Vertical construction will begin later this week at the Williams & Russell project site, in North Portland. It’s a milestone for the Hill Block development intended to restore a cultural and economic center of the city’s Black community.

Housing will come first. Twenty townhomes with an additional four ground-level units will rise on the north side of the 1.7-acre block bounded by North Williams and Vancouver avenues and Russell and Knott streets — in the Eliot neighborhood.

Crucially, the townhomes will be offered for purchase to residents selected according to the city’s North/Northeast Preference Policy, administered by the Portland Housing Center. The policy aims to restore justice to residents whose homes were razed as part of the 1960s Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Project.

The Portland Housing Bureau will provide down-payment assistance to eligible homebuyers. More than 1,200 people initially applied via the North/Northeast Preference Policy, said Dana Fuller Shephard, executive director of the Portland Housing Center.

“We have more people than we have units,” Shephard said.

Homeowners will be able to earn equity over time, and if they choose, eventually sell the homes.

“The homeownership component was something that people really, really wanted to see in the project,” said Bryson Davis, president of Williams & Russell Community Development Corp., the nonprofit group leading the project.

The trade-off between keeping the homes affordable and enabling homeowners to build equity was a keenly debated issue in planning.

“That tension was a key component of a lot of our discussions,” Davis said. “Through the hospital expansion, the community lost a lot of wealth. We leaned towards — and for this project we are doing — the homeowner gets the benefit of their equity.”

However, project team members said they expect most homeowners at Williams & Russell will hold onto the homes long-term. North/Northeast Portland remains the center of the city’s Black community, but homebuying has become difficult amid prices spiraling upward, said Ta’Neshia Renae, chief operations officer of Williams & Russell CDC.

“Really, we’re looking at folks that have historical ties to the community and want to be a part of that,” said Anyeley Hallová, founder and CEO of Portland-based developer Adre.

A second phase will involve the construction of 85 units of subsidized rental housing in family-size configurations. Finally, a 26,000-square-foot business hub, built from cross-laminated timber, will include a mix of affordable office, retail and collaborative space.

The CDC was also able to acquire from Legacy Health a half-block north of the Hill Block that brings the project site to 2.99 acres. In total, the project is expected to cost $16.4 million.

Each project component was designed after an extensive public engagement process. Homeownership, with backyards and parking spaces, was important to Albina residents, and so was affordable rental housing in multibedroom units. Market-rate development has brought a steady supply of studios and one-bedroom apartments, but few larger units.

“The market doesn’t naturally produce the larger-sized units,” Hallová said. “So, the ability to produce those larger units at an affordable price is definitely a desire for the community.”

Vertical construction can begin only now after an extensive environmental remediation process. Legacy Health, which formerly owned the block, provided $10 million for environmental remediation. The Portland Housing Bureau and Prosper Portland also contributed some funding for remediation.

Crews ended up removing 41,000 tons of dirt from the site, Davis said. When the buildings on the Hill Block were demolished in the 1970s, debris from the demolition was used to fill 12-foot-tall basements.

“As you can imagine for buildings that were built in the early 1900s, there were elevated levels of heavy metals and all sorts of other contaminants all around the block,” Davis said.

Also, a gas station once occupied the southwest corner of the block. Decades-old fuel tanks had to be unearthed and removed.

“Despite all of that, it went pretty well,” Davis said.

Project team members are keenly aware that the site in the heart of the former city of Albina has sat vacant for decades, and know how important it is for Portland’s Black community to get it right.

“As a real estate developer and as part of Black community, I knew about the significance of the site to the community, the historical significance, and then also the fact that nothing had transpired on the site for fifty years after it was taken from the community,” Hallová said.

They’ve had plenty of time to think about it: The project team came together in 2021 in response to a request for proposals from the project working group that later transformed into the CDC.

The project is being designed by LEVER Architecture and Hood Design Studio. Colas Construction, Portland’s largest Black-owned contractor, is serving as general contractor.

The project will add housing at a time when state and local leaders say more options are desperately needed. But Williams & Russell means more to its backers than square footage, timber and drywall.

“What we’re bringing back is more than just buildings,” Renae said. “We’re bringing back people and their descendants. We’re bringing back culture.”

The post Williams & Russell set to rise in Portland’s Eliot neighborhood appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Project name: Legacy Silverton Emergency Department

Location: Silverton

Completion: March 2024

Size: 21,000 square feet

Owner: Legacy Health System

Architect: Clark/Kjos Architects

Interior Designer: Bainbridge

Engineers: KPFF, PCS Structural Solutions, PAE

General Contractor: Andersen Construction

Submitting Company: Andersen Construction

Subcontractors: Bell Hardware, Cash’s Drapery, Dallas Glass, DeaMor Associates, Empire Painting, Flynn, Green Mountain Excavation, McKinstry, Northside Electric, Paulson’s Flooring, Rexius, Salem Wood, Southland, SteelFab, WPI

Legacy Silverton Medical Center has completed the first phase of a major expansion project, fulfilling promises made when Legacy Health and Silverton Hospital joined forces in 2016.

The 20,000-square-foot addition to the hospital’s southwest corner includes a new entrance with a covered drop-off and pick-up area, expanded lobby and a modernized emergency department that increases capacity from 12 to 20 patient rooms.

The emergency department now features larger treatment bays and specialized rooms for trauma patients, cardiac care and women’s services. A new helicopter landing pad across the street enables faster transfers of critically ill patients to Portland facilities like Legacy Emanuel Medical Center and Randall Children’s Hospital.

Other improvements include a redesigned coffee shop, gift shop and volunteer greeter station in the lobby. The Family Birth Center received a new waiting room, and an All Faiths Chapel offers space for reflection and prayer. The project was made possible, in part, due to support from corporate and individual donors and the Silverton Health Foundation Board.

Andersen Construction led the project, which was completed in three phases to minimize disruption. Phase 1 involved site prep and demolition, and building a new parking lot so the existing lot could be used for construction staging. The new lot included the permanent helicopter pad. Phase 2 involved building the 20,000-square-foot addition. Phase 3 involved connecting the addition and making upgrades to the existing building.

The project employed innovative techniques including Pro-Press water pipe fittings instead of traditional copper soldering, enhancing safety by eliminating fire hazards. Building Information Modeling coordination optimized the integration of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

What sets this expansion apart is the hospital’s independent board structure, separate from Legacy Health, ensuring local voices remained central in decision-making.

The expansion has increased patient capacity by 10-15 percent, improving healthcare access while creating jobs and economic growth. Project leaders prioritized hiring local contractors, including Northside Electric, Dallas Glass and Bob Fencing.

As always, safety was a top priority on the site. Life safety consultants were used to engineer temporary partitions so that proper building separation could be maintained during construction of the new addition. The consultant verified that life safety was appropriate to keep construction noise, dust and hazards separate from the active side of the hospital. This required properly rated temporary walls and proper exiting to meet fire regulations.

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After years of conversations, a project work group is seeking a developer for the Williams & Russell project in North Portland.

A was issued Feb. 11, and responses are due by April 8.

The RFP marks a major stepping-stone in the yearslong effort to right historic wrongs at the 1.7-acre property bordered by North Williams and Vancouver avenues and Russell and Knott streets.

A developer’s values, familiarity with the community and commitment to an open process will be crucial, members of the work group said.

“We’re also looking for the right development partner to make sure that whatever happens here is responsive to the outcomes that we’re looking for,” said Justice Rajee, a member of the work group and a longtime community advocate.

The property is owned by Legacy Health. The hospital group has pledged to convey the property for free to a nonprofit entity that will be formed for the project, according to the RFP.

The push to build a values-driven project on the vacant parcel dates to 2017, when Prosper Portland officials discovered a 1980 deed provision that required Emanuel Hospital (now Legacy) to develop the property by 1990. That discovery, which was first reported by the 91��Ƶ, led to a memorandum of understanding involving Prosper Portland, Legacy, the city of Portland and the work group.

“The idea is that there is a restorative justice component,” said Bryson Davis, another member of the work group and a lawyer at Sussman Shank. “Some of the goal is righting the wrongs of the hospital expansion, and since the hospital expansion.”

The property once had a large mixed-use building known as the Hill Block, which housed Black-owned businesses and featured a distinctive onion-shaped cupola that now resides in Dawson Park. The building was razed, as were 158 residences and 30 total commercial properties that were located in the heart of Portland’s Black community in the early 1970s as part of an expansion of Emanuel Hospital. The land has sat vacant for about 50 years as a gentrification-fueled building boom swept over the neighborhood.

The eventual development is likely to include housing. About $7.5 million has been earmarked for the project by the Portland Housing Bureau, Davis said. The project also stands to get millions of dollars from Prosper Portland via urban renewal area funds; an exact figure has not been determined.

Prosper Portland’s board in March 2020 added the property to the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area, making it eligible for millions of dollars in tax-increment financing.

“The expectation is we’ll have some funding from them, but we haven’t gotten a number,” Davis said.

Funding from Prosper Portland is expected to be “somewhere north of $10 million,” he added.

The project also has money for predevelopment and operations remaining from a Meyer Memorial Trust grant.

Project work group members expect the project will attract Black-owned contractors and a developer with experience handling values-driven local projects.

“The focus is really on the who – who is on the team, what their experience is and their record doing projects that have a community voice,” Davis said.

Capacity also will be important, he added.

“We’re not going to pick a developer who will immediately start in over their heads,” he said.

Whichever team is chosen, a “semi-public process” will continue to be used in which meetings with various advisory groups take place, Davis said.

“There’s always going to be the voices at the table that we want at the table for the project as it moves forward,” he said. “The idea behind this is to keep everything open, so you don’t have too many cooks in the kitchen, but you can see the kitchen and talk to the cooks.”

Affordable housing is a likely component, given funding from the Housing Bureau and the work group’s goals. The RFP mentions both affordable rental housing and affordable home ownership as potential developments.

“There’s a preference for ownership, but there’s a recognition that you can impact a higher number of people with rental,” Davis said. “The shape of the housing is still to be determined as far as what’s feasible, and what makes sense and what has the highest impact.”

The work group also expressed a desire for education and workforce training space, community space and entrepreneur space.

Legacy’s ongoing involvement in the property that it let sit vacant for decades is another open question. The RFP states that Legacy Health “will convey the 1.7-acre property for no consideration to the body selected by the Project Working Group to implement the project that supports and honors Portland’s African-American community as described in the MOU.” The RFP also mentions the “potential for Legacy-owned or leased medical facilities based on the (project work group’s) direction.”

It’s not clear what type of medical facilities Legacy envisions for the property. A Legacy spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Project backers hope Williams & Russell will serve as a model for developments focused on restorative and racial justice.

“Our intention,” Rajee said, “is to honor what the community has stated.”

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When the coronavirus outbreak hit the U.S. earlier this year, health care providers had to move quickly to alter their operational practices to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while adapting spaces to accommodate a massive influx of patients.

Now, with months’ worth of perspective, architects and health care providers are looking at how medical spaces can be designed to allow maximum operational efficiency and prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

Over the past decade, Ebola, SARS and H1N1 (swine flu) pandemics spurred an evolution of health care design, said Ali Sadri, director of planning, design and construction with Legacy Health. But the arrival of COVID-19 was a wake-up call that accelerated discussions about functional programming, and the relationship between building occupants and their physical environment.

“Most of our providers started paying more attention to environment of care in general,” Sadri said. “What do they need to be more effective and efficient, and care for their patients better so that space would not become an obstacle for them?”

One major step involves removal of some patients from buildings altogether. While business owners, school officials and others weigh strategies for returning to in-person operations, the health care industry is doing the opposite by adopting new methods for keeping some patients off-site.

“We’re going to rely a lot more on care within your own home, because that’s where you’re safest,” said Erin Couch, the Portland-based architectural standards and design director for Providence St. Joseph Health.

Health care providers in recent months have increasingly relied on “telehealth” as a means of seeing patients while reducing the number of people in their buildings. Rather than coming to a hospital or clinic for preventive care appointments, patients connect with providers via video conferencing or over the phone, minimizing the risk of virus exposure for both staff and other patients.

Couch, who works within Providence’s Real Estate Strategy and Operations pillar, sets design standards across a seven-state system that includes 51 hospitals, over 1,000 clinics and 100,000 caregivers. Moving forward, she is going to recommend that Providence convert a quarter of its existing examination rooms to telehealth rooms.

Monty Hill, a Mackenzie design director and associate principal whose specialties include health care design, said his firm anticipates telehealth remaining prevalent after the pandemic, due in large part to changes in how providers are compensated.

“Some of the things that we use as cues for changes in health care are Medicare and what the government is willing to reimburse,” he said.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in April announced a temporary expansion of telehealth benefits for Medicare patients, allowing hospitals to bill the system for services rendered remotely. A bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 16 would make the expansion permanent, as would a bill introduced to the U.S. Senate on July 20 by Sen. Ron Wyden.

Designers and providers are also giving considerable thought to the flexibility of spaces. For years, the nature of health care building design was to create silos of specialties. While a shift in thinking was taking place before the pandemic, providers are increasingly looking at creating universal rooms.

Solvei Neiger, a ZGF Architects partner who specializes in health care spaces, says an ongoing consideration among her clients is the design of nursing units, including those in emergency departments, to allow for compartmentalization of spaces and creation of flexible groupings of rooms for cluster care.

Clients are planning lobbies with some of the infrastructure necessary to convert them to triage space, Neiger said. Rooms are being rethought as well.

“Maybe it’s an exam room one day, a triage room or treatment room another day,” she said. “Being able to not have barriers allows for different types of uses to happen, which gives them maximum flexibility.”

Especially important will be a shift toward rooms that can be adapted to intensive care units in the event of a surge, Hill said. With COVID-19, demand exceeded supply for ICU rooms, which differ from typical rooms because of their life-sustaining equipment available, level of monitoring for the nursing staff, and either positive or negative air pressure.

“I think we’re going to see government rules change to have a plan in order to deal with any major catastrophe,” Hill said, “not just for coronavirus, but any future virus that we may need to be prepared for.”

Also on the horizon is a shift away from using return air to a 100 percent outside air system in all areas in order to reduce the likelihood of contagions spreading through a building’s HVAC system. The Emanuel West core-and-shell project nearing completion in North Portland will not use recirculated air, Sadri said. Energy models show that the full outside air system offers better control of the environment without wasting energy.

“We can actually capture more energy from our exhaust than reintroducing that air back into the building,” Sadri said. “And, of course, fresh air and not recycled air is what everybody in infections control is advising. You will see single-pass air become much more common.”

Providence is also considering a move to a 100 percent outside air system, and is using simpler ways to keep contaminants out of the air. According to Couch, they have already turned off all hand blowers in restrooms, and are considering a return to use of toilet lids.

Reducing surface contamination is an equally important consideration. Touchless devices will also become even more commonplace than they already are, as will handwashing sinks. Some materials like carpet may be completely eschewed for surfaces that are more conducive to disinfection. Cove base flooring and countertop backsplashes, already common in many areas, could become even more prevalent in any areas that patients go.

“It really just eliminates any place for a virus to hide,” Hill said. “The cleanability of surfaces is going to increase.”

Waiting rooms are likely to shrink to allow for improved social distancing among patients and visitors. Large groups of chairs will give way to small clusters or individual seating. Modern communications technology makes it possible for medical staff to be in full contact with patients and to stay updated without being on hospital grounds.

Also, after the widespread shortage of personal protective equipment that caught many hospitals off-guard early in the COVID-19 pandemic, some may begin storing supplies in bulk in warehouse space.

Designers are also beginning to rethink how providers are typically clustered, such as at nursing stations, in order to allow for greater distancing between medical staff members.

The pandemic has accelerated thinking on how to make medical spaces function as safely and efficiently as possible. For Couch – busier than she’s ever been with Providence – it’s a time that has begotten industry-wide ingenuity and a fresh approach to provision of community health care.

“I’m sorry it took a pandemic to do that, but it’s certainly improved the way we do business,” she said. “We will look back at 2020 and say, ‘That’s when it all changed.’”

The post New design considerations for health care appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

As the coronavirus pandemic slows development and construction in Portland, health care projects are moving to the front of the permitting line.

In recent days, the Bureau of Development Services has issued permits for tents at Legacy‘s Emanuel and Good Samaritan hospitals, Providence Portland Medical Center and Providence Gateway. Oregon Health & Science University received a permit to modify an existing auditorium building for patient intake.

“Our Facility Permits Program is working around the clock and working closely with hospitals and health facilities to make sure we can get their permits in the pipeline and approved as quickly as possible,” BDS spokesman Ken Ray said.

In some cases, health care building permits are being issued the same day they come in.

“According to our Facilities Department, BDS has approved all of our permits,” Brian Terrett, a spokesman for Legacy Health, stated in an email. “They also indicated that minor projects that were reviewed by the Facility Permit Program at BDS are working well, and Legacy has benefited from that process.”

BDS’ assigns staffers to work with large institutions, including hospitals, which have ongoing permitting needs for frequent renovations, building maintenance and updates such as fire alarm installations.

While health care projects are advancing, many other developments are not. BDS remains . Permitting is limited by nearly all BDS staffers working remotely using a computer network with limited capacity. As a result, BDS has limited new permitting intakes to projects designated as critical “Tier 1” or “Tier 2.”

Tier 1 includes hospitals and clinics fighting COVID-19, and ongoing infrastructure projects such as the Portland International Airport terminal upgrades and city water plant construction.

Tier 2 includes projects that have building permits in hand and are already under construction.

Meanwhile, other projects are waiting. New commercial construction permits are not being accepted. BDS has exceptions for affordable housing – those are included in tiers 3 and 4.

As other work grinds to a halt, designers and contractors that have bet heavily on health care stand to benefit. Among them is NBBJ, a Seattle-based architecture firm that opened a Portland office last fall.

NBBJ is the designer of two projects for OHSU – the Elks Children’s Eye Clinic now under construction and a 14-story hospital tower not yet under way. (OHSU did not respond to requests for comment). NBBJ is also designing Legacy Emanuel Medical Center’s renovation and expansion������ North Portland, and a project for St. Charles Medical Center in Bend.

“We’re grateful to have that level of investment in health care,” said Carl Tully, an NBBJ principal who works in Seattle and Portland.

Health care projects are proceeding at a normal pace, Tully said.

“We have projects in all phases of progress right now,” he said. “The encouraging thing is we have not had any slowdown, whether it’s being able to have inspections on site, having permits approved, or having permits going through the intake process pretty flawlessly.”

Other firms are looking to help. ZGF Architects‘ health care practice in Portland scrambled to design a modular unit to provide relief for hospitals burdened by a surge of COVID-19 patients. ZGF was approached by TCM Corp., Western Partitions Inc. and Cherry City Electric to provide programming design.

The modular units would be prefabricated regionally and delivered by trucks to hospitals in need of overflow space. They would be placed on a concrete pad, parking lot or other paved area.

“The concept here is these modules would be primarily to off-load lower-acuity patients out of hospitals,” said Richard Shiga, a ZGF principal who is spearheading the design work.

Regulatory agencies have been helpful, Shiga said.

“One of the most interesting things about this process has been the conversations with the state and the city,” he said. “It’s been amazing. Both the state and city have gone out of their way to make it as quick and easy and efficient as possible.”

The units’ size is based on what can be put on a truck and shipped quickly, Shiga said. The companies are in the process of fabricating a prototype. Their goal is to be able to fabricate, ship and set up the modular units within 72 hours.

Shiga said the units are flexible enough to accommodate different purposes if the need arises. Ideally, they may not be needed at all, as Oregon hospitals have so far had adequate capacity to handle coronavirus patients.

“This is the kind of project where if this never needs to happen,” Shiga said, “we’re all for it.”

The post Health care projects receiving high priority appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Prosper Portland‘s board voted unanimously Wednesday to bring the historic Hill Block parcel into the Interstate Urban Renewal Area.

The move expands the urban renewal area’s geographic boundaries to include the 1.7-acre block. The board also agreed to raise the URA’s debt cap by $67 million to allow funding for development.

The moves indicate the future of the Hill Block parcel – stakeholders now prefer to call it Williams and Russell – is beginning to come into focus after more than two years of study, outreach and conversation that were preceded by decades of inaction and neglect by city and health care leaders.

Raising the URA’s debt cap provides capacity for an injection of tax-increment funding to redevelop the vacant block in North Portland. Approximately $45 million will be available for affordable housing and $20 million for economic development, said Lisa Abuaf, development manager for Prosper Portland. Other dollars will cover administrative costs.

The board’s approval followed tense testimony from some residents who said the agency is repeating past mistakes and not adequately consulting with the African-American community. Prosper Portland officials disagreed, saying that after extensive discussions by a project work group led by African-American community members, it was time to move forward.

“What I’m struggling to understand is why there continues to be such tension,” Prosper Portland Commissioner Alisha Moreland-Capuia said. “I don’t think the history is lost on any of us. We can’t revise history, but we certainly can work to reconcile it, and that is what we have earnestly set as our goals. I understand the anger is real, but we’re not going to get anywhere if that’s where we stand.”

The parcel between North Russell and Knott streets and North Williams and Vancouver avenues is fraught with the troublesome history of Portland redevelopment. It was home to a large commercial building that was a center for black commerce before its demolition in the early 1970s by the city of Portland and the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) for a planned Emanuel Hospital expansion.

That expansion never happened, and the increasingly valuable parcel has since sat vacant. In 2017, Prosper Portland officials rediscovered deed language requiring Legacy Health Systems to develop the property. That led to an August 2017 public announcement of a joint effort to plan for the property’s future.

A move in August 2017 to bring the property within the URA was halted after neighborhood leaders protested at a Prosper Portland board meeting that they were not adequately consulted. A work group made up of church, community and city representatives was formed and given broad powers to shape the property’s future. The group has met 19 times and conducted public outreach.

“They spent much of the past couple of years focused on two key areas: Understanding the development-related opportunities and constraints, and where community resources could come from,” Abuaf said. “And, also, undertaking community outreach to understand what are the community priorities on the site.”

Two members of the North/Northeast Community Development Initiative board voted against increasing the URA’s maximum indebtedness. The co-chairs, Gwen Thompson and Maurice Rahming, registered their concerns in a letter to Prosper Portland Executive Director Kimberly Branam.

“Our support depends on the successful transfer of the Legacy-owned property to an African-American community organization or significant progress towards this goal,” Thompson and Rahming wrote.

They also expressed concern that setting aside funding to develop the property while Legacy Health Systems still owns it “sends the wrong message.”

“We strongly recommend,” the letter states, “when working with a large corporation with a history of predatory development in the North-Northeast community, that you exercise caution and provide appropriate consideration to the message this sends to the impacted and displaced community.”

At Wednesday’s meeting, Branam said the agency’s current drive to develop the site is an attempt to ameliorate, rather than extend, the city’s 20th-century land grab.

“There is nobody on the board or on staff that is an apologist for urban renewal,” she said.

Legacy Health Systems has agreed, in a memorandum of understanding, to donate the block to a development team selected by the work group. The group is preparing an initial request for interest from developers, nonprofits and any other organizations that want to participate in the project. The request for interest is likely to be issued after the work group meets in April, Abuaf said. A request for proposals would follow this fall, she said.

The Portland Housing Bureau is involved with an eye toward providing affordable housing on the parcel, Abuaf said.

“PHB is a key partner on this one,” she said. “Affordable homeownership or rental units are a priority coming out of that conversation.”

Prosper Portland has not modeled development scenarios for the site, Abuaf said.

“We really have started with what are the project working group’s priorities for the site, and undertaking a pretty robust community engagement process,” she said.

Officials are well aware of the possibilities for a sizable parcel in an increasingly dense area of urban Portland.

“It’s a pretty large parcel, so you could have multiple uses on the site and perhaps multiple projects,” Abuaf said.

The post Updated: Community development eyed for Hill Block parcel appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Hill Block Project Working Group has approved a memorandum of understanding giving the panel broad authority to shape development on the vacant North Portland parcel.

The agreement, passed Wednesday, gives the 25-member group the task of selecting a developer and choosing a development program on the 1.7-acre block bounded by North Vancouver and Williams avenues and Knott and Russell streets.

The block has sat vacant since the early 1970s, when the Hill Block building and other businesses and residences were condemned and demolished by the city of Portland as part of Emanuel Hospital‘s expansion project. In all, 188 properties were demolished, forever changing the historically African-American neighborhood.

Prosper Portland officials last year discovered a 1980 deed to Emanuel (now part of Legacy Health) that said construction should be concluded by Jan. 1, 1990. Prosper Portland officials last year gave Legacy notice that the agency intended to enforce the deed. That started a round of discussions that resulted in the two sides agreeing to form a working group.

Now the working group faces a tight timeline to make decisions on the property. Members must weigh whether to recommend the property be brought into the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area. Joining the URA could bring a source of funding, but also constraints, working group members said at Wednesday’s meeting.

“I think everyone understands what’s at stake in terms of funding,” said Alisha Moreland-Capuia, a Prosper Portland board member who is serving on the working group.

Any request for urban renewal funding would be made to the North/Northeast Community Development Initiative Advisory Committee, a group set up by Prosper Portland to evaluate spending decisions in the 3,990-acre urban renewal area. The Interstate Corridor URA has $32 million to spend by June 2021.

The eventual development on the Hill Block could involve some mix of office space for Legacy, affordable housing, community and nonprofit space and perhaps other uses. The working group will have to lean on Prosper Portland staff for development expertise because few members of the working group come from industry backgrounds.

The decreasing availability of capital should spur the group to get moving, said Stephen Green, a working group member who represents the Black Investment Consortium for Economic Progress.

“Development financing is getting much more difficult nationally right now,” he said.

Funding for the group itself is also in question. Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office provided $15,000 to get the working group off the ground, but city officials warned not to expect additional funding. One member of the working group asked if Legacy had considered contributing financially to group. Legacy’s representative on the board, Charles Wilhoite, said Legacy had not discussed funding the working group.

Wilhoite did not object when working group members voted to make the health care provider a non-voting member of the board.

“Legacy is here in the spirit of collaboration,” he said.

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Three Central City Concern mixed-use projects now under way in Portland may not be dazzling examples of engineering or construction, but they’re already making an impression.

The Blackburn Building, the Stark Street Apartments and Charlotte B. Rutherford Place – all part of the Housing Is Health initiative – are expected to help get homeless individuals into housing units and provide health care resources to people without insurance.

“I think this one’s different, in that it’s going to be a real service to the community,” said Brian Ames, a project engineer with Walsh Construction, the general contractor for the six-story Blackburn Building at East Burnside Street and 122nd Avenue. “It’s definitely something that we need right now with the housing crisis, and we’re providing housing and a critical need to people who really need it.”

The Blackburn Building is the flagship of – a unique effort that has received a total of $21.5 million in financial support from nonprofit organization CareOregon and five major hospitals (Adventist Health-Portland, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University and Providence Health & Services-Oregon). An additional $9 million for the initiative is coming from the Portland Housing Bureau, and private fundraising efforts will supplement investments.

All told, Housing Is Health this year alone will provide local low-income residents with 382 new housing units, along with health care and other facilities.

Besides 186 housing units, the Blackburn Building will have a health care clinic, a pharmacy and commercial space. Central City Concern, which runs 23 other facilities around the Portland area, will provide on-site support including services focusing on employment, addiction recovery and mental health treatment.

Ground was broken last year on all three projects. The Stark Street Apartments will be a 153-unit complex at the corner of Southeast Stark Street and 127th Avenue, and Charlotte B. Rutherford Place will be a 51-unit complex on North Interstate Avenue.

Recognizing substantial needs

Sean Hubert, Central City Concern’s chief housing and strategy officer, said the nonprofit has been engaged with a range of health systems in the Portland area since the early 2000s. In 2007, it established at its Old Town clinic on Burnside Street a recuperative care program that pairs houseless persons with housing and social services needed to return them to work.

“We put them in housing and stabilize them and give them primary care and help them resolve their acute health conditions,” he said.

The program, in turn, allowed the types of partnerships, Hubert said, that have resulted in initiatives like Housing Is Health.

“At this point we have a decade’s worth of data showing the reduction of recidivism and emergency room admission rates,” he said. “We’re finding housing stability and a standard of care for that population, and all that was already enabled when we started talking about these projects.”

The other factor driving development of Housing Is Health is the ongoing lack of affordable housing. Coupled with increasingly expensive rents in the metro area, it has turned out to be a time bomb for persons with substance abuse or other acute health issues.

Even hospitals accustomed to handing out hotel vouchers to patients without homes began to feel the pinch when their own employees began to struggle with the same issue.

“More generally, housing was on their radar,” Hubert said.

Central City Concern has operated transitional housing for decades now. But these days, that process is not nearly as cost-effective as it once was.

“It worked well when rent is $600 or $700 a month,” Hubert said. “But now, at $1,400 a month, that really has had an impact on our partner organizations’ ability to leverage that. The amount of people we could serve was declining and the hospitals were seeing the results of that.”

Busy building affordable units

At the $52 million Blackburn Building project site, concrete support columns extend upward two stories from ground level as the elevator shaft and other superstructure features take shape. The building’s bottom two stories will be reinforced concrete post-tension decks, while the upper four stories will be wood-framed, Ames said.

The location next to TriMet‘s 122nd Avenue MAX light-rail platform also is ideal for the target population. Coincidentally, most of TriMet’s blue line platforms are being renovated by California-based Stacy & Witbeck at present.

“This whole corridor is now zoned for high-density residential, and you’ll see a lot of that continue to change, as it already has along Burnside,” Ames said. “It should be a big face-lift for this area.”

Just around the corner from the Blackburn Building, crews of framers swarm over the wooden skeleton of the Stark Street Apartments. Consisting of two primary wings, the $29.9 million complex was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects. Central City Concern expects tenants to come from the immediate neighborhood, while rents will range from just $412 up to $995 per month depending on household income. There will be playground amenities for children and at least 88 solar panels.

TEAM Construction of Vancouver, Washington, is the general contractor for the project. Senior Project Manager Mack Thames said the company has a track record of working on similar projects benefiting low-income residents.

“We do a lot of projects with REACH (Community Development),” Thames said, in reference to the Portland nonprofit affordable housing development and property management company. “But this is our first one in recent memory with Central City (Concern). We certainly work with the Vancouver Housing Authority and with Catholic Charities, so we do a fair amount on the nonprofit side.”

Thames showed off the four-story complex, which will feature 91 one-bedroom and 62 two-bedroom apartments. The design provides for interlocking fields of view and communal courtyards and playground spaces. The main feature will be an exterior elevator that allows residents to access either side of the south building via a sky-bridge. Exterior walkways will be built on each floor in other recessed courtyard areas, providing residents with an unusual overhead perspective.

Meanwhile, the $9.9 million, 51-unit Charlotte B. Rutherford Place complex in North Portland is on track to finish first – possibly by the end of the year.

“This will be the first time where we really brought our clinical services together with our housing in the same project,” Hubert said. “This is very exciting for us. It allows us to take all of our knowledge and put it into one projects, and to design the best model of care from a client’s perspective.”

The post Housing Is Health: three critical projects under way appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Redevelopment of a vacant North Portland block near Legacy Emanuel Medical Center will have to wait a bit longer.

The city of Portland is forming a work group to study redevelopment of the 1.7 acre-block in the Albina neighborhood. The move comes after members of Prosper Portland‘s own oversight committee complained they hadn’t been consulted on plans to use urban renewal dollars at the North Portland property.

It also delays bringing the block – bounded by North Williams and Vancouver avenues and Russell and Knott streets – into an urban renewal area that would trigger up to $32 million in available tax-increment financing.

Shawn Uhlman, spokesman for Prosper Portland, said the delay is necessary to make sure members of the North/Northeast Community Development Initiative Oversight Committee are comfortable with the path forward.

“The timing is less important than ensuring what the project working group needs, and what the oversight committee needs, to have their questions answered,” Uhlman said.

Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office is preparing a solicitation for nominations to the work group, spokesman Michael Cox said. The solicitation is expected to be issued Friday.

“The goal of the project working group is just make sure the process is transparent, that it’s community-centered, that there’s meaningful community engagement,” Cox said.

At an Aug. 9 board meeting, Prosper Portland’s board considered adding the Legacy property into the Interstate Corridor urban renewal area. It appeared ready to sail through until several members of the North/Northeast Community Development Initiative Oversight Committee testified that they weren’t consulted about spending plans.

Committee member Chonitia Smith said the African-American community and the oversight committee should be consulted. The oversight committee was formed to oversee allocation of the $32 million in tax-increment financing.

Rahsaan Stuart Muhammad, a representative of the Emanuel Displaced Persons Association, said he was opposed to anything other than housing being constructed on the property.

Since that meeting, little progress has been made.

Vicki Guinn, spokeswoman for Legacy Emanuel, said the project work group would focus on the African-American community, but not exclusively.

“Part of the project is really engaging with the community to get input into what people would like to see there,” Guinn said. “So, yes, we’re gathering names and organizations that we would like to see be a part of this process.”

Prosper Portland’s goal is “really to try to do a community-led redevelopment of the property,” said Tory Campbell, entrepreneurship and community economic development manager for the city agency.

There is no set date to have the work group report back to Prosper Portland’s board, Campbell said.

“It’ll be sometime, obviously, in the next year,” he said.

The property was razed around 1975 as part of urban renewal efforts that destroyed scores of black-owned businesses and homes. The Hill Block Building, a commercial hub for the black community, was demolished.

The property has since sat vacant. Last summer, Prosper Portland Executive Director Kimberly Branam discovered a 1980 deed provision that gave Legacy Health until 1990 to redevelop the property. No action had been taken in the 27 years since the deadline passed.

After realizing the oversight, Prosper Portland officials began discussing the property with Legacy Health, and the Daily Journal of Commerce submitted a public records request for information about the property. The agency denied the records request, but shortly thereafter announced a partnership with Legacy Health to move toward redevelopment of the block.

The post Work group to study North Portland property appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In the early 1970s, the city of Portland, in concert with Emanuel Hospital’s expansion plans, leveled the commercial center of the historically black Albina neighborhood in north Portland with an eye toward future hospital development.

Urban renewal was regarded as a necessary cure for an area that was seen as blighted. But the cure wrought by Portland and hospital officials left a key urban property neglected for decades.

In 1980, the Portland Development Commission sold the 1.7-acre block bounded by North Williams and Vancouver avenues and Russell and Knott streets to what was then Emanuel Hospital (now part of Legacy Health) for less than $400,000 with a covenant to develop the property according to an urban renewal plan.

The planned hospital expansion never happened. Federal grants to build hospitals dried up, and Emanuel expanded elsewhere, while the PDC (now Prosper Portland) turned its attention to other projects.

The property sat largely untouched for 37 years as Portland grew around it, providing a visible reminder of urban neglect, broken promises and a decades-long failure of leadership by two powerful Portland institutions.

A 10-year deadline for Emanuel to begin redevelopment of the property came and went in 1990 with no apparent notice, much less action, from city officials. The parcel was used at times for construction staging, neighbors said.

Now, Legacy Health, Prosper Portland and city officials are left wrestling with the mistakes of the past. They have few answers for why the heart of an African-American business district was demolished and left vacant for more than four decades.

“That used to be the heart of the historical black community there,” Commissioner Nick Fish said. “For a long time, there’s been a desire to develop that piece of property with a heavy emphasis on black-owned businesses. There have been different ideas and visions floated. I have long thought that if we could develop that with Legacy … it would be a big win for that community. That’s been a vision for about a decade.”

Now, it’s happening. Legacy Health and Prosper Portland are set to announce today an effort to develop the property. The two sides are establishing a work group with community leaders to explore options for the site.

Prosper Portland’s board will vote during an August 9 meeting whether to bring the property into the Interstate Urban Renewal Area, which would free up tax-increment financing for predevelopment studies and development work.

The partnership comes after intensive discussions between Prosper Portland and Legacy Health officials in recent months.

The parcel offers 222,000 developable square feet, according to a Prosper Portland estimate.

The work group will host public forums and engage in community outreach to help determine the best use for their property. Eventually, Prosper Portland and Legacy Health will seek a development partner.

“We’re committed to having a transparent, community-centered process,” said Kimberly Branam, Prosper Portland’s executive director.

The project is likely to include some use by Legacy Health, along with a mix of affordable housing, retail and possibly office space.

The work group will “tease out the proposal,” Branam said.

“I think right now we’re all anticipating we would have an external development partner, and that this really will evolve over time,” she said.

The Urban League of Portland has its office directly across the street from the vacant parcel. Maurice Henderson, chief of staff for Mayor Ted Wheeler, said the organization has been involved in ongoing discussions about the parcel. Nkenge Harmon Johnson, president and chief executive of the African-American service and advocacy group, declined interview requests made to her office.

The city’s urban renewal effort came as American cities were riven by riots and racial tension. The Eliot neighborhood lost half its residents – approximately 3,000 people – between 1960 and 1970. City leaders feared the blight would spread to adjacent areas.

Dozens of residents and businesses were forcibly relocated as part of the Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Project.

The Hill Block building was a focal point of the neighborhood, fronting the corner of Russell Street and Williams Avenue and sprawling down both sides of the block. It was named for Charles H. Hill, who served as Albina’s first mayor before the property was incorporated into Portland.

The building hosted a drugstore, a market and a cleaners on the ground floor and second-floor apartments above. In that manner, the building prefigured the mixed-use projects popular in urban corridors today.

The building was demolished in 1975 and its distinctive onion-shaped cupola was salvaged to be placed atop a gazebo in Dawson Park. Dozens of black-owned homes and businesses nearby were pushed out.

After the city cleared the property, it was eventually sold to Emanuel Lutheran for $396,776.92.

The 1980 deed between the PDC and Legacy Health included a provision saying the hospital board “shall use the land for the purposes designated in the urban renewal plan, and shall begin building of its improvements within a reasonable amount of time.” Portions of the agreement were set to expire on July 29, 1990, and the PDC reserved the right to enforce the curing of any breach of the agreement.

That date came and went. The land has since sat vacant for 27 more years.

“Folks in our office are aware of that one component and there could be some debate (of the terms of the deed) if that was necessary,” said Brian Terrett, Legacy Health’s director of public and community relations. “What’s more important is the fact that we’ve come together and we’ve said we want to find a way to be sure that property honored the history and the culture of African-Americans in Portland. We’ve always been interested in that. And so the timing on this is perfect.”

The terms of the 1980 property deed are in the past, Terrett said.

“So rather than thinking about what was written then and how and who says what, why don’t we just look forward?” he said.

The coming community debate over plans for the property is likely to reopen old wounds. Mayor Ted Wheeler, in his State of the City address in March, sought to acknowledge the pain of the African-American community’s relocation.

“Development in the Albina community drove mostly black people from their homes to make room for freeways, stadiums and hospitals,” Wheeler said then. “These new developments were seen at the time as representing progress, but the toll taken on the black community that was displaced was willfully ignored by city leaders.”

Redeveloping the parcel can’t fully atone for the past, Henderson said.

“It’s really important for the community to recognize that this won’t make up for all past ills,” he said. “This is certainly something to look prospectively as a really positive step about what Portland will be going forward, and particularly this location in north-northeast Portland.”

Neighbors are interested in seeing something done with the vacant land. Allan Rudwick, chairman of the Eliot Neighborhood Association’s land-use committee, said redevelopment of the property would fill a hole in the commercial area.

“That’s really exciting,” Rudwick said.

He added ruefully, “They probably could have done that anytime in the last 20 years.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to reflect that the demolition of the Hill Block building was carried out by the city of Portland.

Time line

1915 – Emanuel Hospital moves to Albina from a downtown location.

1930s-1950 – Albina grows as a center for Portland’s black community.

1962 – The Portland Development Commission publishes the Central Albina Study, laying out plans for urban renewal of the now-“blighted” neighborhood. Emanuel Hospital notifies the city of its interest in expanding, using the urban renewal program.

1967 – Emanuel Hospital administrators announce plans to develop a modern medical campus. Portland City Council formally approves an urban renewal project.

1970 – Emanuel completes the first two phases of an expansion plan.

1971 – The PDC begins acquiring and demolishing Albina properties.

1973 – Emanuel cancels the third phase of redevelopment, citing lack of funds. The cancelation leaves a key parcel vacant.

1980 – The Portland Development Commission sells the Albina parcel to Emanuel Hospital for less than $400,000.

1990 – The deed deadline to redevelop the property expires. No action is taken.

2017 – Legacy Health and Prosper Portland announce a partnership to redevelop the property.

The post Broken promises: making good after decades of neglect appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.