A 175-foot-tall multifamily building project, years after surviving challenges from Pearl District neighbors, is advancing between Northwest Naito Parkway and the Willamette River.

Designed by TVA Architects for Lincoln Property Company, Fremont Place will ascend as high as 17 stories and hold 236 apartments above ground-floor retail space and amenity space.

General contractor Andersen Construction and subcontractors are getting ready to tackle the foundation. Pacific Foundation crews are installing over 100 steel pipe piles to support the building, while Andersen Structures Inc. workers prepare the necessary formwork.

DCI Engineers performed the structural engineering, which was complicated due to the riverfront location (1650 N.W. Naito Parkway).

“They are now working on the structural excavation, but we have fully excavated out to the elevation that’s needed to install all the steel pipe piles,” Andersen Construction project manager Katie Hoyt said. “We have an initial foundation permit, which is approved and signed off, and then we’re very close to getting the remainder of the building permits from the city.”

The Portland Design Commission approved the design for Fremont Place in 2018, but that decision was appealed to the City Council by the Pearl District Neighborhood Association. That appeal was at first upheld, but then reversed by the City Council, allowing the project to finally move forward.

The new building will have one level of below-grade parking featuring car stackers. The ground floor will have bike storage, two artist studios and a commercial space with an outdoor patio connected to an adjacent greenway. Meanwhile, the upper levels will have a mix of studios, one-bedroom units and two-bedroom units, with lounges and roof terraces on the second and seventh levels.

The massing, designed to minimize view obstructions for neighboring buildings to the west, steps down as the structure approaches the river. The full 17-story height is reached in the northwest corner, with eight stories on the northeast podium and six stories on the southwest podium.

Exterior materials will include brick pillars, curtain wall and storefront window systems on the ground floor, a window wall system on upper floors, fiber cement panels and metal panels.

The riverfront soil led to a unique foundation design, Hoyt said.

“From the middle of the building out to the river it’s been very sandy,” she said. “And then it starts to be a mix of sand and your typical soils we encounter right around the railroad tracks.”

Along the building’s east face, closest to the river, deep soil mixing was used to construct the below-grade retention wall. On the south and the west there is standard shoring and lagging walls; on the north there is a laid-back wall. Shotcrete will be the main material for the vertical walls below grade.

“And we have over 100 steel pipe pile, which per design are supposed to go down 106 linear feet,” Hoyt said, noting that the piles arrived on site via a barge equipped with a crane. “But it’s going 25 or 30 feet beyond that so that it hits bedrock.”

Initial excavation started in October 2020. Crews are expected to require 25 months to reach substantial completion. Westech Construction did the excavation work. Subcontractors currently on site include Ocean Park Mechanical, Bergelectric and Patriot Fire Protection. All are performing below-grade work at present in preparation for the first of three large foundation concrete pours.

“They’re putting sewers in, getting conduit ready for electrical – that kind of stuff,” Hoyt said. “And our (project engineers) are working on submittals for all the exteriors.”

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Fremont Place won preliminary approval after design changes satisfied earlier objections from Pearl District residents and the Portland City Council.

The council voted 4-0 Thursday to reject an appeal from the Pearl District Neighborhood Association of prior Design Commission approval.

In response to earlier council opposition, TVA Architects and the developer, Lincoln Property Co. of Dallas, reworked the design of the 275-unit mixed-use building. The redesign pushes back the building façade an additional 15 feet from the seawall, to 32 feet, 9 inches away.

The additional space allows for a wider (now 20 feet) Willamette River Greenway between the building and the river. The revised design reduces bike parking from 206 spaces to 140. It does not change the number of residential units.

The 17-story building reaches 175 feet in height, includes 305,936 square feet and uses 84 percent of the allowable floor area ratio. Designers worked to preserve neighbors’ views as much as possible, said Tim Wybenga, principal at TVA Architects.

“Although the council has made it quite clear that views are not a consideration, they were a design factor,” he said. “And so a lot of the massing of this building and the way it’s pushed has to do with consideration of views and sight lines of Pearl District neighbors.”

Fremont Place will not include any affordable apartments; the project entered into the city’s approval process before inclusionary housing rules took effect.

Commissioners praised the redesign.

“The revised plan feels less cramped,” Nick Fish said. “It’s more open, more airy.”

The changes “have satisfactorily addressed the concerns of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association,” said Stanley Penkin, president of the group.

“The applicant has made significant improvements to the greenway, which now better serves the neighborhood and the city,” he said.

Commissioners, responding to criticism from one Pearl District resident, defended their role providing a final check on the Design Commission’s decisions.

“I don’t think this is the right forum to constantly second-guess the Design Commission,” Fish said. “But in the rare instances we’ve done that, I actually think those conversations were quite principled.”

Fish suggested the City Council should raise the bar for appeals of Design Commission decisions. The council could change city rules to choose which appeals to take up, much like the U.S. Supreme Court does, instead of automatically taking each appeal, he said.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz objected to that idea.

“If we narrow who gets to appeal, or how those appeals happen, that means that some people are left out, and the whole process here in Portland is about having people have their say to their elected officials,” Fritz said.

Thursday’s vote was preliminary; a final vote is scheduled for May 31. Commissioner Dan Saltzman was absent from Thursday’s hearing.

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