After nearly three years of construction, Multnomah County is ready to open the $163 million East County Library.

The library branch is the flagship project of the $387 million library bond that voters approved in November 2020. Located in downtown Gresham, the library is meant to bring services to East County residents who live far from the Central Library in downtown Portland.

“This is a palace for the people,” said Katie O’Dell, the library system’s capital bond deputy director.

At 95,000 square feet, the facility is the county’s second-largest branch, behind only the Central Library, which occupies about 120,000 square feet. East County Library will offer 200,000 books, CDs, DVDs and other materials to the public when it opens on Saturday.

It’s the largest of 18 library projects funded by the 2020 bond, which also produced six new libraries, 11 renovations and an operations center. Two projects — in the St. Johns and Belmont neighborhoods —remain to be completed.

Fortis Construction served as general contractor for East County Library, with a design by Holst Architecture of Portland and Adjaye Associates (the international firm left the project in 2023 after founder David Adjaye was accused of sexual misconduct).

The design relies heavily on mass timber, including 1,200 glulam beams and 3,000 cross-laminated timber panels sourced from around the Pacific Northwest.

The project arrives on time and on budget, county officials said.

“Construction went so, so smoothly,” library bond spokeswoman Liz Sauer said.

A TriMet park-and-ride facility formerly occupied the new library’s site at 475 N.W. Division St., pinched between Gresham City Hall and the Gresham Station shopping complex. TriMet still owns a 25,000-square-foot parcel on which it intends to build a transit-oriented project.

The new library branch has ample mass transit access, with a MAX Blue Line station slightly north of the building, and a TriMet Frequent Express bus line on its Division Street frontage.

The East County Library is more than four times larger than the former Gresham branch, with a collection to match. The city of Gresham purchased the former library branch site at 385 N.W. Miller Ave. after a public process.

The East County Library has a diverse collection featuring materials in Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese — all languages commonly spoken in the Gresham area. A world languages section includes books in many more languages.

“I would say we have a more diverse collection than our other library branches,” Director of Libraries Annie Lewis said.

The new library also has state-of-the art technology, including the Intelligent Material Management System, or IMMS, from Utah company SirsiDynix. The system tracks bookshelf offerings and zips books around the library using an extensive conveyor belt.

Other facilities include an auditorium for events and a maker space that offers a laser printer and cutter, sewing machines and more.

Tucked in a sunlit corner, a recording studio features high-end Fender and Yamaha guitars, a drum set and a mixing board.

“Everything in there is gear industry professionals would use,” said Jody Redifer, audio-video program specialist.

The library will open at 10 a.m. on Saturday, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9 a.m.

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A suburban clinic is on track to receive some upgrades next spring.

The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners last week approved plans to upgrade the Rockwood Community Health Center. Medical, dental and pharmacy services are provided at the facility, which is located at 2020 S.E. 182nd Ave. in Gresham.

Multnomah County purchased the Rockwood facility from Care Access LLC (CareOregon) for $1 million in 2023. The county previously rented the facility.

Scott Edwards Architecture designed the building improvements for the county.

A general contractor will be selected through a bid process. Bids are due by Oct. 21, Multnomah County spokesperson Sarah Dean stated in an email.

The project scope includes renovating the entrance and clinic lobby; replacing the roof, the rooftop heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system units; building a small addition for a new electrical room; upgrading the electrical service; installing an emergency generator; completing other building system improvements; and applying interior finishes. The work will also involve adding electric vehicle charging stations.

The lobby will have a window wall to add more light into the space, Multnomah County project manager Brett Taute said.

The $6.8 million project is fully funded, mostly by the county. However, a $1.97 million federal Health Resources and Services Administration grant is helping pay the cost.

Initially crews will focus on performing site work and constructing the electrical room addition. Then the facility will close temporarily next year from April through September. During that time the team will renovate the entrance and lobby, tackle roofing upgrades, and perform heating/cooling and electrical work. Most of the clinic’s staff and programming will move temporarily to two different buildings – the Multnomah County East building at 600 N.E. Eighth St. and the Mid County Health Center at 12710 S.E. Division St.

Construction during the remainder of the project will take place by closing only portions of the building.

Active construction is expected to take 12 to 14 months, according to the staff report.

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Just inside Gresham city limits, near East Burnside Street and Southeast 167^th Place, a multifamily development is in the works for a 0.52-acre parcel. The project, designed by Leeb Architects for developer West Coast Home Solutions, will add 24 apartments to the market.

“It obviously allows people to use the MAX (light rail) to commute,” said Robert Leeb, the firm’s principal in charge. “And I think that in terms of the building and the design, we were trying to coordinate the building with the context of the neighborhood. We had a group of townhomes next to us on the east, and we wanted to be compatible with those owner-occupied row homes.”

The single-building development is being designed in a contemporary townhouse style that will include an internal courtyard and a children’s play area. On-site parking will consist of 15 surface spaces and nine tuck-under parking garages – a one-to-one ratio for the 24 units.

“We created pavilions in the buildings and steeper pitched roofs,” Leeb said, “to break the mass up into different pavilions to give it a row house, townhouse look instead of a monolithic apartment building.”

Traditional exterior materials are being used, including lap siding and brick masonry at the base.

Apartments will be studios, one-bedroom units or two-bedroom units.

“It’s a smaller scale and there are nice-sized two-bedrooms,” Leeb said. “There is a nice courtyard that some of the units face. It’s a small-scale infill, and there’s a limited amount of space to do what you want to do. But we’re proud of it; it’s an elegant little building.”

West Coast Home Solutions will serve as its own general contractor. It formerly developed only single-family homes. Right now, however, the firm is nearing completion on its first multifamily project: the 266-unit Harbor Sky Apartments in North Portland.

The firm hopes to begin construction on the Burnside Apartments sometime in the first quarter of 2020, Leeb said. At that time, he noted, subcontracts for the project will still be going out to bid.

“I don’t think we take our notes from Burnside or the light rail as much from the neighborhood context,” Leeb said. “The idea was definitely to get this project into the neighborhood. This was something that was in their portfolio for a while. They had control of this property for a while, and they’ve done some smaller projects in Gresham.”

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, send an email to newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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The Eastside Timbers youth soccer club is seeking to build a new 43,500-square-foot futsal center in Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood.

As described in a project information form filed Wednesday with the Gresham Urban Design and Planning Department, the new facility would be constructed on a 10.35-acre site on Southeast 174th Avenue, slightly south of Powell Boulevard. This is the same property upon which general contractor P&C Construction completed the Eastside Timbers & Thorns Sports Complex under a design-build contract in April 2018.

According to public documents, the new building would be the second phase of development of that complex and have 43,500 square feet of space dominated by three new futsal courts. The building would also have office and tenant space, a retail shop, a concession area, team meeting space and a gymnasium. A mezzanine level would overlook the futsal courts.

Soderstrom Architects is the applicant and designer for the new facility, while P&C Construction is set to serve as the general contractor.

“It’s going to have three futsal courts, and then it will have TI space for a restaurant and physical therapy,” said Dan Van Calcar, a Soderstrom Architects principal. “It will also have a clinic and concessions; it’s going to have a strong connection with the (three existing) soccer fields outside.”

Ryan Kelley, project manager for P&C Construction, said many changes have already been made to the phase two project – and more are likely.

“This started off as an athletic field, and that was completed,” he said. “And we’ve been back and forth on multiple revisions on the phase 2 futsal courts. We wanted to utilize (cross-laminated timber), but costs of the structure were not where the client needed it to be, so we’re exploring a metal structure right now.”

Project valuation is estimated at $5 million to $6 million, Kelley said. Ground is expected to be broken in March 2020.

“We actually put this project on hold for about a year,” he said. “Not only have things developed slowly behind the scenes, we’re picking this up and figuring out where we’re at now.”

A number of procedural hurdles must be cleared before development may take place. These include design review, a modification of a future street plan and a conditional plan map amendment to allow a commercial building to be built on property zoned for industrial use. The street plan modification will require a comprehensive traffic study of both 174th Avenue and its intersection with Southeast Powell Boulevard.

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One of America’s most popular fast-food restaurants could soon arrive in east Multnomah County.

Quattro Development, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, has submitted to the city of Gresham pre-application documents in preparation for building a Chick-fil-A restaurant at 2550 S.E. Burnside Road, near the intersection with Powell Boulevard.

The site is in the Gresham Village Shopping Center, according to documents submitted to the city. The 5.65-acre property already holds two commercial buildings – each one has multiple tenants.

To build the proposed 5,061-square-foot Chick-fil-A restaurant, the smaller of the two existing buildings would be demolished. Plans call for inclusion of a drive-thru window and parking for around 95 vehicles. Also, the property would also be subdivided so that the remaining commercial building and the new restaurant building would be on separate lots.

Elevation drawings created by Ware Malcomb, an international architecture, interior design and civil engineering firm, show the proposed building would have an exterior similar to a typical Chick-fil-A restaurant. Plans call for a dark bronze aluminum awning and parapet wall coping and white stucco cladding. The bulk of the exterior, however, would feature brick veneer.

The project team is slated to meet with city planning staff before pursuing a formal land use development application.

In July, the Beaverton Planning Commission issued the go-ahead for construction of a Chick-fil-A restaurant on Southwest Cedar Hills Boulevard.

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Gresham-Barlow School District voters approved a $291 million capital bond measure in 2016, and it has launched the district on a building spree that currently includes the overhaul of both Gresham and Sam Barlow high schools, as well as the construction of two brand new elementary schools and the renovation or expansion of several more elementary and middle schools.

Currently, crews from Fortis Construction and its subcontractors are swarming over the Gresham High School job site, where a 169,000 square foot expansion that includes a brand new auditorium and up to 63 new classroom spaces is being constructed. Whitaker Ellis concrete workers are pouring concrete footings for the south wing of the expansion containing the new auditorium, while other subcontractors are prepping for the upcoming installation of the steel support columns that will form the backbone of the expanded school.

The new auditorium at the corner of Southeast Division Street and Main Avenue will form the centerpiece of the school once completed. The main entrance, meanwhile, will be shifted to the south side of the campus off Division Street. This is a big change from the current configuration, which has featured the main entrance along Main Avenue since the school opened 112 years ago.

While work is steadily progressing both inside and outside of the existing buildings, Fortis crews are planning to install a tower crane onsite in about three weeks. This should have the effect of speeding up construction, said Fortis Superintendent Dave Salisbury, mainly because overhead power lines ringing the school campus have made it more awkward for truck-mounted boom cranes to operate.

In addition to Fortis Construction, BLRB Architects is also part of the project team and designed the school expansion.

Check out our photo gallery of the job site taken Friday morning.

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The city of Gresham is planning for a series of improvements along Sandy Boulevard to increase safety and access for all users. The intention, according to the city, is to support the industrial area “by constructing a complete corridor.”

Work will improve entry to commercial sites along Sandy Boulevard and improve access to 19 acres of industrial land currently vacant.

Design and planning is taking place this year, with construction planned for 2019.

To start, crews will install a modernized traffic signal at Northeast 181st Avenue and Sandy Boulevard, and add a second westbound left-turn lane from Sandy Boulevard to 181st Avenue.

A new 12-foot-wide multiuse path will be built on the north side of Sandy Boulevard, between 185th Drive and 201st Avenue. The path will connect with the Gresham-Fairview Trail. Another 12-foot-wide multiuse path will be built on the south side of Sandy Boulevard, between 181st Avenue and the entrance to the Boeing plant.

New bike lanes will be added along this stretch of Sandy Boulevard, and existing travel lanes will be restriped to provide a five-lane arterial cross section. New street trees, rain gardens, planter strips and streetlights also are in the works.

Work is being paid for via a $3,644,000 regional flexible fund grant from Metro, as well as money from the federal Surface Transportation Program and Gresham urban renewal dollars.

More information is available at: .

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In this short video Gresham Redevelopment Commission Executive Director Josh Fuhrer gives a brief overview of Rockwood Rising, a long-awaited plan to redevelop a key property in the impoverished Gresham neighborhood of Rockwood. Once an unincorporated area of the county between Portland and Gresham, Rockwood has remained behind the development curve in spite of the region’s red-hot housing market. This has left plenty of room for enterprising developers to seek out public-private partnerships like Rockwood Rising, which has seen RKM Development team with the city of Gresham to make the project work. Check it out here:

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It’s not often that a community has so many hopes wrapped up in a single project. But in the impoverished community of Rockwood, in east Multnomah County, ground is poised to be broken soon on a mixed-use development known as to reinvigorate an area known more for poverty and crime than for its diverse population and culture.

“Rockwood Rising is a project we’ve been working on for almost nine years,” Gresham Redevelopment Commission Executive Director Josh Fuhrer said. “It’s intended to create an economic engine in the heart of the neighborhood of Rockwood, and it’s really a project that came about because of the deep community engagement we did trying to understand what the challenges were on a daily basis, what their aspirations were for themselves and their families.”

As envisioned, the project will consist of three new multiuse buildings on a parcel of property bordered on the north by Burnside Street and on the south by Stark Street. The parcel reaches from Southeast 188th Avenue on the east to 185th on the west, forming a rough trapezoid.

Plans call for inclusion of an urgent and primary health care clinic in an existing building that formerly held a Gresham police station. A new public plaza between the four buildings will tie the development together. There will be space for job training and apprenticeship programs, as well as public media space.

Finally, there will be 108 new housing units – either studios, or one- or two-bedroom apartments. At least 20 percent of those units will be affordable and be made available to families making no more than 80 percent of the state’s median household income.

“I wouldn’t say we’re breaking any construction boundaries with this,” said Matt Brown, a principal with YBA Architects, the firm responsible for design. “But in fact the game has been: How do we build this as economically as possible but still create remarkable buildings that will still be groundbreaking in the feeling of care in the design and sensitivity toward people while working within considerable economic constraints and trying to build things very efficiently?”

The project has an overall price tag of approximately $70 million, and has at times raised eyebrows among some citizens worried about the ongoing displacement of lower-income residents throughout the Portland-metro area.

The city of Gresham will provide some $9.5 million in urban renewal tax increment financing funding, along with $2 million in state grant funding. The project also is benefiting from $8 million in New Markets tax credit equity.

The balance, close to $50 million, will come from debt and equity financing via RKM Development, the private developer in charge of construction through its subsidiary Central Bethany Development.

RKM Development previously worked on on the western outskirts of Portland in the 1990s. Now the company is taking that expertise and applying it to an underserved community on the other side of the metro area.

“The owner of our development company (Roy Kim) has an interest in doing projects in depressed areas, so that’s kind of what interested him,” said Jeff Oberst, a Central Bethany Development construction manager working on Rockwood Rising. “We haven’t done any new development out there, but we own some property out there for future development.”

The three new buildings will consist of a larger mixed-use structure with a retail component, a four-story office building and a food-oriented structure, Oberst said.

“We’re calling it the market hall,” he said. “There will be an open-air market with micro restaurants, some small ethnic grocers, maybe a meat market. This area is considered a food desert, and there’s not a lot of places for people to shop out there.”

The public plaza will essentially link the three new buildings together.

“It’s kind of a gathering area for the community for events,” Oberst said. “It’s a public space that will be utilized daily.”

From the outset, Brown said, Kim challenged architects to design each building in a distinct fashion.

“He wanted all the buildings to look (like) they were each designed by different architects,” Brown said. “That was a really interesting and cool challenge, and our result was to develop clear concepts for each building and then hold onto that concept all the way through.”

That wasn’t enough, however. Kim also wanted the project to feel unique to the entire metro area.

“There was often a refrain that they don’t want this to be cool in the way the Pearl District is cool,” Brown said. “We want it to be cool for Rockwood, which was awesome for us. I think the output will be unique, and hopefully it will inspire people and be well received.”

The current iteration of Rockwood Rising is a far cry from its original form.

The city of Gresham purchased the property with $8.1 million in urban renewal funding in 2006 following the closure a year earlier of a Fred Meyer store. A year later the city contracted with Williams & Dame Development, but after 15 months all that resulted was a proposal to put a YMCA on the property. In 2009 the city ended that relationship.

Now, 12 years since the city purchased the land, little has transpired. In the meantime, grocery stores have closed. Health care also is not easily accessible; the nearest hospital, the Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center, is nearly four miles east of the Rockwood Rising site.

“It’s not just Fred Meyer,” Fuhrer said. “We’ve had six of the seven major chain grocery stores in and around Rockwood close in the last 20 years at a time when the population is increasing … So, we’ve really tried to create a place in the heart of Rockwood town center where people can come and do their weekly grocery shopping and they can come get grocery staples, paper towels, dish soap and that kind of stuff.”

The entire project, Fuhrer added, is about creating opportunities – housing, employment and health care, in particular – and making them available to Rockwood residents.

“We’re going to create a cluster of uses in this project that is going to be unique to the Portland-metro area,” he said. “Our whole project is about creating opportunities for people to start businesses, providing the wraparound services to give entrepreneurs the resources they need to be successful to start a new business.

“We’ve really tried to be mindful around a strategy that doesn’t displace people, but still allows them to experience the revitalization that the area so desperately needs.”

Rockwood Rising time line:

2005 – Rockwood Fred Meyer closes its doors

2006 – Ex-Fred Meyer property purchased by the city of Gresham for $8.1 million

2007 – City contracts with Williams & Dame Development to create a plan for the property

2009 – City ends relationship with Williams & Dame Development

2014 – Gresham Redevelopment Commission begins public outreach on development ideas

2015 – Community outreach continues with Rock the Block and other events and meetings

2015 – City selects RKM Development to oversee Rockwood Rising development

2016 – Public outreach efforts continue as the plan takes shape

2017 – Ground-breaking event delayed because of financial issues related to tax credits

2018 – Ground expected to be broken in spring or summer

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Specht Development broke ground last week on a major speculative industrial project in Gresham.

The development near the intersection of Southeast 223rd Avenue and Stark Street will encompass three buildings totaling 732,824 square feet on the 37.42-acre site.

New York Life Real Estate Investors LLC is financially backing the $61 million project, named Vista Logistics Park.

The dominant building in the project will be 494,464 square feet, making it the largest vacant industrial space under one roof in the Portland area, according to a statement issued by Capacity Commercial Group principal Don Ossey.

Two smaller buildings will have 112,940 square feet and 124,420 square feet, respectively. Speculative industrial properties built recently have leased up quickly, said Gregory Specht, chief executive at Specht Development.

“There’s a proven demand for space like we are building, and that’s the business we’re in,” he said.

The developers purchased the site from the Port of Portland for $9.28 million in a transaction that closed Thursday. The project is scheduled for completion in fall 2017.

Shipping and logistics companies are continuing to seek large industrial spaces in the Portland-metro area, and they have few choices available to them, Specht said.

“Logistics users are demanding bigger buildings, so here’s an opportunity to give them what they want,” he said.

The largest building will have a clear height of 36 feet, while the smaller buildings with have clear heights of 30 feet.

Industrial construction has surged in Portland, with major facilities such as Capstone Partners’ PDX Logistics Center and Trammell Crow Co.’s and Clarion Partners’ Subaru shipping facility leading the way.

Specht said low vacancies, and strong wage and population growth help support the Vista Logistics Park project.

Specht credited the Port of Portland and city of Gresham for supporting the project.

“We were able to go from signing the (purchase and sale agreement) to closing in about 60 days, which evidences the willingness from the port and the city of Gresham to get this project under way now, because we’ve got an awful lot of dirt to move before it starts to rain,” he said.

Gresham has aggressively courted industrial construction, guaranteeing turn-around times for project review and approval, among other perks.

Specht has been a major player in the industrial market. The company is nearing completion of a 50,000-square-foot Comcast fulfillment center in Gresham. The Portland-based developer is also rehabilitating and renovating the Ballou Wright Building at 10th Avenue and Flanders Street in the Pearl District in a $25 million creative office project.

Mackenzie is the project architect and engineer for Vista Logistics Park, and Perlo Construction is serving as general contractor. Ossey and David Ellis with Capacity Commercial Group are the brokers representing the property.

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