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.”

The post Project team finds a way to build efficiently appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A relatively small residential project in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood could provide a glimpse at the future of wood-framed construction.

In addition, the project aims to revive a long-disregarded housing type – single-room occupancy – now found only in a few aging hotel buildings scattered around Portland.

The first phase of the proposed would provide 35 studio apartments, a one-bedroom manager’s apartment and six additional single-room dwellings. They would fill four buildings on property at 2310 N. Hunt St. According to a request for design review filed with the Bureau of Development Services on Oct. 15, three of those buildings would each hold two single-room units. The apartment building would also have a community room.

The project, developed by Portland nonprofit Transition Projects, is part of the same initiative that produced the Kenton Women’s Village and is aimed at much the same demographic. All units are intended for persons earning no more than 60 percent of the median family income for the metro region.

Holst Architecture has designed the project; a voluntary design advice hearing before the Portland Design Commission took place in July. In total, LISAH will provide 72 residential units, it was split into two phases because of funding concerns centered on low-income housing tax credits. The first phase is now before BDS staff and calls for 42 total units.

“The project finally got its approval for the competitive tax credits from the state,” Holst Architecture marketing director Abigail Carlen said. “That will fund the whole thing eventually, but right now they’re going forward with the first phase. They’ve been working on it for quite some time. It’s been three years now, so it’s good that they got those credits secured.”

Modular components will be used to piece the four structures together.

“We were brainstorming with Transition Projects on how to bring the cost of housing down and what we could do differently,” Holst Architecture principal Dave Otte said. “They were interested in tiny houses, and we quickly came to the realization that with any kind of scale or adaptability to different parts of the city, doing something bigger made more sense. So, the way these duplexes came about was we thought, ‘What if we took tiny houses and stuck them together?’”

To accomplish this, Holst Architecture turned to Mods PDX, which manufactures prefabricated wood-framed walls and other residential construction components.

“We’re still working on details on how they’ll be divided up and go together,” Otte said. “But basically the idea is to make the boxes in the shop to ensure quality control and bring them out to the site and save a lot of time. You can be doing your site work while you’re building the boxes in the shop. While you’re grading, you’re building at the same time.”

Otte said he hopes modular construction will reduce the construction time frame by several months.

“The question is: How do we get housing on to the market to folks who need it the most as soon as possible?” he said. “So that’s why as soon as we got the funding we were all systems go.”

The property, near Kenton Park, currently hosts the 14 tiny houses of Kenton Women’s Village with its 14 tiny houses. The village opened last summer as a temporary housing solution that eventually would be replaced by permanent affordable housing.

The 9 percent federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit allows Transition Projects to complete the purchase of the site from Prosper Portland and move ahead with construction, which will cost an estimated $11.2 million, according to a city report. A $500,000 grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust also was a key piece of funding.

“We are now finally moving full steam ahead,” Otte said. “It has been a difficult process getting people to buy in to the model.”

The post Affordable housing development advancing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.