A new, 150-unit affordable housing community is coming to the heart of Hillsboro.

Nueva Esperanza will feature 12 residential buildings and a community building on a six-acre lot near the intersection of Northeast 53rd Avenue and Hidden Creek Drive.

The co-developers of the $37 million project are Hillsboro-based Bienestar and Portland-based Housing Development Center. Scott | Edwards Architecture is the designer, and LMC Construction is the general contractor.

Most of the apartments will have two or three bedrooms, though others will have one or four bedrooms. Sixty of the units are intended for households earning 30 percent of the area median income or less. The remainder will be for households earning 20 to 60 percent of the AMI.

The complex will have 169 parking spots, exceeding the requirement of one spot per unit.

The intent of the design, architect Eugenia Fama-Higgins of Scott | Edwards Architecture said, was to create small neighborhoods within the larger one. Residential buildings will be grouped into three distinct clusters – each with its own character and an outdoor plaza in the middle. Walking paths and vehicular streets will circulate through the site and connect the plazas.

Nueva Esperanza, according to Bienestar’s website, is its first project designed to meet two culturally different communities: Latinx families and Somali immigrant families. To ensure the needs of both would be met, focus groups were engaged at different stages of development. This made the project unique for Fama-Higgins, she said. From those conversations, she added, importance was placed on picnic areas, a piñata pole and a large meadow to accommodate soccer games and outdoor movies during summertime.

Both communities requested a separate vanity in the two-bedroom apartments where there’s only one bathroom. In units with two bathrooms, one has a shower and the other has a tub. For the three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments, future residents asked for the kitchen to be separated from the living area by a partition wall or a door.

One point of contention between the communities was whether dogs would be allowed. To find middle ground, Fama-Higgins said, the team added a fence around the area for dogs. Also, signage will indicate whether dogs are allowed in certain areas.

All residential buildings will be three stories. The walk-up apartments will be stacked and identical, with entryways on the plaza and street side. The other configuration will be a two-story townhome unit over a flat.

The buildings will have a traditional wood siding, but Fama-Higgins said it would be a vertical board-and-batten pattern to add a bit of playfulness. The bluish color is still being finalized, she added, but so far feedback from the city of Hillsboro, clients and community members has been positive.

Earth Advantage gold certification will be sought for the project. Residential buildings at the site’s south end will be made solar-ready for a maximum 26-kilowatt load. The solar power will serve the community’s side lighting and some common spaces.

Construction crews will use an advanced framing method for the residential buildings. Instead of 16 inches of separation between studs, there will be 24 inches. This will allow use of less material and reduce the labor cost, Fama-Higgins said, but also create more space for insulation and thus improve the building’s energy performance.

The project team already has exceeded its goal of 20 percent participation by minority-owned, woman-owned, or emerging small businesses. So far, it is at 30 percent, according to a Scott | Edwards Architecture representative.

Currently, permits are being sought for the project. Crews expect to break ground this month and finish in fall 2023.

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, contact the 91��Ƶ at 503-802-7221 or newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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Transition Projects doesn’t develop a lot of buildings, so it like to make them count. That’s why the Portland nonprofit sought the most cost-effective and fastest construction method for its unique Low-Income Single Adult Housing (LISAH) project, in the Kenton neighborhood.

“When you look at the cost of projects you look at levers you can’t affect, like the price of land,” said Tony Bernal, Transition Projects’ senior director of public policy and funding. “There’s a lot that’s outside of your control, so it’s about those things that are in your control and how you can gain cost efficiencies there.”

A preconstruction grant from Meyer Memorial Trust, Bernal said, led Transition Projects to choose modular construction for the project at 8550 N. Argyle Way. Thus far, Bernal said, the project’s cost has been competitive with stick framing.

“It’s fairly amazing as far as the process goes,” he said. “The speed of construction is certainly one of the benefits that you see from modular.”

LISAH will be four separate structures with a total of 72 units for individuals transitioning out of homelessness. All of the units will be available to people with incomes no greater than 60 percent of the median family income; at least 18 units have Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers for veterans with as little as no income and as much as 30 percent of MFI.

Holst Architecture designed the project, while Walsh Construction is serving as general contractor. The modular units were manufactured in North Portland by Mods PDX.

Three of the four buildings will be two stories, with shared rooms. Each of these buildings will have four separate modular units. Sleeping areas and bathrooms will be communal.

The fourth building will be three stories and have 35 studio apartments – 220 square feet each – and a manager’s unit.

Also, all four buildings will have dedicated community space.

On the construction side, the compressed schedule of modular building changes project management significantly.

“A lot of it was early coordination between us and (Mods PDX CEO Nathan Young) on how we were going to get a lot of our mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire sprinkler routing taken care of in his shop,” Walsh Construction assistant superintendent Nick Cardoza said. “Typically you’re able to figure out some of those routing questions out as it’s being built, but this all had to be figured out a lot earlier.”

Communication is essential, Young said.

“It’s much more of a team-driven experience,” he said. “You really want to bring everybody together in the very beginning to talk about what we call ship loose, or items that are left to be done on the site; so we’re working very closely with Walsh to make sure there is good continuity from both subcontracting and material bases.”

The payoff is evident in the timeline. Ground was broken on LISAH in July, and completion is expected by early March 2020.

“I think for us, trying to lop a month or two off the schedule means that we can house people much faster,” said Jenn Sharp, senior project manager for development consultant Housing Development Center.

During initial site work, including installation of a huge dry well, the modular units were being constructed at the Mods PDX factory. Foundations for the four structures were poured just days before the first modular boxes were set. The three single-room occupancy buildings are now set, while the larger studio apartment building will be complete in October.

The modular units are fairly simple, with wood-framed construction and standard MEP configurations. They are over-engineered, Young said, to withstand transport by truck and then being rigged and set with a crane.

“You’ve got site-specific constraints that determine the modular,” he said. “So it’s about where the crane can go, size of the boxes, transportation issues.”

On-site, carpenters from Walsh Construction subsidiary RDF Builders and Local 1503 constructed the foundation formwork. Meanwhile, a team of riggers from Bent Level Construction as well as Young himself and Mods PDX Director of Operations Pete Victoor set the first three modular units on Aug. 26 and 27.

“Bent Level is taking approximately one hour per box, maybe moving a little faster,” Cardoza said. “This allows the building to be built as we’re doing all the site work; there’s a ton of underground piping in this project, so just the site graded out and getting this (retaining) wall in, all the infrastructure had to go in, and Nathan was able to build these buildings as we were doing that.”

Yet Young thinks there is a lot of room for improvement.

“There is a need to figure out how to standardize the building process a lot more,” he said. “Eighty percent of every building can be the same every single time instead of these uniquely designed buildings, which would allow us to standardize our process and increase our production flow and spit these out a lot faster so we can start to affect some of the housing crisis.”

Modular construction on the scale of a modest project like LISAH isn’t necessarily cheaper than traditional stick framing, Bernal said, but it’s not more expensive either. And when the time savings is considered, it can be a sound choice.

“We knew what we were getting into and that we were going to explore modular,” Bernal said. “I think it was worth it, but it took a while.”

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A new 101-unit affordable housing development is rising on Southeast Foster Road in the Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhood. LMC Construction is building 72Foster – a four-story mixed-use building designed by Holst Architecture for REACH Community Development. The building will feature three stories of wood-framed apartments over a concrete podium that will hold commercial and residential amenity space.

Carpenters with framing contractor Wood Mechanix are nearly finished framing the building’s fourth floor. Installation of roof trusses and the weather-resistant barrier will begin next week, and windows will follow starting next month. The building will be topped out in early June.

72Foster’s 101 apartments will range in size from studios to three-bedrooms to primarily serve seniors and families. The units will be available to people earning 60 percent of median household income; 20 units will be occupied by residents with Project Based Section 8 vouchers. REACH is partnering with Asian Health & Service Center to provide outreach and on-site programs and services to residents.

The ground floor will hold five commercial spaces totaling 8,900 square feet, as well as residential amenities including a community room and bicycle storage. A breezeway will connect the corner of Southeast 72nd Avenue and Foster Road with a public courtyard on the property.

The building will have two parking lots – one with 23 stalls and another with 12. The $24 million project also includes right-of-way work and frontage improvements, including new sidewalks, lighting and vegetation. Crews began work on the site, a former parking lot owned by Prosper Portland, in September 2017. The building is slated to open in February 2019.

The project team also includes development consultant Housing Development Center, landscape architect PLACE Studio, civil engineer Humber Design Group, and ABHT Structural Engineers.

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