PROJECT: Parkview at Terwilliger Plaza

LOCATION: the full block bounded by Southwest Fifth and Sixth avenues and Sheridan and Caruthers streets.

SIZE:Ěý10 stories (plus one level of underground parking), 374,000 square feet, 127 units

COST:Ěý$110 million

START DATE: May 2021

ANTICIPATED END DATE: August 2023

OWNER: Terwilliger Plaza Inc.

OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE: MHS Consulting

OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE/CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: BC Group

ARCHITECT: LRS Architects

ENGINEERS: IMEG Corp. (structural), DOWL (civil), PAE (mechanical, passive house consultant), GEODesign (soil), PBS Engineering and Environmental (environmental)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: PLACE

CONTRACTOR:ĚýWalsh Construction

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS: DeWitt Construction (shoring design/build), Merit Electric (electric), Tapani Plumbing (plumbing), Ocean Park Mechanical (mechanical), Patriot Fire Protection (fire sprinkler design/build)

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: Parkview at Terwilliger Plaza will be a not-for-profit continuing care retirement community for residents 62 and over. The independent-living facility will feature 127 units. Each one will have one or two bedrooms and full kitchens as well as balconies. Thirteen floor plans will range in size from 1,095 square feet to 2,310 square feet.

Designed for passive house certification, the highly energy-efficient building is projected to use 50 percent less energy than a current energy-compliant building. With 100 percent continuous preconditioned fresh air circulation, interior spaces will be substantially more healthy, quiet and thermally comfortable than those in conventional buildings. There will be green roofs, green living walls and solar panels. Features will include: improved wall R values; triple-pane windows; lighting power reduction; eco-friendly appliances; outdoor air systems with heat recovery; high-performance HVAC-VRF; heat pump water heaters; low-flow fixtures; photovoltaic solar generation; and significant thermal bridging details at balcony connections, balcony edges, parapet connections and exterior walls to concrete slabs.

The commons will include stone terracing, a wood-paneled cocktail lounge and a sports bar. The building’s architectural features will include handcrafted wood paneling and a blown-glass chandelier.

One of the goals of the Parkview project was to encourage movement throughout the campus with plenty of opportunities for residents to gather and socialize. There will be a variety of multipurpose rooms, public living rooms, lounges, sunrooms and lobbies. The building’s U-shape will allow for an outdoor courtyard and amenity space as well as views of the adjacent Terwilliger parkway hills, downtown and mountains. A landscaped rooftop also will provide additional space for gatherings.

One of the most critical elements for this project was approval for a sky-bridge across Southwest Sixth Avenue between Caruthers and Sheridan streets. It will link the new Parkview at Terwilliger Plaza with the existing Terwilliger Plaza building. The connector will double as an art gallery space, in response to community building goals.

“Building Blocks” is a 91ĘÓƵ feature that spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcorprod.wpengine.com/building-blocks.

The post Building Blocks: Parkview at Terwilliger Plaza appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

To ensure that Multnomah County‘s new, $300 million Central Courthouse stands tall at the west end of the Morrison Bridge for decades to come, workers are using a seemingly simple method called crosshole sonic logging (CSL).

“It doesn’t look like much; it’s just a person pulling a string up and down,” said Justin Paterson, Hoffman Construction‘s project manager for the courthouse project.

But there’s much more to it than that.

The city of Portland requires that a contractor verify the quality of all foundation installations. Otherwise, there’s no certainty there won’t be problems once a giant building is placed on top.

The line item for using CSL on the approximately 80 shafts at the courthouse site runs around $30,000. Around six firms in the Pacific Northwest – two in Portland – have the equipment and trained personnel to perform CSL testing.

“It’s pretty inexpensive and readily available,” said Scott Mills, Portland-based president of GeoDesign, which designed the foundations for the central courthouse. “It was something that we recommended in our geotechnical report.”

To pour foundations for the courthouse and projects like it, first, shafts of around 4 to 6 feet in diameter are bored into the ground with a large drill. After the drill bit is removed, the hole is filled with a heavy sort of mud that holds the walls open. A cage of reinforced steel is placed into the hole and concrete is pumped in with a big, long hose. As it fills the hole from the bottom up, it displaces the mud, which is pumped out. Finally, the hole is filled with concrete.

However, installation can at times be plagued by issues that reduce the quality of the shaft. For instance, it can suffer from caving or voids in the concrete. CSL testing, which has been around for decades, is a way of checking whether the concrete is consistent and intact.

It’s done by placing steel tubes attached to the steel cage. The tubes are filled with water and sensors are sent down two different ones. A machine sends a signal between them, and it can identify any issues.

“Basically, it’s a sound wave that goes from a source to a receiver, and it gives us a sense of how long it takes to go from one probe to the other and that gives us a velocity of the concrete, or how fast the sound wave moves through it,” said Jeff Tucker, principal engineer with GeoDesign.

There are lots of other ways to test, like using temperature sensors to give a 3-D profile of the concrete. There’s gamma gamma testing, which employs a nuclear probe to test density of drilled shafts. But at around $10,000 per shaft, that method would have been prohibitively expensive for the courthouse project, Tucker said.

With foundation design, getting it right the first time is critical. Blowing out and grouting a problem area is a highly involved process, Tucker said.

“It’s not easy and it’s not cheap, but it’s got to be done,” he said.

The post Courthouse on solid ground thanks to testing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Opponents of the Wizer Block development in Lake Oswego have lost their appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Thomas A. Balmer on Thursday issued an order denying review of an appeal by two groups opposed to developer Patrick Kessi’s proposed four-story, 201-residential-unit project in downtown Lake Oswego – the first multifamily development there in more than 50 years.

Opponents who believe the $92 million project doesn’t adhere to Lake Oswego’s “village character” first took their fight to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. When that challenge failed, the Evergreen Neighborhood Association and Save Our Village went to the Oregon Court of Appeals. That appeal failed in August.

Demolition and erosion-control permits were issued last month to general contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis. A traffic control plan around the construction site is now in place.

ZGF Architects will be the project design architect, and work in partnership with Ankrom Moisan Architects, the architect of record. Landscape architecture will be performed by Lango Hansen Landscape Architects. Structural engineering will be done by Froelich Engineers and civil engineering will be handled by Harper Houf Peterson Righellis. GeoDesign will be in charge of geotechnical engineering; Interface Engineering will provide mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

The post Review of Wizer Block challenge denied appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The state Court of Appeals this week upheld a decision by the Land Use Board of Appeals to allow a $92 million development in Lake Oswego to proceed.

In coming to its decision, the court rejected a claim by the group Save Our Village that PHK Development’s Wizer Block project did not adhere to the city’s “village character.”

The court affirmed an earlier determination by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals that the proposed project on Block 137 in downtown Lake Oswego is consistent with the city’s development code. The Court rendered the decision without comment.

Plans for the Wizer Block development call for demolishing the Wizer Building at 140 A Ave. and constructing three four-story buildings with 201 residential units and 36,500 square feet of commercial space along with underground parking.

Save Our Village, along with the Evergreen Neighborhood Association, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the PHK Development that was unsuccessful at the LUBA level.

Lake Oswego Mayor Kent Studebaker said he is happy with the court’s decision and expects the project to move forward.

“I’m glad they made a decision and I’m glad they upheld LUBA,” he said. “I’m also glad that it seems to be something that will resolve the appeals issue and that they gave a decision without an opinion.”

Save Our Village attorney Greg Hathaway said he was surprised the appellate court did not include written comments in the case and doesn’t know yet if his client will request the case be reviewed by the state Supreme Court.

“We’re still digesting what’s happened here,” Hathaway said. “I notified the client, but we have not had a conversation yet about what would be the next step.”

Lease Crutcher Lewis of Portland will serve as general contractor for the project. ZGF Architects LLP will be the project design architect, working in partnership with Ankrom Moisan Architects Inc., the architect of record. Landscape architecture will be by Lango Hansen Landscape Architects. Structural engineering will be by Froelich Engineers Inc. and civil engineering will be handled by Harper Houf Peterson Righellis. GeoDesign Inc. will be in charge of geotechnical engineering; Interface Engineering will provide mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

The post Wizer Block gets go-ahead from Court of Appeals appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A local Lake Oswego group called Save Our Village is fighting to stop a development they say is not in character with the city. The group sent out a press release this week urging people to email the Lake Oswego city staff and city councilors and ask a series of questions.

The questions concern whether construction of the proposed Wizer Building development will disrupt local businesses, how parking will be addressed and how much upgrading adjacent streets will cost the city.

Lake Oswego Mayor Kent Studebaker said he’s seen a recent uptick in emails about the proposed project, but the city is not responding to them.

“Those questions have all been discussed before,” he said.

Save Our Village, along with the Evergreen Neighborhood Association, filed an unsuccessful appeal against the developer earlier this year to the state Land Use Board of Appeals. The basis of the suit was that the proposed development did not adhere to the city’s “village character,” said Greg Hathaway, an attorney representing the groups.

The suit is now before the state Court of Appeals, Hathaway said, and oral arguments will begin at 9 a.m. on July 15 in the Oregon Supreme Court hearing room in Salem.

The $92-million project calls for razing the existing Wizer Building at 140 A Ave. and constructing three four-story buildings, totaling 201 residential units and 36,500 square feet of commercial space along with underground parking.

The project is being developed by PHK Development. ZGF Architects is the project design architect working in partnership with Ankrom Moisan Architects, the architect of record. Lango Hansen Landscape is the project landscape architect. Plans call for Froelich Engineers to do structural engineering; Harper Houf Peterson Righellis to serve as civil engineer; GeoDesign Inc. to handle geotechnical engineering; and Interface Engineering to provide mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering services.

Last August, the Lake Oswego Development Review Commission denied a project approval request by the developer, so PHK turned to city councilors. After several hours of testimony, the city council reversed the development commission’s decision.

The LUBA decision sided with the city council’s interpretation of the “village character” section of the city code that serves as a guideline and does not mandate against development taller than three stories.

But Hathaway said the basis of the current appeal is that the project will violate city code and LUBA didn’t consider the right evidence.

“The problem is that it’s too massive and too large in scale in comparison with uses on either side of Block 137,” Hathaway said. “LUBA didn’t do a comparative evaluation, and the question mark is why they didn’t address what we thought was the most critical issue to the case.”

Hathaway stressed that the groups he represents are not trying to stop development.

“We are just trying to maintain the village character like Lake Oswego established years ago,” he said.

Elaine Franklin, speaking for PHK president Patrick Kessi, said the developer is just waiting for the court’s decision. She said a decision could take from two weeks to a month.

“Meanwhile, everything’s going on schedule,” she said. “Financing is on schedule and we’ll be ready to kick in as soon as the Court of Appeals makes its decision.”

Groundbreaking is expected for this fall, as planned, she said.

The post Wizer Block headed to state Court of Appeals appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Portland-based PHK Development has hired general contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis to construct a $92 million mixed-use development in downtown Lake Oswego.

Crews from Lease Crutcher Lewis, which has offices in Portland and Seattle, are scheduled to break ground on the Wizer Block project in September, PHK Development President Patrick Kessi said. Construction is expected to take about two years and should wrap up by September 2017, he said.

Initial site work this summer will include demolishing an existing building, at 140 A Ave., followed by excavation for underground parking. Project plans call for constructing 201 residential units atop 36,500 square feet of commercial space in three four-story buildings.

ZGF Architects is the project design architect working in partnership with Ankrom Moisan Architects, the architect of record. Lango Hansen Landscape Architects is the project landscape architect.

PHK Development has also hired Froelich Engineers for structural engineering, Harper Houf Peterson Righellis as civil engineer, GeoDesign Inc. for geotechnical engineering and Interface Engineering to provide mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering services.

The project was opposed by some Lake Oswego residents who submitted an unsuccessful appeal against the development with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. In April, LUBA denied an appeal submitted by Wizer Block opposition group Save Our Village and the Evergreen Neighborhood Association, and backed the Lake Oswego City Council’s approval of the project last fall.

The post Contractor hired for Wizer Block project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The complexities of building atop a long-vacant landfill soon became apparent for the team creating a Buddhist retreat in Northeast Portland.

The Dharma Rain Zen Center will include a 6,200-square-foot meditation hall and eventually 31 apartment-like units on 14 acres of the 26-acre H.G. LaVelle Landfill site. Redevelopment of that brownfield is being overseen by the Department of Environmental Quality and posed a host of challenges.

Before work could begin, the project team had to figure out how it would build upon a mountain of unstable soil that included roughly 2 million cubic yards of solid waste. Typically, pilings would be driven deep into the ground for support, said Gant Enderle, principal of B&G Builders – the project’s general contractor. That approach was used to build a Home Depot store on a former landfill site in Oregon City, he said.

“It took a bit of work to try and figure out what the best approach was,” he said. “We could have sunk piles down into terra firma, but it would have cost a lot of money.”

The project team, including Tigard-based GeoDesign Inc., looked at several options and eventually settled on one that required pouring 10 feet of dirt interspersed with a specially designed, mesh “geo-mat” fabric. The test took three months and the dirt only settled about three inches during that time, Enderle said.

Developers also have taken special steps to meet DEQ requirements that the threat of methane release be eliminated, said Mike Coenen, an associate engineer for GeoDesign.

The hazards of methane gas appear only when it is allowed to accumulate, according to Coenen. That made design of building ventilation systems critical.

“What we’ve done is to incorporate features into the design of the building that do not allow it to accumulate,” he said.

GeoDesign raised the foundation of the meditation building, essentially putting it on tiny stilts to ensure sufficient air space will be available for ventilation between the floor and the ground, Coenen said. The building will have sub slab vents allowing natural ventilation and preventing methane buildup.

For the development‘s smaller buildings, GeoDesign used a passive venting system so that methane can disperse, he said.

CWK2 designed a pressurized sanitary sewer pump system, rather than a gravity sanitary sewer, to keep utilities closer to the surface, Enderle said.

“With a pressurized system, you don’t have to slope it; it is easier to access and fix,” he said. “The trade-off is you have to replace it every 25 years.”

Special considerations also were made to ensure water from the site will not enter the landfill. In a typical development, water would be treated on site before going into the city’s sewer system. At the Dharma Rain site, the water must be kept at surface level so that it can be treated off-site, Coenen said.

“We have to line our stormwater swales and treat the water above ground,” he said. “Then it goes down off-site.”

Dharma Rain’s development team, in its due diligence phase, worked closely with the city’s Bureau of Environmental Services to get a pair of grants – one for $50,000 to pay for an environmental site assessment and one for $200,000 to pay for cleanup, said Jenn Bildersee, coordinator of the Portland Brownfield Program.

The grants, which came from the Environmental Protection Agency through BES, helped clear the way for Dharma Rain to purchase the property in 2012, Bildersee said.

“The grant is for innocent purchasers who did not cause the damage and gives them liability protection,” she said. “This helps so that people don’t have to be afraid to purchase a contaminated site as long as they take appropriate steps to clean up the site.”

Dharma Rain also got support from the Madison South neighborhood. Volunteers contributed thousands of hours to clean up the site, said Kakumyo Lowe-Charde, the nonprofit’s development director.

“This has been a site that has been an eyesore for the community and a haven for drug use and prostitution,” he said. “Neighbors were eager to take an active role.”

Financing for the project came in part from the sale of Dharma Rain’s three buildings in the Hawthorne neighborhood. The organization has moved its operations into temporary facilities until construction is completed.

Additional financing will come from the sale of membership interest in the development, which includes the right to rent one of the apartment-like units that will be constructed next summer. Twenty-five memberships have been sold, Lowe-Charde said.

Dharma Rain Zen Center, first phase

Address: 8500 N.E. Siskiyou St.

Owner: Dharma Rain Zen Center

Project cost: $5 million

Construction start date: August 2014

Anticipated completion date: February 2015

General contractor: B&G Builders

Architect: Howells Architecture + Design

Engineers: CWK2 (civil), Horn Consulting Engineers (structural), GeoDesign Inc. (geotechnical)

The post Building a treasure atop trash appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

, a regional geotechnical engineering and environmental consulting firm, last month opened an office in Salem.

The firm is headquartered in Portland and has other offices in Vancouver, Wash., Seattle, and Anaheim, Calif.

“This new location allows us better serve our clients in the Salem area and pursue opportunities for strategic growth south of the city,” said GeoDesign CEO Scott Mills.

Julio Vela, a principal at GeoDesign, is leading the Salem office.

“We kind of feel like work is ramping back up,” Vela said. “This is a good place for us to be.”

Salem, in addition to being the state capital, is the home of the Oregon Department of Transportation and provides quicker access for GeoDesign to clients on Oregon’s coast.

GeoDesign is currently doing work in Salem on the Mill Creek Corporate Center.

The post GeoDesign engineering firm opens Salem office appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

April showers may bring flowers to the rest of the country. But in Oregon, May is traditionally the month when local business groups roll out their award events.

Sandwiched between the Multnomah Bar Association’s annual awards dinner and the Oregon Concrete & Aggregate Producers Association’s Excellence in Concrete Awards last week, the Oregon chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services on Thursday named winners of the 2010 Astral Awards.

The awards annually recognize the best marketing efforts by local firms in industries such as architecture, engineering and construction. This year, the event was held at Urban Studio.

Lease Crutcher Lewis received an honor award in the category of advertising and public relations for a campaign the firm ran to let clients know about a relocation of its offices.

An e-card created by David Evans and Associates won an honor award for new media.

In the category of internet marketing, Interface Engineering won an honor award for a redesign of its website while Inkwell Creative won a merit award for a website for Malarkey Roofing Products.

GeoDesign received an honor award in the brochure/proposal category for the H-FWD marketing campaign.

During the awards, the SMPS chapter also recognized a handful of members for outstanding service and participation. Paula Johnson of David Evans & Associates, Yulan Studio’s John Vincent and Bonni Stover of MCA architects received President’s Awards. Penny Williams was named New Member of the Year. Tami Fuller of Dull Olson Weekes Architects, was named Marketer of the Year.

The post Astral Awards recognize marketing efforts appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.