Construction of a new home for Wilsonville-based Victory Academy is on track for the building to open to students this fall, but the nonprofit is still seeking about $1 million in donations to complete the $5.5 million project.

“We’re in this final push,” said Tricia Hasbrook, director and co-founder of Victory Academy – a private school for children with autism.

School officials are seeking monetary contributions, but also in-kind donations of construction labor, building materials and furnishings – acoustical treatments as well as cafeteria and classroom furniture – for an 18,000-square-foot school building. It will include nine classrooms, a teaching kitchen, a large multipurpose room, administrative space, and speech, art and music therapy rooms.

Victory Academy has already benefited from significant in-kind donations from the project team, Hasbrook said. It designed and is now constructing a school building catered specifically to autistic children. The new building, on a 4-acre former horse farm near Wilsonville, will be able to accommodate up to 100 students, allowing Victory Academy to grow from a K-8 school to a K-12 one.

Project architect Opsis Architecture, landscape architect Walker Macy, general contractor Lorentz Bruun Construction, civil construction company MEI Group and engineering firm X3 Development have each donated a portion of their services. Miller Paint donated all exterior paint, The Marble Center contributed kitchen countertops, Fairdale and Countryside nurseries donated plants and Interface offered discounted carpet.

Parties interested in donating to the project can do so at , or by calling 503-427-2063.

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The length of the stairs leading up to a new TriMet pedestrian bridge in Southeast Portland ultimately helped shape its design.

Initial plans for the $3.9 million Lafayette Street pedestrian and bicyclist crossing over railroad tracks to provide access to the future Rhine Street/Southeast 17th Avenue orange line light-rail station called for a taller bridge than the one being built. But the set of stairs up to it would have to zigzag with obstructed landings that could potentially attract crime, said Christopher Pitt, a structural engineer with KPFF Consulting Engineers. This concerned TriMet officials working together with KPFF on the bridge design, he said.

“They care a lot about security and safety (and) looking at sightlines,” he said. “That’s something that TriMet focuses on a lot in the design process.”

Pitt and other KPFF staffers proposed an alternative. Instead of a precast concrete girder bridge, a truss bridge with a lower deck could be accessed via a shorter, straight set of stairs.

“We started looking at alternatives and we thought a steel truss would just bring it as low as possible,” Pitt said. “With steel truss, you can put the walking surface to the bottom of the structure. That shortened the stair length. We can have pretty much straight stair runs. You’ll see where you’re going the whole time.”

Lorentz Bruun Construction crews this past fall started building the 184-foot-long steel truss bridge. Last week, a project milestone was reached when crews used a crane to lower in place the approximately 50-ton span onto two 47-foot-tall steel-framed elevator towers that double as bridge supports on either end of the railroad tracks.

The new Lafayette Street crossing will fill the void left after demolition this past summer of a deteriorating span built in the 1940s to provide access over Union Pacific Railroad tracks. That bridge, owned by Union Pacific, was “functionally obsolete,” Pitt said.

Union Pacific and TriMet are sharing the cost of the replacement project. TriMet will own and maintain the new bridge, which will cross between Southeast Rhine and Lafayette streets to line up with a signaled crosswalk leading to the new MAX orange line station.

The project is part of TriMet’s larger $1.49 billion effort to create the 7.3-mile Portland-to-Milwaukie orange line, which is slated to open in September 2015. The project includes $65 million in improvements to maximize access by pedestrians and bicyclists to light-rail stations.

Besides a shorter stair length, project engineers concluded that a steel truss bridge would have other advantages over a concrete girder span, said Leah Robbins, TriMet civil engineer and east segment director for the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project. A truss structure fit better into the tight space available for the bridge, and that type of span was easier to transport and install with minimal impacts on the active rail lines below, she said.

Safe passage across the bridge for both pedestrians and bicyclists was the top consideration in the design, Robbins said. The bridge will have clear glass elevator cabs for added visibility, closed-circuit cameras and ample lighting. The design team also reviewed bridge plans with TriMet security officials.

“It was (a) struggle to get the precise alignment of the stairway, elevator access and the span direction so there was good visibility for pedestrians at all levels … so they’re not entering an unanticipated area,” Robbins said.

Bicyclists will be better served by the new bridge than the old one, Pitt said. The deck width will be 12 feet – twice the width of its predecessor. Also, the bridge stair width will be 8 feet – up from 2 feet – and have tire gutters for walking bicycles up and down. The elevators will be larger to accommodate bicycles with trailers and have doors on either side so bicyclists won’t have to turn around or back out to exit.

Both the bridge and the elevator towers are being built primarily with raw steel that will weather over time to gain a deep rust color, Pitt said. This weathering will form a protective layer around the steel, eliminating the expense of paint and paying homage to the industrial setting, he said.

“When you can make (weathering steel) work, it’s very economical,” he said. “It kind of has a nice aesthetic to it.”

The new bridge is close to Pitt’s home, and he said he’s looking forward to visiting the crossing when it’s complete next summer. It won’t be part of his regular bike commute, but will come in handy if a train happens to go by.

“I’m certainly going to go down there and take my daughter,” Pitt said. “This way you can get across whether or not there’s a train.”

Lafayette Street pedestrian bridge

Location: near Southeast 17th Avenue/Rhine Street station for future MAX orange line

Cost: $3.9 million

Construction start date: October 2014

Anticipated completion date: summer 2015

Owner: TriMet

Architect: Merryman Barnes Architects

Design engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers

Mechanical engineer: Interface Engineering

Electrical engineer: LTK Engineering Services

General contractor: Stacy and Witbeck Inc.

Subcontractor: Lorentz Bruun Construction

Steel fabricator: Fought & Co.

Bridge truss erector: REFA Erection Inc.

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Portland-based LRS Architects next week will host a holiday-themed LEGO building contest for industry firms.

Each team in the inaugural Bricktastic LEGO Holiday Build-Off will assemble a portion of a cityscape with the plastic toy bricks at the firm’s Pearl District office. All LEGO sets used in the competition will then be donated to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital for holiday gifts.

The theme of the competition is urban holiday waterfront, and LRS Architects staffers prepared a special LEGO building code for participants, LRS marketing director Julie Olson said.

“We realized in order for it to come together as a cohesive landscape we would have to have some parameters,” she said. “We actually have a whole manual that was sent out to all the teams.”

Olson said LRS staffers came up with the contest as an engaging way to celebrate the holidays with industry peers and also support Doernbecher.

“We wanted to do something that was more community outreach, plus it would be fun,” she said. “Everybody gets excited about LEGOs; I don’t care how old you are. We had no shortage of people at LRS wanting to participate.”

About 25 LRS staffers signed on to compete, Olson said. Other firms participating in the competition include Bremik Construction, Interface Engineering, Nishkian Dean, Cardno WRG, PACE Engineers, R&H Construction, Perlo Construction and 3J Consulting Inc.

The contest entries will be judged Dec. 20, and prizes will be awarded in categories including tallest display, best holiday theme, children’s choice, people’s choice and best in show.

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The 87-year-old Louise Building on Albertina Kerr Centers‘ Gresham campus has long served the nonprofit organization that serves clients with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges.

Scott | Edwards Architecture project architect Sarah Cantine was keenly aware of preserving and respecting the historic three-story brick building while designing a 4,000-square-foot addition to house Albertina Kerr’s children’s mental health and foster care services. Instead of losing one wall, the 12,000-square-foot former maternity home for unwed mothers will remain intact. A window-lined hallway with a second-story sky bridge will serve as the connection between the original building and its east-side addition.

“It made a lot of sense to isolate the addition and separate it with a hallway to show off the old building and celebrate it,” Cantine said. “When you work with an older building, (the challenge is) always finding that compromise between that new and older part.”

Careful considerations to preserve the Louise Building and create a coherent addition are the best parts about the Scott | Edwards Architecture design for an estimated $2.7 million renovation and expansion, said Pam Krecklow, Albertina Kerr facilities manager.

“All the ornateness of the building is on the exterior,” she said. “It’s a gorgeous piece of Georgian architecture. (The project) lets us save the east elevation of the building … It’s something that could very easily (have) been lost and it’s one of the beautiful things about SEA’s design.”

Crews with Tualatin-based Russell Construction Inc. recently started construction on the project that includes a full seismic retrofit of the unreinforced masonry structure. The project, scheduled for completion next summer, is part of a larger effort to upgrade the nine-acre campus at 722 N.E. 162nd Ave., where Albertina Kerr has provided community services since 1915.

The work with an older structure has not been without challenges for the Scott | Edwards design team, Cantine said. The ornate facade makes the building appear larger than it actually is, and much of the interior design work involved improving access by widening hallways, replacing narrow stairwells and installing an elevator, she said.

“It’s really actually a quaint, short building, so we’ve had to do a lot of gymnastics to make the circulation work,” she said.

The building’s original layout will largely be preserved with former bedrooms for expectant mothers being converted into employee offices, Cantine said.

“There’s some very sympathetic usage going on,” she said. “It’s really quite nice.”

The addition will nestle between the angled wings of the existing building so that the structure will have a trapezoid shape. A third-floor conference room in the original building looks out over the two-story expansion’s green roof.

Scott | Edwards designers intentionally kept the expansion facade simple, Cantine said.

“We tried to keep it as quiet as possible,” she said. “We really felt we needed to keep our materials really simple and have the original Georgian ones really sing.”

This wasn’t an easily conceived solution, especially given the prominence of the building in the surrounding community, Cantine said.

“It’s a big challenge,” she said. “How do you add onto something that’s really truly loved by the neighborhood?”

The facade design was inspired by a nearby fir grove and features stripes of wood siding between a glass curtain wall, Cantine said. A large meeting and open office workspace in the addition will look out onto this wooded area.

“What we’re trying to do with the addition is marry the fir grove with the building,” she said. “We tried to keep the big open spaces pointed toward the grove.”

Before Albertina Kerr leaders decided to vacate office space the organization leases near the Portland International Airport and consolidate services in the Louise Building, they considered demolishing the structure, leasing it or selling it, Krecklow said. She’s glad the building will remain part of Albertina Kerr’s campus, and praised the Scott | Edwards design as “a really elegant solution to a problem.”

“It’s really breathtaking what they’ve done,” she said.

Louise Building renovation and expansion

Location: Albertina Kerr Centers’ Gresham campus, 722 N.E. 162nd Ave.

Cost: $2.7 million

Construction start date: fall 2014

Anticipated construction completion date: summer 2015

Owner: Albertina Kerr Centers

Architect: Scott | Edwards Architecture

Engineers: WDY Structural + Civil Engineers, Interface Engineering and Harper Houf Peterson Righellis

General contractor: Russell Construction

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A community service project initiated by the International Living Future Institute will transform a vacant lot in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood into a small park.

Over the past four months, a group of Portland architects, landscape architects and Portland State University architecture students have worked with neighborhood residents to design the $20,000 project. Plans call for the addition of native plantings, a gravel path and a decorative steel wall at the Oregon Department of Transportation-owned lot near the intersection of Northeast Killingsworth Street and Northeast Portland Highway.

On Saturday, between 30 and 40 volunteers are expected to attend a work party to plant about 500 native plants. Solar-powered lights also are in the works. The park is expected to be net zero in regard to both energy and water usage.

John Shorb, an associate with Portland-based Opsis Architecture, organized the project as the concluding event of ILFI’s 2014 conference in Portland.

“The intention was to actually have a physical, hands-on activity for the attendees to have a lasting impact on Portland,” he said.

The ILFI, which promotes green building, was looking for a way to reach an underserved community, Shorb said. That led to project partnerships with ODOT and nonprofit Verde, which has worked to add green space in Cully.

Carpet manufacturer Interface donated $16,000 for the project.

The lot will eventually serve as an entrance to the future Cully Park about a block away, Shorb said.

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