It came as a bit of a surprise to SERA Architects officials that they signed the largest commercial office lease in Portland since the pandemic began. In fact, for years they sought to build, not lease, a new showcase office.

“We got serious in a few locations,” said Stuart Colby, a SERA principal who leads the firm’s workplace studio. “It’s just that there were a number of barriers.”

Instead, SERA agreed earlier this year to a lease with Galleria owner Unico Properties for the entire 42,000-square-foot top floor of the historic downtown building between Southwest Alder and Morrison streets, and Ninth and 10th avenues.

“The firm has a long history of preservation and adaptive reuse,” Colby said. “These older buildings offer a lot of richness.”

The Galleria building, completed in 1910, offers a number of other advantages. As a full-block building, it has a floor plate among the largest available in urban Portland.

“In general, a full-floor-plate building is certainly ideal,” Colby said. “Large floor plates are scarce.”

After the move, all of SERA’s Portland employees will be able to work on one floor – something that is not possible within the firm’s current space at 338 N.W. Fifth Ave. in Old Town Chinatown. SERA has approximately 150 employees in Portland (30 additional employees work in an office in Oakland, California, where the firm has done work for Google and other tech companies).

In Portland, SERA currently occupies five floors in two buildings. The firm first moved into the former Minnesota Hotel building in 2004.

Environmental reasons also led SERA to lease existing space rather than build new, Colby said.

“It’s also a sustainability issue,” he said. “Reusing these existing buildings is a huge piece of keeping your carbon use down.”

Another point in the Galleria building’s favor, Colby said, is that it received a major seismic retrofit in recent years.

“We wanted seismic safety,” he said. “Most of these cool, old buildings in Portland, most of the developers didn’t want to do a full seismic upgrade.”

The Galleria office will have more space for collaboration and creative endeavors, Colby said. The tenant improvement is meant to be something of a demonstration project for SERA.

“We’re certifying everything under the sun, at great financial and labor cost,” he said.

Separately, SERA is designing core and shell improvements for Unico Properties on all five floors, Colby said.

“We did not commingle any financial interest between the two (projects),” he said.

Fortis Construction is building out SERA’s tenant improvements. A main goal is to showcase the original skylight, while upgrading it with modern materials. The primary steel structure will remain, but the glazing frames and clear glass will be replaced with insulating glass that will feature tinting and a ceramic frit, or small dot pattern, to maintain consistent temperatures.

“Given the property’s historic significance, the overall appearance both from the inside and outside will maintain fidelity to the original skylight design,” Colby stated in an email.

SERA plans to welcome employees to the new space in June 2022. The firm is also adapting to remote work, with the expectation that employees will return to the office on some days.

“We’re working out the details,” said Cristian Asher, senior director of business development.

Firm executives are discussing the possibility of asking employees to work in the office three days a week, but no decisions have been made, Asher said.

“Again, this is a work in progress,” he said.

The post Refreshment on tap for 111-year-old Galleria appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After a long drought, downtown Portland has finally landed a major new lease.

SERA Architects has agreed to occupy 42,000 square feet of office space within the historic Galleria building. That is the largest lease in Portland’s urban core since the pandemic began more than a year ago.

The lease term is for 15 years. Unico Properties, which owns the building with Partners Group, declined to reveal the lease rate.

SERA will occupy the top floor of the five-story building sometime in spring 2022. The Target store in the building is downsizing, vacating the second and third floors to move into the first floor, which had been limited to a storefront and a Starbucks café.

The upper-floor changes from retail to office will require a major renovation, which SERA is designing. Unico declined to comment on whether SERA’s lease was tied to the design deal. Unico Properties and Partners Group are committing $20 million to fully renovate the 194,737-square-foot building.

The Galleria building was completed in 1910, and originally was home to the Olds, Wortman and King department store. Bill Naito Co. repositioned the Galleria in 1976 as a shopping mall. Naito sold the property to the Unico-Partners Group joint venture partnership in 2018 for $64.1 million.

New building amenities will include a new lobby and entrance for office tenants, outdoor spaces, a fitness center and a yoga studio.

The project team will also be tasked with making the building more efficient. The renovations will target Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold status via the existing buildings program, and Fitwel certification.

The renovation of the Galleria comes as the future of office space remains hazy. Some companies have announced plans to reduce their office footprint amid widespread adoption of flexible work-from-home policies.

Leasing activity for the Portland-metro area fell 42 percent to 562,626 square feet during the first quarter, compared to a year earlier, according to Kidder Mathews. Full-service asking rates slipped to $28.09 per square foot, down from $28.38 per square foot.

More than 2.3 million square feet of office space is under construction in the metro area, Kidder Mathews reported.

The post SERA Architects set to move into Galleria building appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A partnership including Unico Properties has purchased the Galleria Building, a downtown Portland landmark that dates back to 1910, and a renovation project is now planned for the upper two floors.

Unico and its partners, who were not identified, bought the property from Bill Naito Company for $64.1 million, according to a deed recorded Dec. 13.

The five-story, 194,737-square-foot Galleria occupies a full block in the West End. The building was originally an Olds, Wortman & King department store, and is now anchored by Target in an 89,000-square-foot space designed by FFA Architecture and Interiors.

Target opened in the building in 2013.

Currently, the Galleria’s top two floors are vacant.

“With 80,000 square feet of available office space on the upper two floors, we plan to make significant capital investments to convert the existing office space to creative office space, and bring a first-class tenant experience to the building with a new lobby and new common area amenities,” Brian Pearce, Unico’s senior vice president of real estate services, stated in a news release.

Urban Works Real Estate has listed for lease three ground-floor retail spaces totaling nearly 20,000 square feet at the building’s corner of Southwest Ninth Avenue and Morrison Street. A representative declined to comment Tuesday.

On Jan. 24, the new owners submitted to the Bureau of Development Services a request for design advice for a renovation including a new office penthouse and roof terraces. The owners also on Jan. 25 requested a complex zoning analysis of the property relating to a transfer of floor area ratio.

The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Editor’s note: this story has been updated to reflect the building’s correct sale price.

The post Renovation in the works at Galleria Building appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Restore Oregon last week honored five preservation projects and named seven historic properties at risk of being lost. The 2014 DeMuro Award winners and properties on the 2015 list of Oregon’s Most Endangered Places were revealed during the nonprofit’s Restoration Celebration event in Portland.

The DeMuro Awards, named in honor of late Portland developer and preservationist Art DeMuro, recognize commercial, residential and public projects in Oregon that serve as extraordinary examples of historic preservation, adaptive reuse and community revitalization. This year’s winners include four projects in Portland: Fire Station No. 7, the Galleria Building, the Irvington Tennis Club and the Meier & Frank Delivery Depot. The Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis also received a DeMuro Award.

Developer Venerable Properties rehabilitated the decommissioned Fire Station No. 7, constructed in 1927, for office use while retaining its original character, including the fire pole. The project was designed by Emerick Architects and constructed by Bremik Construction.

The 104-year-old Galleria Building was restored by Bill Naito Co. and renovated to house a Target store. The project was designed by FFA Architecture and Interiors and constructed by Lease Crutcher Lewis.

An addition to the Irvington Tennis Club designed by Scott | Edwards Architecture to respect the original 102-year-old building and surrounding historic neighborhood also earned recognition. P & C Construction was the contractor.

Developer Gerding Edlen led a transformation of the 1927 Meier & Frank Delivery Depot in Portland’s Pearl District into Vestas‘ North American headquarters. The project was designed by GBD Architects and Ankrom Moisan Architects (interiors), and constructed by Skanska.

The Whiteside Theatre Foundation organized a restoration and structural rehab of the 1950s marquee on the downtown Corvallis building. The project architect was Andrew Pearson and Bob Grant Construction was the contractor.

Properties deemed Oregon’s Most Endangered Places are: the First Congregational Church in Portland, the Eastern Oregon University Grand Staircase in La Grande, the Gray Building in Portland, the Mildred Kanipe House in Oakland, the Shipley-Cook Barn in Lake Oswego, the Smith Barn in Cave Junction and the Wong Laundry Building in Portland.

Each property was nominated for inclusion on the list. A committee reviewed the nominations and compiled the list based on urgency of preservation, historic significance, community support and long-term viability. Listed properties will receive assistance from Restore Oregon.

The post Preservation efforts feted; at-risk buildings named appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

‘s hush-hush plan to open a store in downtown Portland was finally unveiled last month, but one local construction company knew about it from the beginning.

Crews from are at work today in the Galleria Building, prepping the space for the future City Target. But the general contractor also rents approximately 12,000 square feet of the space that is set to house the popular big-box retailer, so it is literally building itself out of its own offices.

“I’ve been involved in situations where you have to ask a tenant to move, but not where you have to ask (it) to move out of (its) own space, then gut it and rebuild it for another tenant,” said Bill Barendrick, CEO of , which owns the Galleria Building.

So Lease Crutcher Lewis was faced with a rare combination – the excitement of working on a high-profile, downtown renovation project, and the stress of losing the space where it operates.

“We’re working our way out of our own offices,” said Bart Ricketts, president of the company’s Portland branch.

Before the Target deal became public, Ricketts was talking to other Lease Crutcher Lewis clients about options for new office space, ideally in the West End area of downtown, where the company has had offices since 1996.

Lease Crutcher Lewis needed little time to land new office space – and a new job – in the Culver Building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Alder Street. Greg Goodman, developer and president of , owns the property and was planning an approximately $7.5 million adaptive reuse project.

Prior to construction, which began in January, the Culver Building was a run-down, 1920s-era building that housed only a dry cleaning business and parking stalls. But a design by rejuvenates the two-story structure and adds a modern, third-story penthouse.

Lease Crutcher Lewis plans to move into the upper two floors in August. The dry cleaning business will relocate within the building, and Goodman is courting Naomi Pomeroy to bring her successful Northeast Portland restaurant, , into the renovated building.

“We’re not leaving a single stone unturned – we’ll have a whole new storefront, big glass sliding windows on the ground floor (and) a walk-around patio outside of the penthouse,” Goodman said. “I’m really excited what it’s doing for the West End; there’s just a ton of stuff happening there.”

While the renovation involves new structural columns and other intricate seismic work, the biggest challenge for Lease Crutcher Lewis was timing. The whole deal required coordinating several lease negotiations along with complex construction timelines, and the plans did not come together as smoothly as Ricketts had hoped.

Because the renovation of the Culver Building will not be far enough along when crews start to get in the way of their own colleagues in the Galleria Building in May, Lease Crutcher Lewis will have to operate out of temporary office space in Northwest Portland for three months.

“There’s a lot of moving parts,” Ricketts said. “We didn’t anticipate how long it takes to do a major lease agreement and get construction documents ready for a large company like Target – it took longer than any of us anticipated.”

The post Portland construction firm renovating its current home for Target appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After being sworn to secrecy during lease negotiations, Fletcher Farr Ayotte announced it has been released today from confidentiality agreements and can publicly confirm that Target is the tenant for space that is currently under construction in downtown Portland.

Crews from Lease Crutcher Lewis last week began soft demolition inside the historic Galleria Building in Southwest Portland and will soon begin prepping the core and shell for Target, according to Amalia Mohr, project manager for the architecture team from Fletcher Farr Ayotte.

“It’s been a great experience learning what they require,” she said.

The building’s owner, the , and in May requested design advice from the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission as they moved forward with the development. Then on Oct. 10, the Historic Landmarks Commission unanimously approved alterations to the Galleria Building, which occupies the entire city block bounded by Southwest Morrison and Alder streets and Southwest Ninth and 10th avenues.

Once final building permits are issued, crews will begin work on new elevators and escalators for the building. A seismic upgrade also is planned.

Target is working with California-based MBH Architecture for its tenant improvement work; Skanska will be the contractor handling the build-out. The store is expected to open in March 2013.

The post It’s official: Target’s coming to downtown Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Could this be a sign that Target is really coming to downtown Portland? Why, yes, I think it is.

The 91��Ƶ wrote in October that Target was finalizing its lease for a downtown Portland store, and now it looks like it’s really happening you guys!  Construction fencing has been erected around the Galleria Building at Southwest Tenth Avenue and Alder Street, and a large, vertical sign is welded to the corner of the building, though that sign has been there for a while. In any case, the sign looks a lot like the one in renderings originally submitted to the city when the store was in its early planning stages.

To confirm this, I put a call in to the Bill Naito Co., the owner of the building, but CEO Bill Barendrick was on the phone and couldn’t take my call immediately. The receptionist, however, let out a knowing chuckle when I said I was calling about the Galleria Building. Take that for what it’s worth. Employees with the company have for a while been under a confidentiality agreement regarding the Target store.

Anyway, do you know what this means?! It means working downtown is about to get so. much. better. I’m already thinking of all the things I’m going to be able to buy on my lunch break. Local economy? Psht. They can’t build this store fast enough!

The post New Target store under construction in downtown Portland? appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

It’s that time of year again – early November, in which Thanksgiving festivities get overshadowed by a flurry of early Christmas decorations and a flurry of economic prognostications.

Yes, nothing says “Christmas” like projections as to how retail is going to do. This year, things actually look fairly non-terrible, as consumers are expected to spend about 3 percent more than last year.

That’s all to the good, . Why? There’s a lot of them, they face competition from smaller retail outlets, and big box stores have descended upon their market share.  And they have a huge, somewhat-empty reminder of what happens to troubled malls: the Galleria.

Believe it or not, the now-struggling Galleria was once a fairly hopping place. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, downtown Portland was an empty graveyard of office buildings and parking lots. The general populace of the city had no reason to come to the urban core other than punching the clock on their jobs, and the interior of Portland was a gray, empty wasteland outside of normal office hours. The city swooped in with the (when people talk about Portland’s urban planning, this is what they’re usually talking about) and soon began transforming a desiccated wasteland into a space where people would actually want to go.

Chief among the goals was creating a retail core, and in 1976 an old department store that was previously known as was transformed into a monument of then-modern culture: a mall. The Galleria, as it was renamed, was considered a marvel of it’s time. The Oregonian actually called it “the most exciting development in downtown merchandising in several decades.” Yes, way back in the 1970s, the Galleria was exciting. It also soon reached full capacity, and downtown began to transform into the fairly active space that we now know today.

In 1990, though Pioneer Place opened and the once-mighty Galleria was eventually brought to its knees by competition. Downtown was fine, and continues to act as Portland’s retail hub, but one of the major engines that made Portland so Portland-y is now a semi-hollow almost-ruin. However, it’s a big part of the reason why there’s any downtown Portland at all. Life for the formerly revolutionary space certainly isn’t over – Target has been in talks to move in, which could be a shot in the arm for the old place. On a smaller scale, temporary popup shops have, well, popped up in the Galleria. Crafty Wonderland, Flurry, Boy’s Fort and the Portland Design Collective have all moved into the old mall, each selling the wares of different local designers. The temporary storefronts have been a way for the landlords to sell the space even when they can’t find a permanent tenant, and will likely remain for the duration of the holidays. (Side note – definitely check out Boy’s Fort. It’s like the best tree house ever got turned into a store.)

The jury is still out as to whether the Galleria will be able to regain its former glory, but the next time you’re strolling among the food carts and coffee shops, and suppliers of locally produced artisan food items, remember – your city was not too cool to get helped out by a mall.

Photo by via Flickr

The post Sad-looking Galleria building was once Portland’s lifeblood – and could be again appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.