PROJECT: Division 28 Homes

LOCATION: 2871 S.E. Division St., Portland

SIZE: 46,656 square feet

COST: not provided

CONSTRUCTION START DATE: August 2020

ANTICIPATED END DATE: November 2021

DEVELOPER: Urban Development + Partners

ARCHITECT: Hacker

ENGINEERS/OTHER ASSOCIATES: Hunter-Davisson, IES Commercial, Kittelson & Associates, Ohm Systems, Pacific Foundation, Tapani, Wyatt Fire Protection

CONTRACTOR: Truebeck Construction

SUBCONTRACTORS: Anderson Poolworks, Closet Factory, Columbia Drywall Systems, Columbia Millwork, Conco, D&R Masonry Restoration, Dallas Glass & Window, Eastbank Contractor Appliances, Fireside Home Solutions, Floor Solutions, Flynn BEC LP,  GeoTech Foundation Company – West, Ha’s Painting, Interior Tech, Jack’s Overhead Door, JB Insulation, KONE, LaRusso Concrete, Mari Design, Pacific Construction Group, Standard TV & Appliance, TerraCalc Land Surveying, Teufel, Timberland Construction, Westech Construction

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: Located on Southeast Division Street, the four-story Division 28 Homes cohousing development was designed to meet the needs of a close group of friends who wanted to spend their last years together. The building will have both common areas and privacy distinctly different than those of typical apartments and condominiums.

The facade integrates terra-cotta and green spaces, and the interior features cross-laminated timber. The first floor includes a community space with areas for retail and restaurants. Parking is below grade. Above, there are living spaces with high-end interiors and an extensive private patio with green space. Additional amenities include a wine cellar and a pool.

The goal of the project is to create a space that benefits both residents and people at the street level.

“Building Blocks” spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcoregon.com/building-blocks.

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Providence Health & Services is preparing to expand its presence on the southwestern edge of the Portland-metro area.

The health care giant recently unveiled plans for a new three-story, 60,000-square-foot medical office building near the existing Providence Newberg Medical Center off of Oregon Route 99W in Newberg. A is being reviewed by the city of Newberg, which has 120 days from the date of submission to either give or withhold approval.

“It’s the largest new (medical clinic) project for the Oregon region this year, so there’s quite a bit of excitement around it,” Providence Health & Services senior construction manager Weston York said. “You don’t get to build a greenfield medical office very often anymore, so it’s kind of exciting to do that.”

The new clinic will provide outpatient oncology services such as chemotherapy treatment and pharmaceutical sales, and rehabilitation services as well. The project has been in the works for several years, York said.

“The original hospital was built in the early or mid-2000s,” he said. “And there has been such growth in the market that there is the need to grow our primary care group, as well as an expanded cancer service line.”

After construction wraps up and services move from the main hospital building, Providence plans to renovate a portion of the latter building. Altogether, the projects will have a budget of $46.7 million.

“Once services move out of hospital to new building there’s a project to put an outpatient center in the vacated space,” York said. “So, yes, it is a larger effort to expand services on campus.”

The applicant for the project is JRJ Architects, a Beaverton firm that specializes in designing hospitals, clinics and other health care facilities.

The project takes many of its aesthetic cues from the neighboring Providence Newberg Medical Center, JRJ Architects principal Tom Wesel said. That building opened in 2006 with a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating.

However, the new clinic will have distinctive features.

“Being on the campus with the first LEED gold-certified hospital, we’re making sure that we respect the architecture of the existing campus and also have some elements with in this building that make it its own,” Wesel said. “The building interior is based on some new clinic models that Providence is working, and it’s mostly trying to improve patient comfort and service.”

One key design element focuses on maximizing separation between clinic medical staff and patients.

“We’re focusing on getting a patient the opportunity to go to the exam room sooner and have more services delivered in the exam room and less time waiting,” Wesel said.

One complication for the clinic project is the long-planned Newberg-Dundee bypass. There is an overlay zone across a swath of land slated for that Oregon Department of Transportation project. That zone runs right up against the southern edge of the Providence campus, which influenced how the new clinic will be positioned.

“Our site was constrained by the potential bypass,” Wesel said. “Providence owns more land, but we were respecting the proposed location of the bypass corridor. We’ve had a number of conversations with ODOT and Newberg as it relates to the bypass corridor, and the potential for that is there. And based on the overlay we did have to adjust our footprint.”

A separate traffic analysis of the project site by Kittelson & Associates, Newberg associate planner Keith Leonard said, showed that existing roads will likely be able to smoothly handle traffic generated by the new clinic.

Ground is expected to be broken this summer, York said, and the clinic is scheduled to open at the end of 2019. The hospital renovation would then take place during 2020.

“It’s kind of sequenced,” he said. “The new building needs to go first, and once it’s open we’ll do the renovation work. Our plan is to break ground and start prep of the site this summer so we can get our building pad in before the rains come.”

Significant work remains available for subcontractors to bid on, York said.

“There definitely still is opportunity,” he said. “We’ve done some best value selection with the mechanical and electric teams, but other than that there is a traditional procurement for the rest of the building.”

Currently, the project is in a 120-day design review period. Review is still in the early stages, Leonard said.

“I’m just starting to get comments from the various agencies,” he said last week.

The project team includes general contractor Fortis Construction, mechanical engineer PM Design and Catena Consulting Engineers.

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A wetlands system project that saved the city of Prineville tens of millions of dollars took top honors Wednesday night at the 2018 Engineering Excellence Awards event hosted by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Oregon.

In winning the Project of the Year title, the Crooked River Wetlands project, submitted by Anderson Perry & Associates and the city of Prineville, also claimed the right to advance to the ACEC Engineering Excellence national awards competition.

Judges for the local competition gave the wetlands project high marks for providing both an affordable solution that protects the environment and the community with valuable lessons in conservation and stewardship.

The project was the result of a population boom in Prineville that severely taxed the city’s existing wastewater treatment system. Rather than invest $62 million in construction of a traditional mechanical facility, the city approached Anderson Perry & Associates to identify alternatives. The firm’s team designed a series of wetland cells that treat wastewater before releasing it back into the environment. The wetlands area, which ended up costing approximately $8 million, includes walking paths and pavilions as well as informational kiosks created by local schoolchildren.

Parametrix scored two wins during the Wednesday evening event. The company earned the award for Best Small Project for its work on the Deschutes River Trail Boardwalk, a collaborative project with Oregon Parks and Recreation Department staff. The company also stepped forward with Kittelson & Associates to claim a Best in Category award for their respective work on the U.S. 20 Barclay Roundabout for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

KPFF and GRI scored a Best in Category award for their combined work on the Cultural Crossing, an expansion project at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Five firms received Grand awards for work on four projects. Nishkian Dean received one for its work on the commercial crew tower capability project at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. PAE‘s Grand award resulted from its work on the Oregon Zoo Education Center. Shannon & Wilson and HBH Consulting Engineers teamed up for their award-winning Southern Flow Corridor project for the Port of Tillamook Bay and Tillamook County. OBEC Consulting Engineers received its Grand award for work on the Peter Courtney Minto Island Bridge for the city of Salem.

Sixteen other projects received Honor awards.

The awards were selected by a jury of building industry professionals that included Mark Kennedy, associate dean and professor of civil engineering in the Donald P. Shiley School of Engineering at the University of Portland; Tova Peltz, region 1 geo-environmental unit manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation; Nick Bjork, publisher of the Daily Journal of Commerce; Mark Hanson, chief of the structural and architectural design section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District; and Ermel Quevedo, a past president of ACEC Oregon.

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When Razieh got married and moved to the U.S. from Iran in 2011, she didn’t think a planned trip home to visit family would become a source of tension and uncertainty. Then President Donald Trump was elected and initiated an effort to institute a ban on travel from a group of countries that included her native Iran.

“We canceled the whole trip,” said Razieh, a 29-year-old permanent U.S. resident who is pursuing a master’s degree in architecture at Portland State University. (She asked that the 91��Ƶ use only her first name.) “It is a stressful situation.”

As the fight over the Trump administration’s effort to restrict travel from certain countries takes place in courtrooms across the country, some business professionals are beginning to question whether their companies’ sources for future architects and engineers will become limited.

“We have the same concerns about the impact on the ability to hire future engineers,” Kittelson & Associates Chief Financial Officer Larry Van Dyke said. “At this point we haven’t seen much impact in the talent pool we are hiring from. We are concerned about future.”

Some people in the architecture industry are already beginning to be affected by the proposed restrictions.

“We have to do a lot more documentation than in the past for foreign candidates,” said Ruth Lloyd, director of human resources at Ankrom Moisan Architects. “Those trying to come from the banned countries on H-1B visas have been denied.”

For Ankrom Moisan, the impact on recruitment has also been financial, Lloyd said.

“It is just costly on attorneys’ fees,” she said. “If we had a talented person that was a student, we would have to say, ‘Is this worth it?’

“We have trouble with all recruiting. This makes finding the talent and bringing people in tougher.”

Ankrom Moisan, with three offices on the West Coast, is big enough that it can at least weigh whether hiring a foreign national is a feasible option. For smaller architecture or engineering firms, the added cost makes the decision for them.

“It is tough to bring in foreign nationals,” said Brian Knight, a principal at WRK Engineers in Vancouver, Wash. “We have been approached by some really good candidates. It is just cost-prohibitive.”

The biggest immediate impact is on the students these firms will need to hire one day. For students like Razieh, anxiety about the future trumps a missed vacation. The latest version of the Trump administration’s travel ban has been blocked by district courts in Hawaii and Maryland. Nevertheless, there is fear about what will happen in the future.

“I am a student; I cannot predict what is going to happen,” Razieh said. “There could be a new travel ban overnight.”

It’s not an unreasonable fear, according to university officials who advise students to avoid foreign travel. The first travel ban was enacted over a weekend with virtually no notice and little preparation. It triggered protests at airports and headaches for foreign nationals trying to enter to U.S.

The situation has even caused concerns among employees who need to travel to international locations to complete projects, Van Dyke said.

“Our folks that are on H-1B (visas) have been able to travel,” he said. “There is a more detailed level of screening, but we have been able to make it through that.”

The travel ban has already navigated a long and winding road, which has only increased the uncertainty. The first attempt was halted by a federal court, leading to two submissions of revised versions; they have been unsuccessful so far.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the Supreme Court issued a ruling regarding a previous version of the ban that allows the government to block travelers who did not have an existing relationship with people or organizations in the U.S. The government and courts are still debating what defines a relationship.

“It’s on, then it’s off, then it’s on,” said Dennis Galvan, vice provost for international affairs and professor of political science and international studies at the University of Oregon. “A piece of the immigration ban is the uncertainty it breeds.”

That uncertainty is already hurting student enrollments. The final tally isn’t in at the University of Oregon, but Galvan said it expects to register a 10 to 20 percent drop in new foreign students.

Portland State University has seen a similar decline in applications from foreign students. Overall, PSU saw a 16 percent decline in its number of foreign students. International graduate students are down 12 percent. One of the biggest declines was a 23 percent drop in students from Iran.

“For those countries (on the list subject to the ban) the numbers are fairly small, with the exception of Iran,” said Margaret Everett, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at PSU. “There are many factors that affect enrollment, so the direct impact is hard to determine, but that (ban) is part of what is happening.”

Over the long term, the restrictions could impact the quality of education provided in the U.S. for future architects and engineers.

“It can be faculty, staff or students,” said Abe Schafermeyer, director of international student and scholar services at the University of Oregon. “If someone is interested in inviting a scholar to come and present, the ban could limit people from coming.”

Combine those factors with American education costs, and institutions in other countries begin to look more attractive. While U.S. universities are experiencing a drop in foreign enrollment, those in Canada are seeing a 25 percent jump.

“Education is one of the U.S.’ unparalleled exports,” Galvan said. “They can go other places if you close the door to U.S. education.”

Nevertheless, Razieh said her experience at PSU has been worth enduring additional challenges.

“Coming to America was the greatest opportunity in my life,” she said. “The environment here is just amazing for me.”

U.S. companies hope that attitude keeps students coming here in the long term. Losing those students at a time when the country has a severe shortage of them in technical fields could really hurt businesses that need talent.

“If you are embarking on an engineering career, would you still choose the U.S.?” Van Dyke asked. “There has been a lot of hand-wringing. Right now it hasn’t impacted us much. Three or four years down the road, will I still be saying that? Who knows? At this point, it’s the calm before the storm.”

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