An 86-year-old office building on Southeast 11^th Avenue is being demolished to make way for a mixed-use building that will be part of Killian Pacific‘s LOCA superblock development. Crews with LOI Environmental & Demolition Services are dismantling the 24,600-square-foot building and recovering much of the building material.

Approximately 5000 square feet of 3×5 fir roof deck was removed, denailed, and bundled for reuse, as were a total of 167 4×14 fir joists and 13 old growth fir beams ranging in length from 25 to 50 feet. The building’s concrete and steel are being recycled, and general demolition debris will be sorted for recycling, as well. According to LOI president John Mayer, the project is estimated to achieve a 98% recovery and recycle rate.

Portions of three concrete walls will remain in place and will be utilized in the parking structure of the new building, which will be built by general contractor Andersen Construction. The future 4-story, 39-unit apartment building with 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and two levels of underground parking was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects.

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Before a once-vacant Southeast Portland lot served as pasture for a herd of goats and became the future site of a mixed-use superblock development, it was a pond.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, water from the dammed-up Asylum Creek covered a large portion of the site, bounded by Southeast Belmont and Taylor streets and 10th and 11th avenues. The pond and creek were then buried in a series of fill projects intended to promote more development on the east side of the Willamette River.

Now the site is under water again. Andersen Construction crews excavating the 385-spot below-grade parking garage for Killian Pacific‘s LOCA project over the past month have exposed and are working in and around millions of gallons of groundwater formerly hidden beneath the former pasture.

“It’s a filled-in lake, so that’s a problem,” said Stuart Albright, geotechnical engineer for the project and principal with environmental engineering firm Apex. “Really we’re just undoing what they did after the turn of the previous century when the city filled it in.”

Planning around the large amount of groundwater has been one of the biggest project challenges, he said. Anticipating how the water would impact construction involved identifying which portions of the site were once covered in water by examining old land plat maps. Wells drilled on the site also helped paint a picture of the location and depth of groundwater.

“We basically knew there was a pond here before we even started working on the site,” Albright said. “We relied heavily on the existing information. All of that data factored into us making an informed decision for where we thought the water would be.”

He learned that the pond once covered the Goat Blocks‘ eastern side. It provided drinking water to a nearby mental hospital and the city of East Portland. That use was eventually abandoned after East Portland became part of Portland in the late 1800s and the cities combined drinking water systems.

“At the time it was filled, nobody was using it and people were dumping garbage into it,” Albright said. “It was probably not very pleasant, which is probably why it was filled in.”

Draining site not an option

Normally, a construction site where groundwater is exposed is drained first so that crews can work on a dry surface, but the city sewer system surrounding the Goat Blocks site wouldn’t be able to handle the large amount of water seeped up during excavation, said Chris Copeland, a senior project manager with Andersen Construction.

“The project was kind of conceived by Killian with the knowledge that there was no place close to dump the water to do this the standard way,” he said. “We didn’t have any choice except to get creative for how we were going to do this … We had to come up with a scenario to contain that water.”

Draining the whole site would also be expensive because the city of Portland charges a fee for dumping groundwater into its sewer system, Albright said.

“There was a time when we would drain all this water, but the city charges for it so everybody wants to figure out where the water is and get around it,” he said. “It changes how we deal with (ground)water in the city of Portland. Very few clients want to pay for draining.”

Underwater construction

The Goat Blocks project team has devised a way to work around and in all that water. As excavation of the parking garage continues, construction crews are containing the groundwater in pools, ranging from 15 to 18 feet deep, using a steel sheet piling system. The metal walls are typically used to retain either water or soil.

“We’re essentially building underwater,” Killian Pacific Vice President Noel Johnson said. “Once you build it, you pump the water out.”

Project subcontractor West Coast Contractors, a Coos Bay-based firm that specializes in bridges and marine facilities, has assisted with this underwater work. West Coast crews used a boat to traverse the groundwater and check the level of the terrain underneath using grade rods. This helped a long-range excavator operator digging the flooded parking garage space, Copeland said.

A lengthy concrete pour that started Monday is taking place with the water still in place using a type of concrete that cures in wet conditions. Crews will pump concrete using hoses under the water to form a 6-foot-deep plug that after curing in about a week should prevent more groundwater from seeping into the project site, Copeland said.

“It’s the same technology that you would use to pour a bridge pier in a river,” he said.

Once the concrete has set, crews will pump out the remaining water and the construction site should be essentially dry within the next couple of weeks, Copeland said. Crews have pumped out about 5 million gallons of water already, he said.

Although the project team was expecting a lot of groundwater to come up during the excavation process, Copeland said that in some cases it was deeper than anticipated.

“When you expose this water, the most interesting thing to me is it’s not all at the same level,” he said. “It’s very dynamic. It’s very fluid. (You have to) change your methodology as you go.”

A watertight parking garage

The LOCA below-grade parking garage is designed to sit just slightly above the typical groundwater level, Albright said. If the water were to rise above that level, it would flow into and be drained out of the garage, he said.

Johnson said Killian Pacific has owned the Goat Blocks site for a long time, and the Vancouver, Wash.-based developer learned of the underground pond about 10 years ago.

“We did a lot of testing and drilling test pits even when the goats were still there,” he said.

The amount of groundwater on the site didn’t come as a surprise because that’s typical for projects involving excavation in the surrounding Buckman neighborhood, Johnson said.

“That’s the reason there aren’t a ton of basements in that whole area of town,” he said.

But building below ground level was necessary for the superblock development, which will include 247 apartments and grocer Market of Choice and Orchard Supply Hardware as anchor retail tenants, he said. The development is expected to be finished by early 2017.

“The entire foundation is built like a ship, where it keeps the water out,” Johnson said. “We spent a lot of good engineering money figuring out how to build it given the amount of water.”

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The Portland City Council on Wednesday heard testimony from Central Eastside Industrial Council members and tentatively denied their appeal of the Portland Design Commission‘s conditional approval of the “goat blocks” mixed-use development planned in Southeast Portland.

Debbie Kitchin, president of the CEIC, in September filed an appeal of the design commission’s decision in August to conditionally approve plans for more than 111,000 square feet of retail space, 247 apartments and 339 parking spaces on the superblock at 1004-1036 S.E. Belmont St. CEIC members are concerned that adding apartments and businesses on the vacant lot would adversely affect industrial activities within the adjacent industrial sanctuary.

At a CEIC event Wednesday evening, Kitchin explained that current development plans call for narrowing Southeast Taylor Street and 10th Avenue. She said that narrowing those streets could affect businesses, such as Gatto & Sons Fruit, that rely on freight traffic to conduct business.

“It’s important to maintain the viability of the industries that are here, and we’re concerned how narrowing the streets would affect freight movement,” she said.

The appeal requests the city engineer to resolve right-of-way issues to the satisfaction of all abutting property owners on the affected street. It also asks the design commission to make specific findings about how the addition of apartments fits with the city’s Comprehensive Plan goal stating “residential uses are allowed but should be compatible with the surrounding industrial development.”

Noel Johnson, vice president of Killian Pacific, the Vancouver, Wash.-based developer of the project, said it wouldn’t narrow the right-of-way for cars and trucks and that he thinks the CEIC’s appeal was based on a “confusion of facts” regarding street width.

“I think they thought there was an atypical variance in street width,” he said. “The codes have a ‘standard’ width that all streets must meet, and a ‘preferred’ width. The end result will have the streets in excess of the preferred level.”

Portland code requires streets to be at least 11 feet wide, according to Peter Finley Fry, vice chairman of the CEIC’s Land Use and Development Committee. He said the preferred width is 12 feet. He said the CEIC chose to appeal the design commission’s approval to bring to the city’s attention that business owners don’t believe the 12-foot width is enough for freight traffic; they would prefer it be 14 feet.

“Even though our appeal was denied, the council instructed the city engineer to go out and talk to businesses one on one to find out what they need,” he said.

Fry said his group sought to raise the underlying issue that current standards are inadequate.

“Freight mobility is hugely important to us and to this project,” he said. “We explained, but that seemed to not be able to be heard by everyone.”

The Portland City Council is set to prepare its findings and on Oct. 22 issue a final ruling denying the CEIC’s appeal and upholding the design commission’s decision.

Johnson said construction will begin next month and require 21 months to complete.

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With signed lease agreements with a grocer and a hardware retailer in hand, the team planning to develop the Goat Blocks in Southeast Portland is eager to gain approval from the Portland Design Commission.

But that won’t come until at least next month, after several issues were brought up Thursday during a roughly six-hour hearing before the commission. Approximately nine months have passed since developer Killian Pacific filed its request for a pre-application conference with the city.

“The bottom line is we need an approval,” said Tom Moisan, president of Ankrom Moisan Architects. “We need to keep this moving.”

Killian Pacific is planning to add 87,000 square feet of retail space and 247 apartment units on a three-block area. The seven-building development would include a grocery store and a hardware store, and several smaller retail spaces, Killian Pacific Managing Director Noel Johnson said.

“We’re pretty adamant this is not the next Pearl District,” he said. “It works hard to diversify and complement an already rich built environment.”

At the heart of the discussion Thursday was the use of public space and how the building would interface with the neighborhood at street level. The property, previously used as pastureland by a herd of goats, could mark the east-to-west transition from the leafy Buckman neighborhood to the grittier Central Eastside.

That transition presents a design challenge because the property slopes 24 feet from the northeastern corner at Belmont Street and 12th Avenue to the southwestern corner at Taylor Street and 10th Avenue.

Killian Pacific and Portland-based Ankrom Moisan Architects, the project architect, have proposed building an alley through the property from Yamhill Street. The alley would essentially cut the property in half and take advantage of the slope with a set of stairs rather than a flat surface.

One commissioner, David Keltner, said he would not vote for design approval unless the developers were to build Yamhill into a continuous street that would encourage more pedestrian and bicyclist traffic through the development. Otherwise, the steps would create a “weird dead end,” he said.

“The kinds of spaces they are making are creative and inventive, but you’ve got to be sure that you’re doing everything else to make sure that they actually work,” he said.

The Yamhill steps would provide some dramatic views of the city’s skyline and also provide more room underneath for the hardware store, Johnson said.

“We simply disagree that it’s better to slope smoothly,” he said. “We think it’s better to basically hold it level and then go down stairs. It creates an iconic viewpoint of downtown.”

Commissioners who reviewed the project wanted to know how the Yamhill alley and another smaller pedestrian walkway would contribute to public space, which is a requirement for superblock projects.

“My point of view is that there is a lot of corridor circulation, but there is no place to get off the path and be in public space,” Commissioner Jane Hansen said.

Commissioners also repeated concerns issued in February about a lack of coherency in some of the planned materials and complexity of forms.

“The biggest issue is that so little changed in response to our original comments,” said Keltner, a principal architect at THA Architecture.

Buckman resident Kenneth Diener, owner of KJD Architecture in Portland, wondered whether a second-floor restaurant space could be set back farther from the street and an internal corridor could be moved to the perimeter.

“That would allow the grocery to expand upward, and it would activate the walkway on the west side,” said Diener, who submitted 25 pages of testimony stating concerns about the project. “There is no reason that can’t work.”

Making suggested changes, including leveling the Yamhill alley extension and setting back second-floor retail space, could lessen the appeal of prospective tenants, said Jeff Mitchem, an Ankrom Moisan urban designer.

“The moment you do one of those things, you lose the second-floor viability and views to the west of the city,” he said.

Killian Pacific will return with suggested changes at a July 17 hearing. Its goal is to start construction in August, Johnson said.

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Killian Pacific is adding another Central Eastside block to its portfolio, but without specific redevelopment plans yet.

The Vancouver, Wash.-based development company is under contract to purchase the lot owned and occupied by Speed’s Towing at 125 S.E. Clay St. The full block – in operation for now – is due west of the former Rexel/Taylor Electric Supply warehouse, which Killian acquired in 2012 with plans for a new five-story creative office development.

Killian Pacific Vice President Noel Johnson said the company’s strategy for the Speed’s Towing site may not be clear, but its advantages are evident.

“The green street improvements, the bike boulevard … you’ve got the bus, the light rail and the streetcar all right there with (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) and (Portland Community College) being good, reliable, stable institutions that are really meaningful to the city,” he said. “It just seemed like a great place, and it just seemed like a logical extension of our commitment to the Central Eastside, and helping it grow.”

Killian Pacific also is redeveloping a former PGE industrial building nearby into the new offices of Viewpoint Construction Software. Johnson said the Speed’s Towing site could provide a logical avenue for future expansions by that firm or others in the area; however, he’s also talking with a food-based wholesaler interested in the site.

As the Central Eastside experiences a wave of change in the way of pedestrian-oriented development, Johnson said he wants to remain true to the neighborhood’s industrial roots.

“We’re trying to find ways to continue to be partners for those businesses and not just be a developer that’s doing breweries and mixed-use stuff,” he said. “There are plenty of people doing that out there. We want to make sure we’re staying true to the eastside’s core.”

About eight blocks east and five blocks north of the Speed’s Towing property, Killian Pacific has significant mixed-use development plans for the Goat Blocks, which the company is now referring to as the “Loca” (as in locavore) development. The project is going back before the Portland Design Commission on June 12, and Johnson said the project has garnered the support of the Buckman Neighborhood Association as well as the Central Eastside Industrial Council – groups that tend to have competing interests. Killian Pacific now controls more than seven blocks worth of the Central Eastside.

At the Rexel/Taylor Electric site, Johnson said Killian Pacific is close to securing anchor tenants and expects to have project news to report soon. Interest in that pending development, he said, has been strong.

“Once a week we’re responding to inquiries and every week we’re meeting with some group that’s interested in that site,” he said.

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The Goat Blocks project, a superblock redevelopment consisting of seven mixed-use buildings in Southeast Portland, is designed to evoke the simplistic, utilitarian feel of the nearby warehouses and other structures in the Central Eastside Industrial District.

“It’s a collage of different scales of buildings,” Ankrom Moisan Architects principal Jason Roberts said. “I think that’s an enduring quality of that overall feeling of the neighborhood.”

Portland Design Commission member David Wark, however, didn’t see that when he got a look last week at Ankrom Moisan’s revised plans for the Killian Pacific development.

“What’s the story behind these (buildings)? What’s the connective tissue?” he asked. “It’s so disassociated as a collage. I don’t see a unifying concept. Is it a modern interpretation of what’s there now? It just doesn’t coalesce.”

Wark wasn’t the only commissioner with reservations about the most recent iteration of the design. Many concerns centered around accessibility to an open-air market on a raised platform over below-grade parking on the corner of Southeast Belmont Street and 10th Avenue. This led to worries that the 133,000-square-foot superblock development, bound by Southeast Belmont and Taylor streets and 10th and 11th avenues, wouldn’t adequately engage passersby.

“There’s very little retail experience on the sidewalk,” commissioner Jane Hansen said. “It’s Belmont. Belmont is really important, and it’s dead.”

Killian Pacific Vice President Noel Johnson said the Vancouver, Wash.-based developer this week plans to submit an application seeking design review approval with the hopes of a hearing before the Design Commission in late April. Ground could be broken on the development, named for the goats that long wandered the site, as soon as this fall, he said.

The design of the Goat Blocks has gone through a number of iterations since the process started in summer 2012 to incorporate input from neighbors, Johnson said. The design also has changed since Ankrom Moisan first sought design advice from the Design Commission in January, he added. For instance, the number of stories of apartments for the main building was reduced from six to four, and the total number of units was reduced from 257 to 240.

Johnson told the Design Commission that flexibility exists to change the design, but the development must include two large ground-floor spaces for anchor tenants, including a grocery store facing Southeast 11th Avenue and Belmont Street.

“I think the best thing we can do is go back to see what we can do and what we can’t do,” he said. “Some of the site planning comments we simply can’t accommodate … If we come back and we haven’t made a move, it’s not because we haven’t tried.”

The revised design features a prominent set of stairs on the corner of 10th and Belmont that would provide pedestrian access to a raised market walk with small retail spaces and a terrace gathering spot, Ankrom Moisan principal Jeff Hamilton told the commission.

“This is an evolving process that we’re working on,” he said. “We’re actively trying to make stairs that are not just daytime stairs, but lit in some way.”

Wark said he didn’t like the stairs being the primary entrance to the market space.

“Is there any way to minimize those ups and downs?” he asked. “If you’re ambulatory challenged, you have to go to an elevator to get to the market level. It just doesn’t flow.”

Commissioner David Keltner, however, said he appreciated the effort to connect the development to the neighborhood.

“It does have a scale thing going on that I think is very unique to Southeast,” he said. “They really nailed it. It has that eclectic goofy mix, which I think for this kind of neighborhood works.”

The development should not only respect the neighborhood, but also elevate it, commissioner Tad Savinar said.

“I feel like they’re taking a little piece of every little thing in the Central Eastside … They’re trying to jam everything into this place, rather than allowing it to be proud,” he said. “You don’t need to bring everything in. This is a real opportunity to create a place within a place. What this district doesn’t have is a go-to place. This can be that go-to place.”

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The goats are going to need to find a new place to graze.

Killian Pacific has filed for a pre-application conference with the city of Portland for development of the “goat blocks” – a popular nickname for a 92,000-square-foot superblock bound by Southeast Belmont and Taylor streets, and 10th and 11th avenues. The grass-filled lot has been the occasional chomping grounds for a herd of goats for many years.

Noel Johnson, vice president of Killian Pacific, said the company purchased the property about 13 years ago and has been waiting for the right time to develop it. Killian Pacific’s holdings include a 41,000-square-foot parcel on the east side of Southeast 11th Avenue.

“As a company, we’re focused on trying to do something that is, I guess enduring may be the word,” Johnson said. “So, having the timing being right is really difficult because sometimes it’s good to do retail, and then other times it’s good to do housing. This is a site that wanted both, but you have to execute it in the right way.”

Designs are still preliminary, but the plan is to build a mixed-use development with approximately 200 residential units. The initial concept calls for three or four separate buildings similar to Trammell Crow Residential‘s Tupelo Alley on North Mississippi Avenue. That development has three buildings and incorporates community plazas and walkways.

The amount of ground-floor retail space at the Killian Pacific development will depend on the massing, but Johnson said it would be significant.

“It’s going to be a pretty big chunk of retail and should be enough to activate (the area) and provide a real catalyst of energy,” he said.

Killian Pacific has a large anchor tenant lined up for the site, but Johnson couldn’t name it yet.

He said he thought the project would help complement the Grand Central Building two blocks west. Foresight Development in 2008 restored that 45,000-square-foot building’s historic facade, and reintroduced a hip bowling alley, restaurant and bar. The recession curtailed development of much more in the area, but Johnson said retailers are becoming aggressive again.

“So, when we come in and build additional retail it will really start to get an interesting node of energy to that area,” he said.

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