the neighborhood.  The area has been primarily African American and ethnically mixed for decades and some questioned the idea of building a public park on a landfill.

In 2008, a master plan was created, but no funds were available to begin implementing the cleanup and construction. In 2005, Verde, a project started by Hacienda CDC to serve impoverished communities was started in Cully. Oriented to providing jobs and improving the neighborhood with an emphasis on environmental design, they launched letsbuildcullypark.org.

The organization was soon active in making the vision of a community park become a reality.

In 2012 a public/private partnership was approved by the Portland City Council and fundraising began. The park design included new access on Northeast 72^nd Avenue, parking, fitness trails, a dog park, athletic fields, stormwater management, bioswales, plantings, and the Native Gathering Garden. Among the issues they had to deal with was adherence to state and federal DEQ policies. Once that was achieved, people in the neighborhood saw the potential and were eager to participate.

Michael Martin, president of Northwest Infrastructure, served as the main lead of the group that worked to bring the $11.3 million project to fruition.

“I’ve been involved for about three years, but this is really a community project,” said Martin.

Maurice Rahming and Ali O’Neill of O’Neill Construction Group and James Faison of Faison Construction were also heavily involved. All are COBID-certified contractors.

“Instead of just one contractor, we kept the spirit of what Verde was doing and included several certified minority companies,” said Martin. “And people in the neighborhood got on board. They were a lot of the labor force that helped with the landscaping and built the community garden.”

A grand opening event was held on June 30th with Governor Kate Brown, Mayor Ted Wheeler, members of the various construction firms and landscape teams – and even the Portland Timbers – on hand to celebrate opening the park for public use.

Alan Hipolito, Verde’s outgoing executive director, said of the project, “Cully Park is a statement about the power of community, and I want to especially thank the hundreds of Cully adults, families and children who worked so hard for so long. My friends, you did it. You designed and built a park which everyone can enjoy and which will serve generations of Portlanders.”

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From the outset, was challenged to make its project on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard pencil out.

The idea was to create a high-end living option for people making between 50 and 60 percent of the area median income, and to activate the building – as well as the neighborhood – with retail space. Compromises had to be made, but last month ground was broken on the five-story, 50-unit building at 3250 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

“It was hard,” said Sarah Stevenson, Innovative Housing‘s executive director. “The architects and the contractors went to the drawing board and we cut what we could and we saved what we needed to and we generated a bit more equity than we were originally budgeting. We had a good investor who was interested in being here.”

Early on, the $11.9 million project attracted St. Petersburg, Fla.-based equity investment company Raymond James, which Stevenson said was interested in entering the Portland market. Innovative Housing already had received $400,000 in state grants, but it also qualified for federal low-income tax credits, which it sold to Raymond James to raise $8.4 million.

The developer also received $975,000 in HOME program dollars and a $531,000 system development charge waiver from the city of Portland, and a $1.4 million loan from the Network for Oregon Affordable Housing.

Money was already being stretched when plans to include 1,400 square feet of ground-floor retail space – an early promise to the neighborhood – posed a new challenge.

“The (building’s) entire 48,000 square feet was subject to commercial prevailing wage,” Stevenson said.

The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries has a higher prevailing wage for commercial products than for residential projects, Stevenson said. Even though the vast majority of the MLK project would be residential, BOLI dictated that the entire job be billed at the commercial rate – generating a cost approximately $600,000 more than planned.

That sent the design and building teams back to the drawing boards. A decision was made to focus on long-term durability.

“One thing we maintained throughout the design of the project was all brick cladding, which, as you know, has a higher up-front cost but is seen as a long-term investment by the owner, not only for its aesthetic value but also its life span,” said Ben White, an architect at , the project’s designer.

Similarly, the team decided to invest in high-performance wall assemblies to achieve energy savings. It also chose to leave concrete floors exposed rather than install floor finishes in some rooms, and use granite countertops instead of cheaper alternatives.

And at the last minute, co-general contractors and suggested switching from blown-in fiberglass insulation to a mineral wall system. It has a higher up-front cost, but it doesn’t require gypsum sheathing, so it’s cheaper over the long run.

Wells Fargo provided a $3.6 million construction loan for the project, which could qualify for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver rating. Katy Patricelli, senior vice president for Wells Fargo’s community lending and investments department, said the project made financial sense from the start.

“The location is also geographically very nice,” she said. “It’s close to public transportation. It has a public park (and) grocery stores (nearby). It has a lot of things that people who have less money can get to very quickly and easily so they won’t be isolated.”

The building will have 42 one-bedroom apartments and eight two-bedroom units. It’s scheduled to be completed in August 2013. A planned second phase calls for constructing a second building nearby with two-, three- and four-bedroom units that also will cater to low-income families.

Stevenson said she is hoping that the first phase will be a kind of catalyst for more development along the northern stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. And as the neighborhood develops, she wants the new building to become an anchor.

“As things have changed and the neighborhood has gentrified, I think a lot of people have been displaced,” she said. “We’re hoping we can create a place where people from the community can either come back to or find a place to stay.”

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