Plans presented for Hollywood HUB Housing to the Portland Design Commission on Thursday call for a 12-story, 120-foot building with 234 affordable units. It is the second design advice hearing for the project; the first included a 13-story, 199-unit building scheme.

The project in part is a reimaging of the Hollywood Transit Center and is the first proposal under TriMet‘s Transit-Oriented Development Guidelines. The site along Northeast Halsey Street is owned by the agency, but BRIDGE Housing is the developer for the building.

As part of the project’s scope, a new pedestrian and cyclist connection would be added to the end of the Interstate 84 pedestrian bridge. The goal is to create a seamless transit connection from the Hollywood MAX station across the bridge to the three bus lines in front of the building along Northeast Halsey Street.

Last time, commissioners said that the building’s L-shape design — coupled with the plan for the shared driveway, outdoor area and inactive ground-floor uses — would be unsafe and create a hostile pedestrian environment, according to the summary memo.

Senior City Planner Tim Heron said, “while this is technically … a second DAR (design advice request) for this site, it feels like a brand new one.”

The building’s massing has transitioned to a C-shape with a courtyard in the cutout and has substantial relief along the north and south pedestrian transit connection planned.

“The new direction of the project is stupendous,” Commissioner Brian McCarter said. “It’s so much, it’s not even in the same universe.”

Before, the development team was constrained by a Difficult to Develop Area boundary bisecting the site. Dave Otte, applicant and principal/owner at Holst Architecture, said it pushed their original design into that “really shoehorned” L-shape.

Failure to keep the building within the boundary meant that the associated 30 percent boost in tax credit would be lost – about $10.2 million in tax credit equity.

What in part triggered the big massing shift was an agreement. The western and southern half of the transit site fell within the DDA boundary, established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Bridge Housing Executive Vice President Kurt Creager said, however, in the case of the transit center site it was an uncommon situation. The DDA boundary did not follow the property line but rather the busways. The line was calculated using the postal zip code for the transit area.

To rectify this, BRIDGE and TriMet worked with Senator Ron Wyden’s office and consulted with HUD, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service and Oregon Housing and Community Services. An agreement was reached to allow for Low Income Housing Tax Credit to boost any development delivered on the site, regardless of whether it is in inside or outside the current DDA boundary.

Creager said while they are technically unable to change the boundary until the 2030 census, they have received “a favorable administrative interpretation,” endorsed by the IRS and OHCS.

The resulting resolution meant that the Hollywood HUB Housing project could be built in a C-shape, alleviating most of the commissioner’s prior concerns and be completed within a single phase (rather than the two-phased approach proposed earlier). It also allowed an additional 37 housing units to be added.

“I know it has a long way to go,” Commissioner Don Vallaster said, “but just the simple massing moves that have (been) proposed so far would make this a pretty outstanding building. So I think by the time they’re done this should be a real landmark for the neighborhood and for the city.”

The pedestrian and cyclist connection, referred to as the “paseo,” was extended to the full width (64 feet) of the vacated street between the building site and the businesses across the street. The connection would be built by TriMet and function as an amenity for the greater community. Within the paseo will be a stair and ramp connection to the pedestrian bridge.

Alongside the connection will be an entrance to the future Sullivan’s Gulch Trail, a roughly 5-mile-long trail in planning from the Central City out to the Gateway Regional Center. Plans for the entrance call for a 20-foot-wide path to allow for bicyclists moving quickly to get on and off the trail.

“I can’t wait for the Sullivan’s Gulch trail to open up,” McCarter said. “When that thing opens up and there’s people coming over the bridge, there’s people coming into the site from Sullivan’s Gulch, there’s people coming through the site from Halsey, it is going to be an amazing – a really pulsing urban place and that’s gonna be great to see.”

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Ground will be broken soon on a third micro-housing complex in Northeast Portland.

The Portland Bureau of Development Services has approved a construction permit for a four-story, 54-unit building with 10 shared kitchens; it will be located at 1521 N.E. 41st Ave. in the Hollywood District.

Jeff Sakamoto, Portland-area development representative with Seattle-based Footprint Properties, said construction crews have already demolished the single-family home that had occupied the site and that new construction will start in December.

Each unit will be approximately 200 square feet, fully furnished and rent for about $700 to $1,200. That rate will include all utilities, Internet access, shared common amenities, bike storage, on-site laundry facilities and secured entry.

There is no vehicle parking on site for this development.

“This site was strategically chosen because you could literally throw a rock and hit the transit center,” Sakamoto said. “That’s our resident right there: people who use mass transit to get around.”

Sakamoto said that when construction of Footprint Properties’ first Portland project – a similar building at 2250 N.W. Thurmond St. – finishes soon, resources will be transferred to the 41st Avenue project site. He said that building should be ready to lease in about a year.

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The project team creating a retail space in the Hollywood District is rolling with the punches.

When the 48-lane Hollywood Bowl building opened as Timber Lanes in 1963, it had a split-level. It’s not ideal for incoming retail tenant Orchard Supply Hardware, but the project team modifying the building is working around it. Crews also are finding ways to make a dark and enclosed space more airy and inviting.

The split-level could not be altered without removing the horizontal, precast columns that supported the main floor. The bowling lanes’ mechanical equipment was hung in those T-shaped columns, so the split-level had to stay, said Paul Schulz, principal of LCG Pence, the project’s general contractor.

A variety of shoring and other strengthening methods are being used to reinforce the building. Much of the west side will be removed to work around the split-level.

Meanwhile, the building’s basement-level parking garage made it difficult to increase access into the main retail space, Schulz said.

“If you look at this building from the outside, you could say this is a simple project,” he said, “but it’s far more complex than that. We’re improving the old bowling alley on a lot of fronts to make it work for retail.”

From the outside, the parking structure presented aesthetic and logistical challenges. Creating a more attractive storefront meant taking off much of the west-facing wall where cars enter the garage. The four entry bays will be opened up with steel backing to support the remaining masonry. That will create a common building entrance from both the parking garage and street level, and give Orchard Supply Hardware a place to display its garden center.

“We changed where the front entry was,” said Matthew Lillard, an associate principal with Baysinger Partners Architecture, which designed the adaptive reuse project. “We are putting a lot of big holes in that building, taking out the block and putting in a lot of glazing. This will add to the communication to the street.”

Much of the work had to be done up front, with careful thought about how an old bowling alley could be made into a retail space, Lillard said. Ramps and stairs will be installed to give shoppers access between upper and lower levels.

“Orchard has been pretty good at this,” he said. “They have lots of experience determining how a large-format retail space can interact with an urban environment.”

Getting customers from the underground parking structure to the main floor also presented challenges for the contractor. Two elevator wells had to be dug deep into the footings and the walls had to be shored up for support, Schulz said.

LCG Pence cut out several thousand square feet of the floor structure to make room for the elevator shafts and stairwells, he said.

Crews had to work around long, precast, T-shaped columns to accommodate the elevator shaft and accompanying stairwells. The project team had limited information to work with to determine how the floor system would support a retail use, including a delivery area for trucks and vehicles.

“The precast floor system created the biggest difficulties,” said Joe Gehlen, senior principal at Kramer Gehlen & Associates. “Where we didn’t feel the structure was adequate, we were able to provide some reinforcement to those members by adding … support and columns. In other areas, we had to take the floor out and put in a new floor structure.”

A new seismic system also had to be installed. The building’s roof had limited lateral load resistance and needed to be replaced with plywood and anchored to the walls. That will make it more resistant to seismic shaking, Gehlen said.

The seismic work also exposed existing Douglas fir beams that had been covered by a dropped ceiling since the opening of the building. The like-new beams will increase the space’s aesthetic value, Schulz said.

Hollywood District building renovation

Tenant: Orchard Supply Hardware

Address: 4030 N.E. Halsey St.

Owner/developer: Oppidan Investment Co.

General contractor: LCG Pence Construction

Architect: Baysinger Partners Architecture

Engineer: Kramer Gehlen & Associates Inc.

Civil engineer: Cardno WRG

Construction start date: mid-July

Anticipated completion date: mid-November

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After a period of relative silence, a developer has broken ground for a mixed-use building next to the Hollywood Theatre in Northeast Portland.

Hollywood District business owners and historic preservationists had concerns about the project, which was proposed to include approximately 52 apartment units and no parking. A project manager said the team was concerned about a prolonged design review process, and chose to use a different process so it could build without facing potentially costly and delay-inducing appeals.

Construction of the Hollywood Apartments has “just started,” according to Creston Homes project manager David Mullens. The building, due to be completed in 14 months, will include 47 one- and two-bedroom apartments and 3,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space, Mullens said. The owner of the project is Hollywood Apartments LLC, part of , which also owns Creston Homes.

In May, the by Hollywood Theatre Executive Director Doug Whyte, who expressed concern that the new apartment building could hinder visibility of the theater’s historic marquee, particularly for people traveling on Sandy Boulevard.

Representatives of the building’s designer, , met with Hollywood Theatre and neighborhood stakeholders a few times, but those conversations stopped last spring. That’s because the project team decided to take a different avenue to secure design approval, Mullens said.

The project proposed in May called for 52 units, enough to require a loading dock, according to city code; the team was seeking a variance for that requirement. The design, as it was, also varied from design guidelines for aspects like cornices and height, Mullens said.

The team discovered that it could make changes to make the project fit “Community Design Guidelines” – an “objective set of standards,” said Bureau of Development Services spokesman Ross Caron. Those standards can substitute for design commission review in some of Portland’s design overlay zones, including the Hollywood District, Caron said. And unlike the design review process, the community design process does not allow for public appeals.

Mullens said he can’t remember exactly when the team decided to use Community Design Guidelines.

“It had a lot to do with the fact that anyone in the neighborhood could file an appeal of any decision (of the design commission), for a small fee,” he said.

Such appeals, Mullens noted, could have derailed the project.

The commission’s design review process also could have been longer, he said. And that would have made a huge difference because city building permit fees increased on July 1. Because the team applied before fees increased, Mullens estimates that it saved $56,000. The permit for construction was issued Nov. 17.

Whyte and representatives of the Hollywood Theatre stopped meeting with the apartment designers once they started pursuing the alternate review process. Whyte has not seen an updated design.

“I would have liked it if we had been in communication through the whole process,” he said.

However, Whyte did say that the theater’s major concern – visibility of the marquee – seemed to be addressed in the new design. He said he heard that the new building will “step back” from the curb near the theater, so that views will be preserved.

Whyte also said he is glad something is being developed on the long-vacant property adjacent to the theater.

“We want to work with them to see if they can get something really cool into a retail space, like a restaurant that will both benefit the theater and the restaurant,” Whyte said. “The lot has been empty for so many years; it will be nice to have some life and activity there.”

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A planned transit-oriented development is expected to appeal to young, urban dwellers when it opens adjacent to the historic Hollywood Theatre. The building, designed by , will feature 51 market-rate apartment units, ground-floor commercial space and an internal courtyard and pedestrian plaza.

“We’ve worked really hard to create a really interesting design that respects the theater but creates an exciting and livable apartment community,” firm principal Jeff Myhre said.

The ground floor is intended to be transparent and allow a lot of movement throughout the commercial spaces. A central plaza will allow public exploration of the area. Ultimately, movies will be shown on the exterior of the Hollywood Theatre’s western wall, which will face the interior of the courtyard. Myhre said.

Myhre acknowledged that a triangular-shaped site in a prime location posed challenges.

“We not only have to respond to design a building that is architecturally appropriate, but we also want to create a unique central location that is a signature of Hollywood District,” Myhre said.

Design plans involve vacating Northeast 41st Street, the small side street that connects Broadway Street and Sandy Boulevard, to accommodate an expansion of the public plaza space.

“We want an enhanced pedestrian streetscape and we want this building and its design to give back to the community,” Myhre said.

The 45,000-square-foot building will include a variety of different materials, from traditional brick veneer to metal panels. The goal, Myhre said, was to break down the scale of the structure so that it appears as a series of buildings.

The building facade closest to the theater entrance was designed to appear simple and traditional.

“The design allows the theater to be the shining star,” Myhre said.

The project is undergoing design review; ground is expected to be broken in late summer. The owner and general contractor is Creston Homes LLC. Other Myhre Group team members include Don Sowieja, principal in charge, and Erik Winter, project designer.

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The historic building for the Burger Bar in Portland’s Hollywood District was built in 1922 as a trolley station, and then turned into the Burger Bar in 1954. The interior is getting a cosmetic renovation. Woodwork covered previously is being exposed, flooring is being updated and new paint is being applied. Next Level Building & Remodeling is the general contractor for the project.

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