A creative agency has signed a lease for a 19,489-square-foot space at Field Office in the North Pearl District.

The lease by Instrument is the third lease at Field Office since October, totaling approximately 35,000 square feet, according to Colliers, which represented the landlord. The building, completed in 2018, is owned by a joint venture of Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property Co. through a limited liability company.

“Field Office continues to attract innovative companies looking for a high-quality office experience,” said Trevor Kafoury, vice chair of Colliers, in a news release. “Instrument’s decision to relocate here reflects the building’s premier location, top-tier amenities and the increasing demand for thoughtfully designed workspaces in Portland.”

Colliers said the lease reflects the “flight to quality” seen in the office market, whereby newer, more expensive Class-A office space is attracting tenants ahead of older Class-B and below office stock.

Vacancies have continued to grow in Portland’s office market, reaching 24.9 percent in the first three months of the year, according to Colliers.

Field Office comprises more than 300,000 square feet in twin six-story buildings. It was developed by Project^, designed by Hacker Architects and built by Lease Crutcher Lewis as general contractor.

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A planned 10-unit mixed-use building in the Richmond neighborhood features a unique design intended to foster a sense of community in residents. The Division 28 Homes, designed by Hacker Architects for Urban Development + Partners, blends aspects of single-family design into a multifamily structure.

The building would contain eight two-bedroom condominiums and two one-bedroom units, as well as restaurant and retail spaces, as well as a below-grade parking garage.

To avoid the isolating effect of boxy designs and vertical integration, the building’s massing steps back as it increases in elevation, giving the structure a staggered form and minimizing its impact on neighboring buildings. The massing provides a connection between the outdoor terraces included with each unit, providing an opportunity for interactions between neighbors spending time outdoors. Further communal interactions would be fostered by fourth-floor tenant amenity spaces including a community kitchen, game room, gym, indoor swimming pool and an outdoor spa.

The project went before the Portland Design Commission for the first time Thursday for design advice. Commissioners were generally excited about the design itself, but wanted to see some tweaks made in the direction of a greater experience for pedestrians and the public realm.

The building lacks canopies, which means those walking by won’t be able to seek refuge against the project’s walls in inclement weather. Furthermore, the restaurant patio is the only defining outdoor characteristic at ground level, which means a lack of noncommercial public space.

“Really good design is not a hall pass on public realm response,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “There’s got to be a way to integrate public benefit.”

Livingston said she would like to see some kind of area for passersby to relax and enjoy the atmosphere of a street as busy as Division is. Commissioners Jessica Molinar, Don Vallaster and Sam Rodriguez also took issue with the restaurant corner, saying they want to see more of the building’s massing taken up at the sidewalk, instead of the currently set-back second floor.

The design of the building itself, however, was never at fault. Commissioners praised the aesthetic, the shape and the use of materials. Commissioner Brian McCarter said the building will add to the richness Division Street is trying to cultivate, and that he hopes the design will go relatively unchanged by the time it receives a land use review.

Commissioners also expressed excitement at the idea of a new residential building that doesn’t involve flat, rectangular facades.

“It’s absolutely thrilling when an applicant brings in great architecture,” Livingston said. “This is really lovely architecture.”

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It’s been more than a year since Beam Development was chosen by Prosper Portland to develop the ODOT blocks, a series of three vacant parcels along Southeast Water Avenue in the Central Eastside.

The developer and the economic development agency say the project is still moving forward despite some delays and economic headwinds.

“It’s going well, albeit it’s going slower than we would like,” said Brad Malsin, principal of Beam Development. “The process of getting through all of the details with Prosper has been slow going, but we are making progress.”

Beam is operating under a memorandum of understanding with the agency while the two sides negotiate a development and disposition agreement. The experienced Central Eastside developer was chosen to lead the ODOT blocks project in May 2018.

On Wednesday, Prosper Portland’s board approved a resolution authorizing agency staff to seek state reimbursements for infrastructure that would be extended to the site. The Industrial Site Readiness reimbursements administered by Business Oregon would be used to compensate for conveying utilities, conducting environmental remediation and making street improvements for the industrial office site.

Prosper Portland staff estimated the agency could seek $13 million to $17 million in state reimbursement funds.

The ODOT blocks comprise three parcels formerly owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation that were purchased by Prosper Portland for $2.485 million. The properties total 2.19 acres and are located along Southeast Water Avenue between Madison and Taylor streets.

Plans call for commercial buildings on each block of about six stories with industrial and creative office and “maker” space for entrepreneurs. The nonprofit Innovation Quadrant is on board to take office space in the first building, Malsin said. The group’s space needs are to be determined, but will likely fall in the 10,000 square foot to 15,000 square foot range, he said.

“Our ideas center around a hub of ground-floor manufacturing and prototyping that would potentially be an adjunct to the IQ’s headquarters,” Malsin said. “It could be used collaboratively for the IQ as well as other makers and designers that could share that space.”

The project team includes architecture firms Hacker Architects and Mackenzie, and Colas Construction.

“We’re all still together,” Malsin said. “We all still are excited about the project. We are looking to continue to identify the opportunities that are unique to the Central Eastside and unique to that site.”

As plans for the ODOT blocks shuffle along, other Eastside office projects are poised to beat it to market, including Beam’s own District Office, a 72,000-square-foot project developed in partnership with Urban Development + Partners. 7 S.E. Stark from Harsch Investment Properties is nearing completion with approximately 70,000 square feet of office space, and 5 MLK from Gerding Edlen will bring about 120,000 square feet of office space to market early next year.

“I would definitely say that we are very aware of what is coming on the market in our district,” Malsin said.

ODOT Blocks would be built in phases, and timing would depend on tenant interest and other market factors. Malsin suggested he would proceed cautiously.

“I’m not feeling the love for (speculative) office at the moment,” he said. “Would I do one block? Maybe. Would I do three blocks? No.”

Malsin added: “It’s a moment in time to be as responsible and cautious as you can be.”

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The Portland Design Commission last week offered nearly unanimous praise during a design advice hearing for a full-block apartment building that would replace a former Sunshine Dairy facility in Northeast Portland. Criticism was fairly specific in scope and was limited to a few nuances.

The Dairy Apartments are being designed by Hacker Architects for developer Eastbank, an affiliate of owner NBP Capital, which acquired the site and adjacent properties earlier this year for $8.1 million. The building would contain six floors of apartments over one level of below-grade parking. The 244 apartments units would have floorplans ranging from studios to three bedrooms, and ten affordable units would be included in accordance with inclusionary housing requirements.

The building consists of two seemingly separate towers connected at the ground floor. Ground-level apartments will feature a raised stoop that separates balconies from the sidewalk.

“It’s really well thought out,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “This is modern, but it is borrowing from the vocabulary of nature as well as some of the industrial past.”

Commissioners were united in at least one criticism, which concerned the ground-level stoop. As proposed, the balcony would sit over 5 feet above the sidewalk, which commissioners said would create an unpleasant pedestrian experience. Commissioner Jessica Molinar described the ground floor as feeling like a “fortress” and said she has seen similar stoops in the Pearl District which didn’t work well for pedestrians.

Commissioner Brian McCarter said the proposed 5-foot-6-inch height is too much, but said a height between 2 and 3 feet would be effective.

Chairwoman Julie Livingston was more pointed in her critique, bringing attention to a lack of canopies or cover on the building’s sides, which are needed to keep pedestrians dry. She emphasized that it’s important to shield not only residents and visitors, but also people that are simply walking by.

Her main focus was on the building’s similarity to another Hacker-designed project, the TwentyTwenty Condominiums, which are located less than a quarter mile north on 21^st Avenue.

“I think you need more generations in between the TwentyTwenty and this,” Livingston said. “This needs to be the 5.0 or the 6.0.”

With two similar buildings so close together, Livingston said she worried about setting a precedent for the neighborhood’s style.

While the old dairy building itself will be demolished to make way for the apartments, the design team plans to preserve an old telegraph building and antenna tower at the north end of the site, which it said has an iconic presence in Portland.

Located on Northeast 21^st Avenue, the Dairy Apartments are the latest addition to a spate of recent development near the Sandy Boulevard corridor. The site is expected to become part of a designated pedestrian district by the end of the year, and a future bus route is expected to run by the building, although funding has not yet been secured and those plans could be at least five years out.

The project will return before the commission for a design review hearing at a date yet to be set.

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First Tech Federal Credit Union’s new corporate office building in Hillsboro is the country’s largest cross-laminated timber structure. Around 650 employees will occupy the building, which was designed by Hacker Architects and constructed by Swinerton Builders. The five-story structure features floor-to-ceiling windows that open the space up to the natural surroundings, which include a wetlands area and a park with walking trails.

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The Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives and Museum, known locally as the SLAM, is a significant project for the state of Alaska, Hacker Architects founding principal Thom Hacker said.

“It is the biggest cultural project for the state and required a lot of cultural cooperation,” he said. “The building basically houses the collections of native artifacts, which is extremely deep and rich because of the nature of the different tribes.”

Because of the artifacts’ historic nature, fragility and high values, native tribes don’t have ways to preserve them, Hacker explained. But tribes will be able to remove the artifacts temporarily for ceremonial rituals and then return them to the museum for safekeeping.

Tribes throughout the state were involved in the design process for the structure, Hacker said.

“They needed conditions for (artifacts) to last for another 10 generations,” he said.

The museum also houses rare books for the Alaska State Library, which required an entirely different set of conditions.

“One whole wing of the building is essentially a vault, with varying degrees of humidity and temperature controls,” Hacker said. “The controls are not just in one space and the spaces are graded in different ways, according to what the needs are of the artifacts and rare books.”

The vault consists entirely of concrete and concrete blocks faced with terra cotta, Hacker said. Those building materials make the vault able to withstand 110-mile-an-hour winds and temperatures reaching 10 below zero.

For the main public spaces, a concrete column structure and a flexible and spanning structure of wood trusses were used along with wood panels with undulating forms.

“A lot of people see boat shapes and wing shapes in them,” said Hacker, the project’s chief designer. “And we shaped the roof so that when you’re inside, you can see all the five major peaks … nearby.”

Underground heat pumps were used for both heating and cooling, he said. Pipes go deep into the ground below the building; the site has tailings from old gold mines that deposited tons of waste sediment. Juneau is far enough south that it doesn’t sit on permafrost, he said, and the heat exchange comes from pipes filled with water from Glacier Bay nearby.

Because of Alaska’s climate, construction times were limited, Hacker said, noting that he took about a dozen trips to the site during almost three years of construction.

The design of the museum was an ongoing discussion, he said.

“At every trip we took we talked about design concepts and people would come down from different parts of Alaska,” he said. “Also, the museum people would go and do outreach to (places such as) the Aleutian Islands and Nome.”

Project Stats + Team

Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives and Museum

Location: Juneau, Alaska

Cost: $127 million

Size: 120,000 square feet

Construction start date: spring 2013

Construction completion date: June 2016

Owner: state of Alaska

Design architect: Hacker

Architect of record: ECI Architecture

Civil engineer: R&M Engineering

Mechanical engineer: AMC Engineers

Landscape architect: Walker Macy

General contractor: PCL Constructors Inc.

Design Beyond Borders is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects outside of Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact 91��Ƶ architecture and engineering reporter Beverly Corbell at 503-802-7224 or beverly.corbell@djcOregon.com.

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