Completion is finally in sight for Multnomah County’s Central Courthouse project.

With delivery scheduled for spring 2020, the three-year process to erect a new 17-story, $325 million courthouse building on Portland’s waterfront is entering the home stretch as the number of craft workers on site starts to ramp down significantly. From a high three months ago of some 350 workers on site each day, that figure is now down to just over 200 as rough-in has been completed and finish work accelerates.

“The biggest period was about three or four months ago because you had everything happening,” said Justin Paterson, project manager for construction manager/general contractor Hoffman Construction. “You were still doing rough-in on the upper floors, but now the wet-side mechanical guys are pulling out and the dry-side mechanical guys are pulling out from the rough in, and they’re down to a couple of people.”

Architecture firms SRG Partnership and CGL RicciGreene designed the 461,000 square foot building, which will feature 44 total courtrooms on floors eight through 17. Additional small claims, traffic and other high-volume court functions will be located in the renovated historic Jefferson Station building at the southwest corner of the project site on Southwest First Avenue and Jefferson Street.

The project is aiming for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold rating. The new facility will replace the old county courthouse on Southwest Fourth Avenue, which was completed in 1914 and is considered by the county to be functionally obsolete. The older building does not meet modern seismic codes, and is considered at high risk in case of an earthquake.

The new courthouse will be an estimated 46 percent more efficient than a conventional code building, and will use energy saving strategies that include radiant slab heating and cooling, a high-efficiency chiller plant, displacement ventilation, radiant panel heating and cooling, thermal storage in fire and rainwater tanks and chilled beams. A rooftop solar array will help generate power for the building.

Another notable feature is the limestone cladding used on the building exterior and on the interior walls of the main lobby. The cladding was fabricated by Columbia Stone and is being installed by the company’s own personnel.

Further, because the building is designed to withstand a significant earthquake, viscous dampers akin to shock absorbers have been placed throughout floors eight through 17, while outsized concrete and steel structural members anchor its framework.

This is most evident in the main entry, where massive octagonal structural columns serve both a functional and aesthetic purpose.

“It’s not hollow on the inside, it’s solid concrete and it’s poured exactly like that,” Paterson said. “It’s got a wide-flange beam on the inside of it and then a rebar cage and basically a steel shell goes around that. We build that in two halves, board form line it, stand it up, bolt it together and then the concrete is pumped in from the bottom.”

Once the head pressure falls too low, he added, which is right around the 40-foot mark, crews quickly switch over and start pouring from the top. “You’re trying to make the gap, the seam, disappear,” Paterson said. “So they have to move pretty quickly.”

There’s the new, and there’s also the tried and true. The renovation of the historic, three-story Jefferson Station building falls squarely in the latter category. The first reinforced concrete structure built in Portland, the old building is being refurbished for use as high-traffic courtroom space, but because of its historic designation the original façade has been retained even as the building has been physically connected with the new courthouse tower.

Another original touch, however, is purely for show.

A 20-ton-capacity gantry crane dating to 1909 will remain on its original track on the top level of Jefferson Station, still able to roll back and forth smoothly on its track. That discovery, however, took a bit of work.

“It (the crane) was actually still sitting on a little stub of rail that was still there,” Paterson said. “We do a lot of work for Sound Transit in Washington, so we called them up and said ‘Hey, where do we buy railroad track?’ And they said ‘Oh, no problem, we’ve got a railroad track company,’ and he sent me a name.”

A Hoffman engineer sent the firm a profile of the needed track and a photo of the Jefferson Station crane. The response was somewhat unexpected.

“One of our engineers sent them a profile of it and a picture of it and the guy said ‘You know what? We actually have some of that in our yard.’ So they shipped it down here, it was actually pretty cheap, and we installed it ourselves.”

As it turns out, the century-old crane was built to last.

“We just connected the rail together and some guys got up there and unlocked the wheels and the damn thing still rolls,” Paterson said. “It’s got a chain fall on it and they started pulling on the chain and it traveled on its own.”

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The removal of the tower crane for Multnomah County’s new 17-story Central Courthouse has been postponed until next month.

Multnomah County is constructing the courthouse on a full block at the corner of Southwest Madison Street and First Avenue in downtown Portland.

Crews were in the process of setting up a crane to begin removing the tower crane, according to county spokesman Mike Pullen, when underground utilities were discovered early Friday morning. They could have been damaged by the outrigger supports for the crane that will be used to remove the tower crane section by section.

Accordingly, the construction team will need to revise the layout before the tower crane can be removed sometime in July in a multiday process that requires street closures around the project site.

Hoffman Construction is serving as the construction manager-general contractor for the project, which was designed by SRG Partnership.

Ground was broken in October 2016, crews topped out the building in November 2018, and work is scheduled to wrap up by late spring 2020.

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Several downtown Portland streets will close June 21-24 to allow removal of the tower crane that has been used by general contractor Hoffman Construction during construction of the new Multnomah County Central Courthouse at Southwest First Avenue and Madison Street.

The work will also impact all forms of eastbound transportation connected to the Hawthorne Bridge, including motor vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians, according to the county.

A traffic plan will be in place from 4:30 a.m. Friday, June 21 until 11 a.m. Monday, June 24. It will include the closure of Southwest Madison Street from Southwest Second Avenue to the Hawthorne Bridge. Further, eastbound access to the Hawthorne Bridge for motor vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians will be maintained from northbound lanes of Naito Parkway.

From downtown, drivers may use Southwest Columbia Street eastbound, turn left at Southwest Naito Parkway and use the northbound ramp to access the bridge. This also will be the eastbound detour route for TriMet buses that use the Hawthorne Bridge.

Southwest First Avenue also will be closed from Southwest Main Street to Southwest Jefferson Street.

Westbound access to the Hawthorne Bridge will not be impacted.

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Two and a half years ago, officials gathered on property near the Hawthorne Bridge‘s west end to ceremoniously break ground on the Multnomah County Central Courthouse project. Then major work began in spring 2017.

These days, crews are building at a rapid pace. As many as 350 tradespeople are on the site daily, at either the 17-story courthouse or the adjacent Jefferson Station building. Hoffman Construction is the construction manager/general contractor for the estimated $324.5 million project, which is being funded jointly by the county and the state. SRG Partnership is the lead architectural firm.

Structural steel and concrete work has wrapped up in the L-shaped tower, but most other trades remain on site. Electrical, plumbing and HVAC work is continuing in the two-story entrance lobby, and drywall is being installed. Also, extensive electrical work is required in lower-floor courtrooms and other court-related spaces ranging from jury waiting rooms to defendant holding cells. The 44 new courtrooms will be spread through the lower floors, while district attorneys’ offices and other spaces will take up the remainder of the 460,000-square-foot building.

A host of features, many passive ones, are being incorporated to boost energy efficiency. The project team is targeting a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating, with the possibility of stretching for platinum, Hoffman project manager Justin Paterson said.

Generous glazing will be used on the building’s east and south sides to take advantage of daylight. Also, a large rooftop solar array will both power the building and offset energy costs for the Hawthorne Bridge.

Underneath the building’s concrete floors, however, a radiant hydronic loop system will absorb natural light and the heat that comes with it, and then redistribute that heat throughout the building. A high-performance building envelope, meanwhile, will reduce heat leakage and associated energy use.

The top three floors remain open to the elements as rough-in proceeds and the curtain wall system is built. Professional Lath and Plaster crews are handling interior and exterior metal framing on the top floors, while Elemental Energy crews are installing the tracking for the solar array atop a steel structure designed to give maintenance crews easy access to individual panels.

Meanwhile, crews are also gutting the interior of the Jefferson Station building, one of the first in Portland to use reinforced concrete. That building is now down to its shell and a dirt floor as preparations are made to install new steel shoring in the walls and begin interior improvements. The building will house high-traffic courtrooms such as those for small claims and traffic infractions.

The project team expects work to finish in approximately another year. Officials plan to open the new courthouse to the public in spring 2020.

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A celebration was held Friday to mark the topping out of the Multnomah County Central Courthouse project in downtown Portland. The final structural beam was placed atop the 17-story tower by ironworkers with Local 29 working for Alliance Industrial Group.

The project’s groundbreaking was held in October 2016, and construction manager/general contractor Hoffman Construction began major work on the $324.5 million project in spring 2017. Ongoing façade work is expected to last through next April, and interiors and finishes will be completed near the end of 2019. Commissioning will begin next summer and run through early 2020, and a grand opening is scheduled for that spring.

The project’s design team includes SRG Partnership, the prime architect, and CGL RicciGreene, which is handling courts programming and design. Day CPM is the owner’s representative for Multnomah County.

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An elaborate, decorative mural created to beautify the Multnomah County Courthouse job site may wind up finding a permanent home when the job is complete a couple of years from now.

The mural, spearheaded by Portland artist Ralph Pugay and students from the King School Museum of Contemporary Art, currently adorns a temporary pedestrian shelter on the north side of the job site along Southwest Madison Street between Southwest First Avenue and the Hawthorne Bridge‘s west end. The artwork depicts a jury box filled with people representing the concept of a “jury of your peers.”

It was, Pugay said, an educational experience for students and teachers alike. The art community, the judicial branch and the construction industry converged for one project.

“It seemed really interesting for us to create a project that is courthouse-related,” Pugay said last week following a short dedication ceremony for the mural. “So what we ended up doing is creating a mural that is about us thinking about what … a non-partial jury (looks) like.”

Viewers now see 86 artistic portraits – figures created by students and superimposed into a courthouse environment. It relates to the new 17-story Multnomah County Courthouse building that is rising floor by floor on the adjacent site under the direction of general contractor Hoffman Construction.

“I think the students got to learn a lot about the process of construction but also about the judicial process,” Pugay said. “And me too.”

Overseeing the work, and helping connect all the moving parts, was the Regional Arts and Culture Council. It worked with the King School Museum of Contemporary Art and its staff to organize the initial art and its eventual installation by Hoffman Construction on the pedestrian walkway.

It all came together last week, when everyone involved gathered at the Hawthorne Bridge‘s west end to dedicate the mural. The event was attended by Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Nan Waller, Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith and numerous others from both the public and private sectors.

“Part of our initial experience was to talk to and have a conversation with Judge Waller around what she does as a judge, but also what the new courthouse is for,” said Pugay, who has taught art classes at the King School for the past year.

Waller was all smiles at the dedication as she surveyed the mural and spoke with students and other visitors.

“Hopefully we can find a place for it in the new courthouse,” Waller told the assembled group of King students. “Since I’ll be in the new courthouse, maybe I can figure out a way of getting it in my new courtroom.”

Each of the 86 figures was originally drawn by one of the 13 students in Pugay’s class. And because of time constraints, the project was carried out over a span of hours, not days or weeks. In fact, when it came down to the drawing itself, each figure received just seven minutes worth of work. Pugay ensured that by timing each drawing session.

“We only had about two class sessions to work on it,” he said. “Because the class happens at one in the afternoon, and at that time everyone is kind of (sleepy), so it seemed like a good idea to keep time. I think that in that way if we had seven minutes for each drawing there’s not a lot of time for overthinking.”

Once the initial 11-inch-by-14-inch drawings were complete, they were scanned into digital files and enlarged for printing. The resulting prints were placed on panels in the pedestrian shelter and laminated to protect against ultraviolet light and other dangers.

King School teacher Kiera Asay oversees the school’s leadership class, which provided the artists for the mural. The students experienced a lot of growth during the project, both artistically and personally, she said.

“We had to just be comfortable with discomfort and getting away with our mistakes,” she said. “The students, I really appreciate how they’re owning every part of it; they’re definitely owning the good and the bad. … It’s really exciting to see them get so excited about their work.”

There were smiles all around as the students toured the site and saw the sheer size of their work and how thousands of passersby, both on foot and in vehicles, were going to be viewing the mural each day.

“It has turned out to be really informative and something that I think that is very impactful, especially after today,” Asay said. “Coming and seeing it through, I think has been very impactful for them.”

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Workforce development has become a mantra in and around the building industry. It stems from an ongoing shortage of skilled workers in virtually every trade imaginable. Combine that with the red-hot Portland construction market, and it’s a recipe for even bigger issues down the road if left uncorrected.

That’s where events like , held last week, come into play. Portland nonprofit started the event as a broad strategy to help local educators guide young people into the many opportunities in the trades.

“The goal for today is to gain hands-on experience in these construction and manufacturing jobs so you can become a stronger advocate for our students and make them aware of those options,” Emi Donis, an All Hands Raised board member, told more than 200 educators last week. “You can help them gain the tools to help them with what they’re going to do after school.”

Industry for a Day is a collaboration involving All Hands Raised, East Metro STEAM Partnership, Impact NW, Portland Metro STEM Partnership and Worksystems Inc. The third annual event was held April 26 at the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute facility in Northeast Portland and at the job sites or factories of 38 participating construction and manufacturing partners such as Hoffman Construction and Boeing.

Following a large breakfast session, smaller groups of educators broke off from the main event to visit job sites around the region. Regardless of size or trade, all participating businesses have one crucial thing in common: they can’t find enough skilled employees to fill all their positions.

“We have an older workforce out there; you see it reflected in a lot of places,” said Hoffman Construction project manager Justin Paterson, who led a tour of the Multnomah County Courthouse project site in downtown Portland. “There are lots of reasons to get the workforce addressing those issues, not the least of which is a lot of people are ready to retire.”

Contractors have even taken to trying to lure retirees back to work, he added.

“It’s almost an insatiable need right now,” he said.

It’s not likely to change either. The Oregon Employment Department estimates that more than 30,000 construction and manufacturing jobs will be added in the Portland area over the next decade. This comes on top of an anticipated wave of retirements by baby boomers.

Making things worse is an ongoing lack of vocational and technical education in public schools. This has been the case for two generations as schools have focused on the college pathway at the expense of the trades. The result is that jobs sit unfilled as contractors scramble to find needed labor.

Groups like All Hands Raised are left to step up and provide pathways for young people. Even with professional training centers such as the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute running full tilt to turn out apprentices, demand is not being met.

“With the stigma, and the lack of awareness among professional educators who don’t know about this pathway, out of no fault of their own, they just don’t know it,” said Nate Waas Shull, vice president of partnerships for All Hands Raised. “The old perception of dirty jobs is still a problem. Even jobs that are still dirty, but also pay $100,000 a year, we still need to do them. So that’s what this mission is about.”

Hoffman Construction is the general contractor for the $315 million Multnomah County Courthouse project. Now 18 months into the four-year construction timeline, plenty of time remains for apprentices like Benjamin Gilmore, 20, to get a piece of the work. He is pursuing journeyman status with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 48 at the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Northeast Portland.

Gilmore attended Benson Polytechnic High School, which offers a construction course. This, he told the Industry for a Day breakfast session attendees, gave him enough knowledge of the trades to spark a desire to pursue a career as an electrician.

Now, just two years out of high school, Gilmore is already earning a solid living and has an internship with Precision Castparts under his belt.

“It’s something that’s right out of the gate, you’re already making money and it’s something you can build on,” Gilmore said. “It’s a straight shot to having a successful life and a successful career.”

That’s why companies like Hoffman Construction work with groups like All Hands Raised, Portland YouthBuilders, Constructing Hope, Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and many more to offer pre-apprenticeship programs for budding carpenters, glaziers, welders and other skilled workers.

“It definitely can be lifesaving; they can definitely turn your life around,” said Rosa Gomez, who is currently an apprentice carpenter training at the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute.

Gomez, while working mainly for Andersen Construction over the past year, has climbed the ladder to a job paying $24 an hour.

“Especially if you come from a background where your family has always worked in low-paying jobs, you can actually help out your family,” she said.

Industry for a Day Host Companies:

Boeing Portland

Cascade Controls

Charter Mechanical

Daimler Trucks North America

EC Electric

Fortis Construction Inc.

General Sheet Metal

GrovTec US Inc.

Hoffman Construction

Imperial Brown

Integrated Metals: Machine Tool Technology at Mt. Hood Community College

Integrated Metals: Welding Technology at Mt. Hood Community College

KCR Manufacturing

LiUNA! Local 737

Madden Fabrication

McKenna Metal LLC

Microchip Technology Inc.

NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center

Northwest College of Construction

Nu-Tech Machining Inc.

ON Semiconductor

O’Neill Construction Group

Oregon & SW Washington Mason Trades JATC

Owens

Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute

Pacific Northwest Ironworkers Local #29 Training Center

Pella Corporation – Portland operations

Portland Community College – Swan Island Trades Center

Portland General Electric

PCC Structurals Inc.

Premier Press

Skanska USA Building

Streimer Sheet Metal Works Inc.

TCM Corp.

Teeny Foods Corp.

Turner Construction

Wright Business Graphics

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To ensure that Multnomah County‘s new, $300 million Central Courthouse stands tall at the west end of the Morrison Bridge for decades to come, workers are using a seemingly simple method called crosshole sonic logging (CSL).

“It doesn’t look like much; it’s just a person pulling a string up and down,” said Justin Paterson, Hoffman Construction‘s project manager for the courthouse project.

But there’s much more to it than that.

The city of Portland requires that a contractor verify the quality of all foundation installations. Otherwise, there’s no certainty there won’t be problems once a giant building is placed on top.

The line item for using CSL on the approximately 80 shafts at the courthouse site runs around $30,000. Around six firms in the Pacific Northwest – two in Portland – have the equipment and trained personnel to perform CSL testing.

“It’s pretty inexpensive and readily available,” said Scott Mills, Portland-based president of GeoDesign, which designed the foundations for the central courthouse. “It was something that we recommended in our geotechnical report.”

To pour foundations for the courthouse and projects like it, first, shafts of around 4 to 6 feet in diameter are bored into the ground with a large drill. After the drill bit is removed, the hole is filled with a heavy sort of mud that holds the walls open. A cage of reinforced steel is placed into the hole and concrete is pumped in with a big, long hose. As it fills the hole from the bottom up, it displaces the mud, which is pumped out. Finally, the hole is filled with concrete.

However, installation can at times be plagued by issues that reduce the quality of the shaft. For instance, it can suffer from caving or voids in the concrete. CSL testing, which has been around for decades, is a way of checking whether the concrete is consistent and intact.

It’s done by placing steel tubes attached to the steel cage. The tubes are filled with water and sensors are sent down two different ones. A machine sends a signal between them, and it can identify any issues.

“Basically, it’s a sound wave that goes from a source to a receiver, and it gives us a sense of how long it takes to go from one probe to the other and that gives us a velocity of the concrete, or how fast the sound wave moves through it,” said Jeff Tucker, principal engineer with GeoDesign.

There are lots of other ways to test, like using temperature sensors to give a 3-D profile of the concrete. There’s gamma gamma testing, which employs a nuclear probe to test density of drilled shafts. But at around $10,000 per shaft, that method would have been prohibitively expensive for the courthouse project, Tucker said.

With foundation design, getting it right the first time is critical. Blowing out and grouting a problem area is a highly involved process, Tucker said.

“It’s not easy and it’s not cheap, but it’s got to be done,” he said.

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The Multnomah County Central Courthouse, one of the largest construction projects in the area, reflects an adaptive response to circumstances.

The $300 million project at the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge involves a new 17-story tower wrapping around a three-level restored historic structure.

Multnomah County already owned all of the block surrounding the 108-year-old Jefferson Station building. After officials closed a ramp from Oregon Route 99W to the Hawthorne Bridge, the block basically functioned as a small, off-the-books skate park. County commissioners could have elected to buy and demolish the building, but that was expected to take years. Ultimately, commissioners chose to incorporate Jefferson Station into the new courthouse.

Today, surrounded by a lively jobsite, all but one Jefferson Station tenant is out (and Sloy, Dahl & Holst Inc.’s lease runs out next year). Construction manager-general contractor Hoffman Construction, designer SRG Partnership, and some of the project’s more than 60 subcontractors now occupy its office space, including the former home of the iconic Veritable Quandary restaurant. On the top floor are mock-up stations testing curtain wall concepts, the unique slabs of limestone exterior, and the two-inch, graffiti-resistant glass.

Far, far earlier, the building powered the gears of commerce. It housed the electrical substation that powered the early downtown trolley. Jefferson Station is also significant in the history of building methods, as it was the first building in Portland to feature reinforced concrete.

“Essentially, it was one of the first buildings to use rebar,” said Jason Patterson, project manager for Hoffman Construction. “It was advanced for its time, but different from how’d we’d do it today, for sure. They were still learning about how to consolidate concrete around rebar and there’s evidence of that throughout the building.”

Despite being innovative for its time, in 2017, the building is a big seismic liability. Much is essentially brick stacked on top of brick, in some cases bearing on soil. To meet preservation requirements, Hoffman Construction and its subcontractors will replace the entire building structure with steel, as well as remove the top level (added in the 1980s) and re-establish an original entrance.

The restored Jefferson Building will be incorporated into the finished courthouse, likely housing high-volume courts with low security risk, like those for traffic infractions and small claims.

The rest of the project, the courthouse tower, is the real showpiece.

After more than a century of use, Multnomah County’s current central courthouse building on Southwest Fourth Avenue is “structurally and functionally obsolete,” according to the county. There is today far greater demand due to a much larger population, which has led to safety and operational problems, county spokesman Mike Pullen said.

The new facility will have 44 courtrooms and is expected to accommodate higher levels of traffic, incorporate a number of courthouse design best practices and meet current seismic code, which the current facility does not. The experience for jurors, in particular, is intended to be improved. Pullen showed pictures of the current juror waiting areas – subterranean, brightly-lit and sparse.

Hoffman is currently working on a $38 million preconstruction contract. In total, it will control $195 million of a $300 million price tag. Along with the land, the county is putting $175 million toward the project, with the remaining $125 million expected to come from state bonding.

The state has already provided $32.4 million of its share, and Multnomah County is requesting the final $92.6 million in bonding authority from the 2017 Legislature.

Multnomah County Courthouse replacement

Cost: $300 million

Architect: SRG Partnership

Contractor: Hoffman Construction

Expected completion: 2020

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Despite its design not yet being approved and construction months away from beginning, a groundbreaking was held Tuesday for the Multnomah County Central Courthouse. Major work on the project is slated to begin in the spring of 2017; in the meantime, the demolition of the Veritable Quandary building and tree removal will begin next month, and the new building’s design will be reviewed for the second time by the Historic Landmarks Commission on Oct. 24.

The planned courthouse, designed by SRG Partnership and CGL RicciGreene, will have 17 stories and reach 325 feet in height. It will contain a total of about 440,000 square feet that will include courtrooms, offices for district attorneys, public defenders, and sheriffs. The building will connect to the historic Jefferson Station office condominium building at Southwest First Avenue and Jefferson Street, triggering review of the project by the Historic Landmarks Commission.

Multnomah County has so far acquired all but two of the nine units at Jefferson Station, which will undergo renovations and be used as high-volume courts dealing with traffic and parking infractions, small claims, and landlord-tenant disputes.

Hoffman Construction will serve as the construction manager/general contractor on the project, and DAY CPM will serve as the owner’s representative. The building is slated for completion in 2020.

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