PROJECT: Fountain Place Apartments

LOCATION: 929 S.W. Salmon St., Portland

SIZE:��74 units

COST:��not provided

START DATE: April 2020

ANTICIPATED END DATE: October 2021

OWNER/DEVELOPER: Home Forward

ARCHITECT: Peter Meijer Architect

ENGINEERS: KPFF (structural), Glumac (mechanical, plumbing)

CONTRACTOR:��Lorentz Bruun Construction

CONSULTANT: Salazar Architect Inc. (affordable housing design specialists)

NUMBER OF WORKERS EMPLOYED: 100

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: Work is drawing to a close on Home Forward’s renovation of the Fountain Place Apartments. Built in 1911 by local millionaire and salmon cannery owner Frank M. Warren, who died the following year as a passenger on the Titanic’s doomed maiden voyage, Fountain Place is one of the earliest examples of high-end apartment construction in downtown Portland. It also is one of the area’s first U-shaped buildings.

Each floor has approximately 7,500 interior square feet, for a building total of 45,000 square feet. The building features a wood structure and a brick exterior. The contractor is dropping in six seismic braces on top of about 60 micro piles placed below the slab on grade for attachment to the walls to provide seismic safety. The additions of two layers of plywood to the existing diaphragm will also provide a more seismically resilient building.

As part of the project, on March 4, 2020, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The renovation was made possible with financing from Oregon Housing and Community Services, Banner Bank and U.S. Bank.

A major goal of the project was to retain the 100-year-old building’s historic character while adding several future-proofed improvements, said Halla Hoffer, an associate principal with Peter Meijer Architect. The seismic upgrade will not only improve safety for occupants, but also extend the building’s useful life at least 50 more years, according to the design team.

“Building Blocks” 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.

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PROJECT: Amaterra Winery

LOCATION: 7856 S.W. Mayway Drive, Portland

SIZE:��46,000 square feet

COST:��$26 million

START DATE: January 2019

ANTICIPATED END DATE: April 2021

OWNER: Amaterra

DEVELOPER: Touchmark

OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE/CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: O’Brien & Company

CONTRACTOR:��Emerick Construction Company

LEAD ARCHITECT: Waterleaf Architecture

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Mayer/Reed

INTERIORS AND FURNITURE: GBD Architects

ENGINEERS: Glumac (MEP), Humber Design Group (civil), TM Rippey Consulting Engineers

MAJOR SUBCONTRACTORS/OTHER ASSOCIATES: Whitaker/Ellis Builders, TT&L Sheet Metal, Team Electric, American Heating, Anning-Johnson, Heinz Mechanical Industries Inc.

NUMBER OF WORKERS EMPLOYED: 45

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: Emerick Construction is working closely with Waterleaf Architecture and O’Brien & Company, the construction manager, on this three-story, 46,000-square-foot project – the first full-production winery in the Portland metropolitan area. Approximately 3,600 cubic yards of concrete was used for the foundation and structure of the two lower levels that will serve winery production. Approximately 35,000 square feet of 12-inch, precast/prestressed, hollow-core planks were placed for the Level 2 and 3 suspended slabs. The top level, which will house a restaurant and event space, is wood-framed with a multi-gabled roof structure that emulates the West Hills in which the building is located. The project started in spring 2019 with ground modification. The project was undertaken with an aggressive schedule coupled with a phased design process. A very tight site on a slope, with deep excavation in a microclimate subject to high winds, necessitated a lot of coordination and planning. Currently, site construction and the build-out of the restaurant and event space are under way, and completion is expected late this spring. Like many projects in 2020, this one challenged its team because of the atmosphere of the times. Team members adapted to the momentum adjustments associated with COVID-19. Also, a few weeks of forest fires required constant evaluation of the schedule and creative thinking to keep materials arriving and crews working. Once open, the facility will be home to a gravity-flow winery led by Willamette Valley winemaker Matt Vuylsteke. Its production will be predominantly pinot noir and chardonnay. The restaurant will serve as both a tasting room and dining space.

“Building Blocks” is a 91��Ƶ 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.

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A historic apartment building in downtown Portland is undergoing a seismic retrofit, and general contractor Lorentz Bruun Construction is seeking subcontractors for work on the project.

Fountain Place, at 929 S.W. Salmon St., is a five-story (plus a basement) unreinforced brick masonry structure owned by Home Forward. The 45,336-square-foot building is listed in the city’s Historic Resource Inventory for its architectural significance.

The proposed scope of work includes seismically upgrading the entire 105-year-old building, providing a new, rated egress stair, a new elevator, a new community room, and office space for residential services and property management.

Peter Meijer Architect is designing the retrofit, which is awaiting issuance of a building permit from the Bureau of Development Services. Other members of the project team include KPFF Consulting Engineers, Reyes Engineering, Glumac and Salazar Architect Inc.

According to the design team, Fountain Place was built in 1914 in Second Renaissance Revival style. The raised basement, bracketed sheet metal cornice and belt course with brick corbels all correspond with the style.

Nonmandatory job walks for prospective bidders will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 31. Any questions about the project are due by 5 p.m. on Nov. 1. Bids are due by Nov. 12.

For more information on this project and others, visit the 91��Ƶ Project Center online at www.djcoregon.com/projectcenter/.

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A series of high-profile Portland projects for Mill Creek Residential Trust is continuing to grow.

The latest, Modera Buckman, will be a seven-story mixed-use residential building on a half-block parcel at the northeast corner of Southeast Belmont Street and 12th Avenue in the Central Eastside. The rectangular building will feature 170 apartments – a mix of studios, one-bedroom units and two-bedroom units. It also will have over 6,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

“I don’t know if it’s a template,” said Rex Ingram, an associate and lead designer for Leeb Architects. “But they’re looking for a certain mix of units and they’re careful about where they put their projects and properties for the benefit of the neighborhoods they go into. This project is kind of special; the first floor is a lot of retail, which is great, and we have some really nice amenity spaces as well.”

Mill Creek Residential Trust has spent plenty of time and energy promoting its Modera brand across the country. In Portland alone, there are six Modera-branded properties either built or in development.

The 200-unit Modera Belmont was completed last year; construction of the 204-unit Modera Davis is set to finish later in 2019; the 291-unit Modera Glisan remains under construction in the Pearl District; construction of the 290-unit Modera Pearl finished in 2017; and the 134-unit Modera Goose Hollow was sold by Mill Creek in 2017 for a reported sum of $47.5 million.

Construction of Modera Buckman is set to wrap up in fall 2019, and there is plenty of work still to be done. Mill Creek Residential Trust is serving as its own contractor for the project.

“We’re framed pretty much all the way up,” Mill Creek assistant superintendent Colin Hallberg said. “The roof deck is sheeted – we’re just about complete there – and we’re headed toward dry-in.”

Most of the roof trusses are now in place, Hallberg added. Next up, crews will wrap the building with a stout weather-resistant barrier and prep window openings for glazing.

“It’s a battle with the weather trying to get it dried in and get things sealed up,” he said. “The big push right now is just getting it dried in. We have temp heat coming in in a week or two to start drying it out. And then we’ll start from the top down with our rough-in and the MEP stuff.”

Modera Buckman amenities include a hotel-style lounge and fitness studio on the ground floor. An outdoor terrace with a fire pit and barbecue area will be on the top floor. Pet washing and dedicated bike parking and maintenance areas will be available in the underground parking area.

The project team is aiming for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating, Ingram said. That will be achieved, in part, through a highly efficient envelope, access to transit and other features.

“They’ve (engineering firm Glumac) looked at the envelope and the efficiencies of the mechanical units and the way the building will be heated and cooled,” Ingram said. “And we look at the air barrier between units – that’s a big one.”

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Lease Crutcher Lewis is nearing completion of a renovation and expansion of a building at the Salem campus of SAIF, Oregon’s not-for-profit, state-chartered workers’ compensation insurance company. The project includes construction of a new six-story wing, renovation and seismic upgrade of an existing office building, and modernization of the building’s facade.

Work on the Ankrom Moisan Architects-designed project began in early 2016 with extensive abatement at the existing 1960s-era office building. It was originally L-shaped, with five stories on one wing and one story on the other. The single-story wing has been demolished, and a six-story addition built in its place. The five-story wing was gutted down to structural concrete and rebuilt, including seismic reinforcement.

Due to the building’s location on the floodplain of Pringle Creek nearby, the first floor of the five-story wing was abandoned. Concrete walls around the old first floor were built up, essentially turning it into a crawlspace, and mechanical systems were installed to keep air flowing so it isn’t stagnant. The first floor of the new south tower is higher than the original building’s first floor and is out of the floodplain.

The building wraps around a large old oak tree that is the visual focus of two-story “collab” spaces. Large, open common areas are used by employees for breaks and meetings, and two-story curtainwalls provide a view of an outdoor courtyard. The renovated building will feature better natural light, and upgraded energy features including chilled beam cooling, vapor heating and all-LED light fixtures.

The original building, minus the former first floor, measures 95,912 square feet, and the south tower will add 83,215 square feet. Crews currently are applying final touches on the building, including refinement of the façade and installation of roof metal panels and concrete skin panels. Finish work is continuing in common areas, flooring is still being installed, and commissioning and startup have begun. The project is slated for turnover on April 20.

A second phase of the project, including renovation of an adjacent building connected by a sky bridge, will begin later this year. That work will be completed by June 2019.

Other project partners include structural engineer Kramer Gehlen & Associates Inc., civil engineer Harper Houf Peterson Righellis Inc. and mechanical engineer Glumac.

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Portland has long been known for its progressive environmental policies and commitment to sustainable buildings and industries. Recently, businesses here have begun exporting aspects of those successes.

“We have a long history in sustainability in urban planning,” said Michael Gurton, business development officer at the Portland Development Commission. “We realized we could take our abilities to rapidly urbanizing areas around the world.”

Kashiwanoha, Japan, was one such city in need of what Portland companies could offer. Kashiwanoha (pronounced cash-owa-no-ha) is a city of approximately 400,000 people, 27 miles north of Tokyo. It was one of the first Japanese cities to dive into the eco-district concept with its “Smart City” development.

With eco-districts, engineers and architects look for ways to combine structures and services within a small urban area to more efficiently handle items including energy, water and waste.

Portland companies become involved in Kashiwanoha’s district, which measures slightly less than one square mile, in 2014 when business leaders from Kashiwanoha signed a memorandum of understanding with the PDC to improve the Kashiwanoha Campus City project. The group toured the Pearl District, which serves as a model for the Japanese district.

Initial efforts in the district weren’t a rousing success.

“What they did was put in all that green development and still no one wanted to come to that one development,” said Amy Nagy, PDC business development coordinator for green industry. “Having the green infrastructure is all well and good, but it needs to be a place people want to use.”

Many of the problems stemmed from how development was conceived and tested.

“It has been corporate or business users that have been asked about the use of the space – not the users of the space,” Nagy said.

In Japan, use of focus groups and community outreach is not as common as it is in the United States. Getting people talking was a major step in helping make the community more livable.

That is where ZGF Architects and its team came into the picture.

“It’s almost like a test bed for (Japan’s) national initiatives,” said Charles Kelley, a principal at ZGF. “They were looking for ways to deal with questions of health and happiness. Their GDP is third largest in the world, but they are losing population.”

The biggest part of the project, Kelley said, was aimed at making the district’s technology more user-friendly. For instance, a stormwater facility in the district was addressed. The water ran into a detention pond, generically named No. 2 flood control reservoir.

“The detention pond … was fenced off,” he said. “They thought it was dangerous. We looked at it as an asset.”

By redesigning how water flowed into the pond, the team was able to turn the pond into an aqua-terrace park. Now a popular bookseller is set to open shop there.

One of the first goals of the project was to come up with the big concepts for the area. A big part of those early steps was increasing the jobs to housing unit ratio. Again, the team looked to the Pearl District as a model. Within that district, there are four jobs to every one housing unit. In Kashiwanoha, the original idea was a one-to-one ratio.

Merging ground-floor activation with existing technology and systems was crucial to the district’s success, Glumac associate principal Chris Lowen said.

“We came up with a variety of efficient ideas,” he said. “We presented a range of these ideas.”

Glumac took the lead in helping the city reduce its environmental footprint. There was a give-and-take atmosphere, Lowen said.

“They had very ambitious waste reduction goals and needed us to help them look at the area as a whole as opposed to just individual buildings,” he said. “They had large battery storage systems. We were able to bring some of those ideas over here.”

By combining the Japanese electrical storage concepts with effective distribution techniques, team members were able to create a better electrical system within buildings, Lowen said.

“It was kind of like a hybrid building instead of hybrid car,” he said. “I think we also came up with some pretty cool ways to recycle water.”

Glumac’s involvement was largely in the project’s early stages. The eco-district has now progressed to the point where it is a growing and vibrant part of the city.

One of the biggest aspects in developing the new district was making sure that not only the buildings but the people could survive the earthquakes that plague the region. After an earthquake in 2007, lessons were learned.

“They found that there was lower mortality in regions that had higher social cohesion because people were taking care of each other,” Kelley said. “The community cohesion was not felt the same in the district.”

While the buildings had top-notch technology like battery power, stormwater and wastewater systems that could operate “off the grid,” there wasn’t much that drew people together. The way ZGF changed that was by creating more open spaces to serve as gathering places.

“Portland was exporting the green outdoor space use to connect the buildings,” Kelley said. “We got people to talk openly about what they wanted. We got the buildings organized. We got a vision plan centered around what these people wanted.”

Kashiwanoha’s Smart City still has tons of technology that includes battery storage, an aerobic digester, and solar and wind energy elements. There are also hotel, hospital, laboratory and commercial buildings that are connected together. The district energy distribution system shares heat loads, and the synergistic system allows the buildings to operate off the grid until regional power and water can be restored during a disaster.

“Tech is meaningless unless we also have an open space that is equal to what we want in our lives,” Kelley said.

The result of the project is an area where people want to live and work. It’s also being honored as among the most environmentally friendly. The project has already earned Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Neighborhood Development platinum certification. It is the first neighborhood in Japan to earn that designation and ranks among the largest, in terms of land space, in the world to achieve that honor.

“They took advice, made a plan and are now implementing a plan,” Kelley said. “It is kind of an unusual project. It’s the next-level kind of stuff we did there.”

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A single change in the design of the Center for Health and Healing-South, now coming out of the ground in Portland’s South Waterfront District, is credited with saving Oregon Health & Science University $900,000. The move from an extruded aluminum product as a building accent to a thinner, stainless-steel plate product was actually suggested by a representative of one of the subcontractors, General Sheet Metal.

“That’s something we never would have considered, because stainless steel is a lot more expensive than aluminum,” said Kip Storey, a principal at ZGF Architects, the project’s designer. “It turned out to be great for the project and good for the design.”

According to the CHH-South project team, the change is the kind of idea that only could have come through the collaboration afforded by Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). Intended to close communication gaps and improve efficiencies on tight budgets, the alternative delivery method favored for large and complex projects has gained acceptance by the mainstream over the past decade. The team behind the CHH-South says theirs is the largest and most advanced local example of the form. But there are hazards involved with IPD, and other sectors beyond health care are moving toward it.

“Having all the owners in the same boat, rowing in the same direction, bound together to drive out waste – that’s all good,” construction attorney Brian Perlberg said. “But you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s certainly not the right fit for every project.”

Great expectations

The job trailer for the CHH-South is something to behold.

The 10,000 square foot “temporary” structure is eight doublewide trailers wide with an open-plan design and enviable frontage on the Willamette River. Every wall is covered with detailed, color-coded information, though actual paper plans are in short supply. Employee nameplates show the variety of firms at work. There’s an energetic buzz across the floor.

IPD is unique in how it binds the three traditional signatories to a construction contract – the owner, architect and contractor. It’s not quite like design-build. It’s not necessarily cheap. And it’s not magic, says Perlberg, who has written sample IPD agreements for ConsensusDocs, as well as Associated General Contractors.

“It’s not a panacea,” he said. “It’s a different way of doing things, and it takes clear expectations and trust.”

IPD is seen as the best fit on large, complicated projects where the owners are interested in exploring cost savings – meaning it’s right at home in the health care field. (In fact, the first project to use an IPD contract was the Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis.) It’s also gaining appeal for higher education projects and with museums and libraries, Perlberg said.

Perlberg said the risk-averse building field is historically uncomfortable straying from low-bid, because it’s often considered the fairest method. Owners of public projects are often barred by law from using alternative delivery methods, though there are informal, non-contractual forms of IPD, known as “IPD Lite” or “IPD-ish.”

“Pure” IPD involves greater up-front costs, an issue that’s compounded on smaller projects.

“There’s a scalability issue for sure,” Perlberg said.

SAIF and sound

Currently engrossed in preconstruction, the team building SAIF Corp.‘s new headquarters in Salem is employing a modified form of IPD. Owner’s rep Day CPM, Ankrom Moisan Architects, engineer Glumac and contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis are meeting twice a week in converted surge space in the latter firm’s Portland office. Team members will relocate to a construction office near the site in Salem as the heavy work approaches.

“We’ve found for us, two, three days a week has been real effective,” said Andy Dykeman, senior project manager for Lewis Crutcher Lewis.

SAIF is attaching a five-story wing to an existing five-story building, with a goal of making it all look like one building. Move-in for SAIF is expected in summer 2018.

It’s been a new experience for Ankrom Moisan and Lease Crutcher Lewis to have the contractor and trade partners involved in design, Dykeman said. But here it led to an enriching dialogue as the architects established the building’s programmatic layout: Four stories with wider floorplates, or five stories with narrower floors? Structural steel or concrete?

Dykeman said IPD has improved communication by replacing the traditional way parties communicate on big jobs – through a never-ending cycle of highly-formal requests for information.

“This prevents all that volleying where the architect has to write something up and toss it over the net, and then we have to analyze it and toss it back over the net,” he said. “It really puts everyone on the same side of the net.”

Values judgment

The CHH-South project is a good example of full-on IPD. Occupying a full block, the project will include a 15-story hospital with more than 370,000 square feet of ambulatory surgery and clinic space and will connect underground to the bustling CHH across Southwest Whitaker Avenue.

Early on, ZGF’s and Hoffman’s experience with IPD factored into OHSU’s decision to choose them for the project, said Stephanie O’Brien, clinical enterprise liaison for OHSU.

“Not only did we think about how to improve processes to design the building, but having Hoffman as part of the design process, we began to understand what things cost,” she said. “They quickly took away the really expensive ideas to ensure we could afford the building we were trying to design.”

Design concluded in March, and permits with the city are now being finalized. Crews in the colocation trailers on the Willamette are shifting from the design phase to construction. With that shift, more ZGF designers are being recalled to their “mother ship,” as more Hoffman staffers and trade partners move in. ZGF has gone from around 30 staff on-site to about eight now, a figure it intends to keep through the duration of the project, Storey said.

“Most of the design is complete, but there are a lot of options we’re still looking at,” he said.

There’s a steep learning curve associated with IPD: smaller, less-sophisticated firms have to work hard to catch up. Teams responsible for certain components – the envelope team, for instance – must be educated.

“It’s a very different process than the traditional process, so a lot of people don’t have a whole lot of experience with it,” Storey said. “And it’s also fairly new to the industry, especially in the Portland market – and so it’s new for a lot of people, and it’s been an interesting process. … We’ve had some people who’ve took to it like a duck to water and some people that haven’t. So you’re doing a lot of educating and talking about the process to get everybody on board – but when it works, it works really well.”

The city hasn’t caught on as quickly as some subcontractors, according to the team behind the CHH-South project. In IPD, design elements are worked out during out construction, so the team often seeks building permits with incomplete designs. This project went before the Portland Design Commission five times, worrying OHSU it wouldn’t meet its goal of opening in 2018.

“To be honest, the city has made efforts to catch up, but they have not embraced the process, and they’re not really set up to do a fast-track process like this,” Storey said. “It’s much easier for them to understand a project when the project comes to them in one piece, and what we’ve asked them to do is look at it one piece at a time.”

Another advantage discussed by the project team is IPD’s edge in helping battle the twin evils of labor shortage and materials cost escalation. They say that by sharing space with key subcontractors, they’re better able to secure needed materials when they’re available, and they’re better able to administer coordinate trade partners based on their roll sheets.

Aside from gaining strength from the IPD method, the mission of the CHH-South has helped the team maximize value, said Elaine Dabrowski, senior project manager for OHSU.

“One of the things we did when we first got together is talk about what our true north is, what makes us come to work,” Dabrowski said. “And what we said is, at the end of the day when this building is done, regardless if you’re the contractor or the architect or a trade partner, you could be served in this building – you could get chemotherapy in this building. We take it back to that. This is not just a great construction project; it’s not (just) a great design project – it’s something that’s going to help all Oregonians. And that brings us together at the end of the day. It makes us trust each other.”

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Green developer Ryan Olsen has two projects now mired in city permitting. Both are what the president of Elemental Urban Living calls “micro villages” – mixed-use communities oriented around central courtyards that utilize rooftop space for trees and community gardens.

By taking a birds-eye view, Olsen had hoped to satisfy landscaping requirements and earn stormwater credits. But the city doesn’t offer such incentives in low-density residential neighborhoods, he learned; only in the high-density Central City.

“Why does this have to be a fight?” he said. “I mean, we’re pretty excited about this. It’s good for people. It’s good for the city. Why do we have to fight the city to do it?”

Olsen isn’t alone in his frustration. Business owners and building professionals say that thanks to red tape and disappearing incentives, other cities have caught up to Portland in terms of green building, a concept that it helped pioneer and still is a major part of its brand. Perhaps more incriminating is that they say now the city’s most sustainable projects are affordable only to its wealthiest residents.

“For a long time I think we’ve all benefited from each other’s great work in this area,” said Bob Packard, partner at ZGF Architects. “But what many of us who’ve been engaged in this practice are beginning to see and to talk about is, you can’t brag about something, you can’t point to something, that isn’t there.”

Oregon outside U.S. top 10

Portland builders have been on board to combat climate change since it was called “global warming” in the early 1990s. Green building (construction and land use practices that limit negative effects on the Earth) has informed many, if not most, prominent projects dating to that time, including Veridian Place (2000), the Mirabella condo tower (2007) in the South Waterfront District and the OHSU Center for Health & Healing (2007).

But the rest of the world has started catching up. Illinois now has the most Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design-rated buildings per capita. Oregon isn’t even in the top 10. Cities like Chicago, Washington D.C. and Salt Lake City have made significant strides in transit and planning. California’s CALGreen building code is nearly identical to the LEED code. Reno, home to Tesla and cheap housing, is said to be a particularly hot spot.

“The tech companies are swarming to that place,” said Steven Straus, president of Glumac, an MEP firm specializing in sustainable consulting.

Green building is today among America’s fastest growing industries, along with health care and legal marijuana. Glumac, with 10 offices on the West Coast, is quite busy these days, Straus said, though mostly outside the Portland area. The firm was able to establish and grow a solid reputation thanks in part to an Oregon program tying energy tax credits to the LEED rating system (the higher the LEED score, the more credits), he said. But that program has diminished, and become less effective, he added.

Glumac’s latest office is in Shanghai. China has started looking seriously at green building, due in part to the high health care costs associated with pollution. The Portland office of LEED consultant U.S. Green Building Services has been active in all kinds of projects there, including Shanghai Tower, principal Richard Manning said.

“We’ve done a 122-story building, and a bunch of KFCs,” he said.

Packard said Europe is passing Portland and the U.S. He’s currently traveling the world learning about sustainable building practices in places like London, Paris and Madrid. As an environmentalist who cares about mitigating climate change, he said what he’s seen is heartening. But as a Portlander, it has him worried about the health of the local market.

The problem is that sustainability is still central to Portland’s brand, Packard said.

“Can we really say we’re leaders on this?” he said. “If we want to lead on this kind of thing, we can’t just do it once in the past 10, 20 years. We have to continually apply forward-thinking.”

Barriers to innovative projects

Also, a list recently passed around the Internet, of the country’s hottest green cities, omitted Portland. Mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler called this “embarrassing” in a debate.

But, Vanessa Keitges points out, Portland did make a recent USA Today list of cities with the worst heat islands.

Keitges, co-founder of Columbia Green Technologies, is also frustrated these days. Its status as a Portland green building firm carries a cachet outside the area, she said, like being a tequila maker from Mexico. Her company’s green roof tray systems provide a simpler, cheaper alternative to waterproof membranes, but can run afoul of building codes, stalling projects and making it harder to find clients.

“Innovation is happening so fast across the country and the world that the building codes have to try to keep up. And in Portland, they haven’t,” she said.

There were as many green roofs installed in Portland last year as there were in 2000, she said.

One issue with green products like roof trays is that they must be specified through an architect.

Melissa Milburn, spokeswoman for SolTerra, said her firm has been successful in part because it’s “vertically integrated.” SolTerra, with offices in Seattle and Portland, owns, designs, builds and leases all its projects, all of which are heavily green. This helps accelerate the permitting process, she said.

“We have everybody in one room,” Milburn said. “We have the architect sitting right next the construction leads. They’re a part of the same team, at the same company, with the same mission.”

SolTerra’s Woodlawn project, they say, features the largest “living wall” on the West Coast. The 8-year old company owns 13 properties it plans to develop near its two offices.

Establishing eco-districts, like Lloyd or one including Portland State University, is one proposed way to reduce costs by pooling resources. Architect and affordable housing advocate Stuart Emmons says another is altering RFPs for public projects, which he says are so dense and complicated that they can be an early barrier for forward-thinking developers, as well as for minority- and women-owned businesses.

“RFPs are the gateways to projects; they’re a really big deal,” he said. “In general, I feel like innovation is not supported in these RFPs. It’s always, ‘How many things have you done?’ ”

As projects are downscaled, the green attributes end up being affordable for spaces with the highest rents. That has led to a feeling that green features are perks of being rich, Ryan Olsen said.

“We shouldn’t treat them like amenities – this is healthy living. It’s good for all people,” he said.

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A team of Portland-based SERA Architects‘ staffers has earned a special recognition award in an international design competition.

Participants in the 2014 Architecture at Zero competition were tasked with creating buildings that meet net-zero-energy targets set by the California Public Utilities Commission. Six SERA staffers in about a month designed a 60-unit, 69,500-square-foot affordable housing complex that generates more energy than it consumes on a site in Oakland, Calif.

The SERA design team volunteered time on lunch breaks, nights and weekends to complete the design of “Flourish,” which relies completely on the sun for energy production, said Jeffrey Maas, a SERA sustainable design analyst. SERA staffers teamed up with engineering firm Glumac to design the building that features extensive solar panels and solar thermal panels that heat water, along with various measures that reduce overall energy consumption, he said.

“A lot of us were interested in pushing the boundaries with housing,” he said. “We thought it would be fun to see how far we could go with energy conservation.”

This effort impressed the competition judges, who earlier this month honored it with one of three awards given to professional entries. Two awards went to student designs. The jury of design professionals praised the Flourish designers for their strong energy analysis, thoughtful balance of public and private space, and approach to indoor and outdoor retail spaces.

One of the most challenging parts of the design process, Maas said, was figuring out a way to include a series of courtyards on the constrained site. The curvy building design frames these outdoor spaces, he said.

“We designed places where we didn’t want the building and then we designed the apartments around those spaces,” he said.

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A frequent concern for Gerding Edlen CEO Mark Edlen is the impression that the Portland-based development company’s projects will make on neighborhoods.

“We used to think sustainability was a big deal, but today for us it’s building communities,” he said. “I think people are looking for more, richer ways to interact. To us, that’s what we think community is about. We think the buildings that we build have an enormous impact.”

With Portland communities in flux because of a boom in development, Edlen on Thursday joined three other industry professionals on a panel to discuss how to create inclusive, livable neighborhoods across the city. The “Designing Better Neighborhoods” event was hosted by Design Museum Portland at the Portland office of engineering firm Glumac.

Panelist and moderator Randy Gragg, executive director of the University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center, steered the discussion toward topics that included identifying ways to improve East Portland and addressing concerns about demolitions of older residences.

“We have a lot of heartburn going on in terms of change in historic neighborhoods,” Gragg said.

Panelist Jeff Stuhr, co-founder of Portland-based Holst Architecture, said it’s important for architects to investigate whether it’s possible to save an existing building or replace it with a thoughtful design.

“We’ve yet to elevate that conversation beyond historic preservation,” he said. “When we take down buildings and replace them with inefficient buildings, that’s not what we want to do. I think we need to change the conversation. I think this process of renewal and growth is natural.”

Acknowledging neighborhood opposition to development is crucial, said panelist DeAunne Denmark, a Pacific Northwest College of Art instructor who teaches a course that applies the principles of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience to design thinking.

“You get this vehement pushback, and it’s often because they want to feel like they have a stake in it,” she said. “If you don’t design well for the culture that’s in place you see these problems come out around it. The design process itself has to change. If the neighborhood itself wants historic preservation, it behooves you to find out why.”

The longevity of a development is one reason why its design must consider the larger impact, Edlen said.

“In our industry it’s very capital intensive; there’s a tremendous amount of risk,” he said. “One of the things we talk about a lot (is) … it’s a 100- to 200-year asset. It’s going to be around for a long time.”

Panelists also discussed ways to create better neighborhoods in underdeveloped areas in Portland east of 82nd Avenue.

“How can we create a sense of a neighborhood out there from this very piecemeal urbanism?” Gragg asked.

Some basic city amenities would be a great start, said Edlen, a Portland Development Commission board member.

“I think we’ve got to move faster,” he said. “We’ve got to have a public process, but we’ve got to move the needle faster on issues like parks and sidewalks.”

Stuhr pointed out that the larger lots available in East Portland could be advantageous for future development.

“I see this as a great potential benefit for the city rather than having to design the 200-by-200-foot square,” he said. “From a design standpoint, we have opportunities that we don’t have anywhere else. This is going to be the next big opportunity for density in the city.”

Redeveloping East Portland will also involve consideration of the needs of lower-income neighborhoods with more diversity than in other parts of the city, Denmark said. What worked downtown or in the Pearl District may not apply, she said.

“You can’t just impose those values on people that don’t want them,” Denmark said.

That doesn’t mean the standard of architecture in East Portland should be different, Stuhr said.

“Design makes a difference, and a lot of times when you’re working with a marginalized community you have to convince them of that,” he said. “People out there deserve good design just as much as we do in the inner city core.”

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