A cluster of 50 new townhomes will offer affordable homeownership opportunities for 190 people who have been displaced or are at risk of displacement in the University Park neighborhood of North Portland.

Portland City Council on Wednesday authorized a land transfer of a three-acre property to Habitat for Humanity Portland Region for construction of the True North project. The Portland Housing Bureau issued a Notice of Funding Availability and subsequently chose True North in 2022. The total project cost estimate is $29.1 million, according to the bureau’s website.

Previously known as Carey Boulevard, the property is adjacent to 6631 N. Syracuse St. The site was formerly the home of the Belmont Goats and then a Safe Rest Village until last year.

OnPoint Community Credit Union will offer affordable 30-year fixed-rate loans and Proud Ground will provide permanent affordability and lower purchase prices through the Community Land Trust model.

Councilor Mitch Green said the project is an example of the impact of land banking.

“The result of that is we were able to build a number of … family-sized units at a cost that pencils out for these families,” he said.

MWA Architects designed the project for Habitat for Humanity, which is serving as both the developer and general contractor.

True North will include 20 two-bedroom units, 19 three-bedroom units, and 11 four-bedroom units.

Homes will be regulated to maintain affordability for 60 years. At initial sales, 25 units will be for households earning up to 60 percent of median family income (MFI) and the other 25 for those earning up to 80 percent of MFI. After initial sales, all 50 units will be for people earning up to 80 percent of MFI.

All units will be subject to the city’s North/Northeast Preference Policy, in which preference is given to applicants who are current or former residents of North or Northeast Portland or who have been displaced or are at risk of displacement from the area.

“Right now, with Portland being in a housing crisis, we need more pathways,” Councilor Candace Avalos said, “not just into housing but into stable affordable homeownership for Oregon families.”

Five common areas will be developed with playgrounds, community gardens, picnic or gathering areas, as well as three access points to the Peninsula Crossing Trail. The homes will also have energy efficiency features and be Earth Advantage Net-Zero Energy Ready certified.

The Portland Housing Bureau plans to close on financing with partners on May 28, said Kara Hamilton, housing portfolio finance coordinator for the bureau. Habitat for Humanity plans to begin site development shortly thereafter.

Construction is scheduled to start in June and finish in 2029. Home sales will begin in 2028.

The post North Portland multifamily development moves ahead appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Happy Valley’s first regulated affordable housing development is underway.

Good Shepard Village will have 143 affordable homes, including 35 Permanent Supportive Housing and 15 units prioritized for veterans who have experienced homelessness.

The approximately $60 million development was funded in part by Metro Affordable Housing Bonds. About $18.3 million of the bond will go toward the project.

Director of Community Development and Housing at Catholic Charities Travis Phillips said the entire property at 12596 SE 162nd Ave. in Happy Valley is 11 acres; seven of them are developable, the remaining slope down to Rock Creek, which they plan to maintain as greenspace.

Still, with 7 acres available, Good Shepard Village will be Catholic Charities’ largest development to date.

The 143 units will be spread out over three buildings designed by MWA Architects. The two buildings on the west end of the site will be identical three-story structures with two- and three-bedroom units. The third building will be four stories and hold all the studio apartments, plus a few two-bedroom units.

The property will include a large community room, play areas, courtyards, garden beds and an outdoor cooking area, as well as 219 parking spots.

Phillips said while the development is large, “it’s about the same amount of work for 50 units as it is for 140.”

In addition to the buildings, the project is extending Southeast Skyshow Place by roughly 856 feet. Crews with Walsh Construction recently ran about 2,150 feet of storm mainline and 1,770 feet of sanitary mainline under where the road will go.

Good Shepard Village is one of several other developments transforming what had been a rural area. Directly across the street from the site is a 71-lot development for Pleasant Valley Villages, and down the road is a 38-lot development.

Drew Andersen, a superintendent at Walsh Construction, said they have been in close contact with the other development teams to ensure deliveries are not road-blocked or crucial construction activities, such as concrete pours, are not impacted.

The land Good Shepard is on was donated to Catholic Charities by John Brockamp, co-founder of Brockamp & Jaeger General Contractors, and his family in 2012. Up until the start of construction in late March, the Brockamp Family had a single-family residence on the property.

Phillips said with the growth Happy Valley has seen, the scale of this development felt right and was the site’s best use.

The project is slated for completion in late 2023.

The post Happy Valley’s first affordable housing development gaining steam (VIDEO) appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When developers Wylie Gibbins and Taylor Kaplan were searching for an underserved multifamily market, they looked to Gresham.

The east Portland suburb had several factors in its favor. Rents were rising to the point that new development could be supported, and job growth was surging – in part because of the arrival of an Amazon warehouse in Troutdale and Vista Logistics Park in Gresham.

Gibbins and Kaplan, who met while working at Williams & Dame Development, formed Gibbins Kaplan Development in 2017. The business partners found they had complementary skill sets, with Gibbins focusing on finance and investor relations, and Kaplan working with architects, contractors and city officials to launch multifamily projects.

Having found a suitable market, the developers next needed access to capital, so they turned to some bigger fish in the business.

Like many industries, real estate development faces a generational gap. Older, established developers enjoy many advantages – typically a long record of successful projects, deep relationships with investors, architects and contractors, and more resources to marshal bigger and more profitable projects.

Younger developers like Gibbins, 42, and Kaplan, 34, sometimes must become a bit scrappy to find opportunities. Enter the older, more established developers.

Gibbins Kaplan Development partnered with Urban Asset Advisors on two multifamily projects in Gresham: The Archibald and Douglas Grove.

“We basically rode shotgun with them on the project,” said Tim O’Brien, president of Urban Asset Advisors. “We helped them where we could, and otherwise stayed out of the way.”

O’Brien introduced Gibbins and Kaplan to one of UAA’s longtime lenders, helping the newer developers access debt.

“We helped raise the equity for the project from local, private investors. Then we went and signed on the bank loan with them,” O’Brien said.

Gibbins Kaplan Development this past summer completed Twelve Mile Crossing, an 82-unit complex in Gresham, in partnership with McKenzie River Company. The complex has 10 three-bedroom units in addition to one- and two-bedroom units. All are occupied.

“There’s a big demand for that (unit size) and a lack of that in Gresham,” Gibbins said.

Now, Gibbins Kaplan Development has forged a partnership with another Portland developer, Capstone Partners. They plan to break ground in June on Arts Plaza Apartments, a 97-unit project in the heart of downtown Gresham expected to be completed in summer 2023. Then construction of West Powell Apartments, a 48-unit complex, is slated to begin in late summer, with completion scheduled for fall 2023.

“Part of my interest is to help promote a good project, but also to help smaller developers,” said Chris Nelson, president of Capstone Partners.

For Gibbins and Kaplan, the partnerships have enabled them to get rolling on projects and establish their firm as a player in the workforce multifamily market.

“We’ve been very fortunate with both Tim and Chris that they’ve provided a lot of mentorship in addition to partnership,” Kaplan said.

Gibbins Kaplan Development does not plan to rely on other developers for long, however. The firm recently closed on another property at 405 N. Third St., that they envision holding their first solo development. The Gresham Arts Plaza property will have approximately 20 units.

The firm has also kept projects moving by using a small roster of industry firms. MWA Architects has designed every Gibbins Kaplan Development project to date, which helps the design process run smoothly, Kaplan said.

“We know we’re not going to have a big surprise,” she said. “Everybody’s done this a few times.”

Douglas Grove and The Archibald were built by LMC Construction. Team Construction, based in Vancouver, Washington, built Twelve Mile Crossing and is performing preconstruction for the projects with Capstone Partners.

Rents in Gresham do not yet support podium construction, Kaplan said, unlike in Beaverton and Hillsboro. To make the Gresham projects financially feasible, the buildings are designed with a minimal amount of steel on the first floor.

“Not only are steel costs going up, but the lead times are going up as well,” Kaplan said. “Designing projects that are responsive to materials’ (cost) increases is increasingly important for controlling your (total) costs.”

Douglas Grove and The Archibald were envisioned as short-term holds. They were put on the market on Jan. 27 by JLL.

All of Gibbins Kaplan Development’s subsequent projects are in an Opportunity Zone and are part of Opportunity Zone funds. As such, they are expected to be 10-year holds to reach the threshold that allows investors to forego paying tax on the capital gains.

Gresham has five contiguous Opportunity Zones. The tax break has helped get Gibbins Kaplan Development’s multifamily projects off the ground, Gibbins said.

“Out here, I think it’s spurring development as the program is intended to do and producing workforce housing,” he said.

Opportunity Zones have attracted criticism for encouraging investment in areas that already had attracted developers’ interest, including Portland’s West End, where a 35-story Ritz-Carlton tower is under construction, and fast-gentrifying areas of West Oakland, California, and San Francisco.

Other developers, including Palindrome Communities and Wood Partners, have targeted Gresham for multifamily development.

“There continues to be a lot of interest in Gresham as a whole, but certainly multifamily,” said Eric Schmidt, assistant city manager for the city of Gresham.

Gibbins and Kaplan have learned how to smoothly navigate the city’s approval processes, Schmidt said.

“They’ve been a great partner with the city,” he said.

The multifamily projects align with the city’s need for more housing, Schmidt said.

“They do great work,” he said. “Each project is just getting continually more dialed in.”

Gibbins and Kaplan said Gresham had been supportive.

“She’s able to key decision makers in Gresham on the phone on the weekend,” Gibbins said of Kaplan, “which doesn’t happen in every jurisdiction.”

The post Teamwork making the dream work in Gresham appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Construction crews have broken ground in Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood on a 110-unit affordable housing development. Cathedral Village will house low and very low-income families as well as people either chronically homeless or at risk of homelessness.

The four-story building is being erected on a 1.2-acre lot at 8614 N. Crawford St. The site is within walking distance of Cathedral Park, grocery stores and retail outlets.

Related Northwest and Catholic Charities of Oregon are co-owners of the project. MWA Architects is the architect, and LMC Construction is the contractor.

The building will hold one-, two-, and three-bedroom units ranging from 384 square feet to 1,051 square feet. It will also feature a community room with a kitchen, a shared laundry, a teen room, a courtyard with a barbecue area, a “tot lot” with a garden for children, and bicycle parking.

The building’s exterior will be a brick skin with metal cladding; an art installation will be added to the panels facing Crawford Street. The building’s other side will have views of the St. Johns Bridge.

“I think it’ll be a handsome building when done,” said Stef Kondor, vice president of development at Related Northwest.

The location was selected as part of an effort to ensure there are affordable housing opportunities throughout the city, said Travis Phillips, director of community development and housing at Catholic Charities.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit midway through the design phase, Phillips said, and main elements had already been established. The design team then looked at how to make sure residents would be able to both live and work in their units.

“I think that (need for individual space) elevated this year with the pandemic – the fact that more people are spending more time in their individual spaces,” he said.

Many meetings took place, Phillips said, concerning whether a cabinet would be installed in one place, or shelving units would go in another.

Affordable housing units often have limited storage space in individual rooms, Kondor said. A big initiative, she added, was to make sure each unit would have enough pantry and linen storage.

Team members also spent a long time configuring the community spaces, Kondor said. Wi-Fi was included in all of those spaces to make them more inviting and able to facilitate children’s schoolwork.

Catholic Charities will provide residential services and support within the building. It was important for those spaces to be placed near the community ones, Phillips said, in order to encourage face-to-face interactions between staffers and tenants.

A point of emphasis for Kondor, she said, was location of building entry and exit points allowing high visibility to ensure security. The design team used a crime-prevention-through-environmental-design model to make sure residents would feel safe. Landscape and lighting were given special attention. There will be no hidden corners, and security cameras will be placed in all common areas, Kondor said.

The aim of the support services within the building is to help people adjust to living inside if they’ve been homeless. Staffers also will help tenants understand the health care coverage system and how to navigate it.

With Cathedral Park hosting one of the longest-running jazz festivals west of the Mississippi River, music is an integral part of the St. Johns neighborhood, Kondor said. The project team wanted that to be reflected in Cathedral Village with a music room. It’s also working with a local high school to provide an after-school music program for children.

The development’s estimated cost is $37.7 million. Funding is coming from Umpqua Bank, Red Stone Equity Partners, the 2016 Portland affordable housing bond, Oregon Housing and Community Services, The Collins Foundation and the Hedco Foundation.

The project team is adhering to PHB (Portland Housing Bureau) green building standards and aiming for Earth Advantage gold certification.

The post Affordable housing coming to St. Johns appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Under construction for a long while now, Renaissance Commons (formerly called the Argyle Street Apartments) is due to open in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood later this year.

The building is rising at 2133 N. Argyle St., on property left over following construction of TriMet‘s MAX yellow light-rail line along North Interstate Avenue.

The vast majority (185) of the 189 units at Renaissance Commons are intended to house current or former North or Northeast Portland residents who were displaced in recent years.

MWA Architects designed the complex, which is technically a single structure. However, it closely resembles a pair of separate buildings connected by a second-story sky-bridge. The building will have a total of 151,555 square feet of floor space.

General contractor Walsh Construction is building the project for developer REACH Community Development Corp. Ground was broken in early 2019, and completion is expected by June.

Currently, crews from several subcontractors are on site performing interior and exterior work. Some include: sheet metal technicians with Pioneer Sheet Metal, electricians with O’Neill Electric, drywall installers with Bridgeport Interiors, HVAC specialists with Jacobs Sheet Metal, finish carpenters with RDF Builders and masons with Kraft Masonry. Tapani Plumbing, Vale Insulation and KO Construction also are working on the project.

The post Affordable housing builders approaching homestretch appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

An affordable housing project on the rise in Northeast Portland will add 159 new units to address the region’s ongoing housing crisis while providing residents with convenient access to mass transportation.

The four-story Glisan Apartments is being erected on a narrow, 0.45-acre parcel stretching between Glisan and Irving streets, just east of Interstate 205 and in two blocks south of the Gateway Transit Center.

General contractor Walsh Construction Co. is building the MWA Architects-designed building for nonprofit developer Northwest Housing Alternatives. The building fits the mold of workforce housing quite smoothly, Walsh project manager Jay Nees said, particularly in light of its convenient access to multiple bus and light rail connections.

“It’s all affordable, and it’s all geared toward the workforce so it’s a lot of studios and one bedrooms, not necessarily family housing,” Nees said. “It’s close to services, and we’re right off the light rail.”

Crews broke ground in March with the abatement and demolition of three single-family houses on the site. Once the 90,000-square-foot building is completed in spring 2020, the new complex will contain mainly studios and one-bedroom units, and a small number of two-bedroom apartments will be included, as well.

The four-story wood-framed structure is being erected atop a slab-on-grade foundation. The long, narrow building will feature gable ends with steep pitched roofing on the Glisan and Irving Street frontages. Cladding materials will include brick, and metal and fiber cement paneling. The project team is aiming to achieve Earth Advantage platinum certification.

The Glisan Apartments will be the first project in the area to include a required pedestrian path built according to the Gateway Master Street Plan, which calls for a network of new and improved pedestrian and bike paths to aid connectivity between large city blocks. The path will run along the west side of the property, connecting Glisan and Irving street.

“I’m amazed at how many people are walking by here on the sidewalk, but it’s not very friendly to walk on,” Walsh Construction Co. superintendent Andy Morris said.

The project will also include supportive offices, a large community room, parking for about 200 bicycles nine motor vehicles, and a landscaped courtyard.

“They’re committed to bike parking so there are big parking rooms on each floor,” Nees said. “And being so close to transit, they’ll be encouraging folks to use mass transit, because it’s in a perfect location for that.”

The post Affordable housing with a path to transit appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In 2007, conceptualization began for a highly energy-efficient office building as part of a mixed-use development in Milwaukie. Around 12 years later, Northwest Housing Alternatives has a two-story headquarters on track for net-zero-energy certification.

The five-building campus was designed by MWA Architects and built by O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders. Three three-story, wood-framed buildings hold a total of 28 affordable housing units, and another building serves as an emergency shelter. All of those were designed and built to Earth Advantage platinum standards.

But the office building stands out for exceptional sustainability. Project team members discussed the effort on Wednesday during an event held as part of Portland’s second annual Sustainable Building Week. Crews broke ground in summer 2018 and finished roughly one year later. But design work dates back to 2013.

“The project started with net zero as the goal,” said Bill Lanning, a MWA Architects principal and lead designer for the project. “Early in the design it was going to be net-zero ready, but as we moved through design and funds were made available through grants we were able to add the solar.”

That was a huge component, said Afton Walsh, project manager for O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders. PGE provided an especially important grant, Northwest Housing Alternatives Executive Director Trell Anderson added.

“With the grant we said, ‘How much solar can we do?’” Walsh said. “And what is needed for net zero?”

A 38-kilowatt solar array placed on the office building’s roof not only powers that structure but at full capacity is also able to feed power into the campus shelter building.

“There will never be any power going back into the grid,” Walsh said. “It will all be going back into … the shelter.”

In addition to the solar array, the office building’s envelope played an important role in energy performance.

“We tend to spend a lot of our love and effort on the envelope,” Walsh said.

Under-slab insulation was used, all sheeting was taped, and an additional air barrier was installed beneath the weather barrier. Meanwhile, the double-ventilated roof assembly features three inches of spray foam under the ceiling sheeting. This gives a final energy efficiency rating of R-69 – far higher than required by Oregon Specialty Code. Finally, vinyl triple glazing is used throughout the building.

Testing showed the building is exceptionally airtight.

“We did a lower door air test and it came out to .047 (cubic feet per minute) per square foot,” Walsh said. “We had to reach 0.1, and we basically cut that in half.”

Lanning and Walsh worked with Green Hammer on the project’s sustainable aspects. The design-build firm has net-zero-energy project experience, especially on the financial side.

“We talked about budgets and how to set the stage so we could be successful with net zero,” Lanning said. “Really, it was looking at how to simplify things as much as possible and focus on the envelope; that’s the first place to start.”

Design started with a passive house model to estimate energy usage. Then the same approach was used for mechanical systems via readily available equipment, including ductless heat pumps and high-efficiency water heaters.

But one of the biggest interior factors was use of a zonal ventilation system.

“The building is split into four zones for ventilation,” Lanning said. “And with that we used a cross-counter-flow heat recovery system. It isn’t readily used in the U.S. right now, and it has an efficiency of 84 percent, which is much higher than most (energy recovery ventilation) systems.”

Budget constraints led to decisions to forgo other options for ventilation, passive cooling and some automated mechanical systems.

Nevertheless, “constant communication” among team members helped advance the project, Walsh said.

“We were always verifying,” she said.

That paid off during construction of the office building, when an air gap raised questions.

“We had started framing and sheeting the roof, and that second gap didn’t make sense to us, so we went back to design team and asked” about it, Walsh said. “And they made changes that meant they were able to give a pretty good credit back to NHA to use on other features. This project was definitely a labor of love … a lot of hands touched it.”

The post A project team recounts its net-zero building experience appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A grand opening celebration was held Saturday for a new affordable housing building in Vancouver, Washington.

Isabella Court II is the second of a two-phase affordable housing project by developer REACH CDC. It contains 49 apartments available to families experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless. The four-story building is adjacent to the original Isabella Court, which opened in 2016 and provides 49 affordable housing units to seniors aged 62 or older.

“I’m excited for the inter-generational community that will develop here between our two buildings,” said Dan Valliere, CEO of REACH CDC, in a statement. “This new community creates many opportunities for collaboration, mutual support, and mentoring for the families moving into this new building.”

The new building includes 34 one-bedroom and 15 two-bedroom apartments. Rents will be affordable to families earning 50 percent or less of median family income, currently $43,950 or less annually for a family of four. A project-based rental subsidy from the Vancouver Housing Authority will make 30 of the units affordable for households earning 30 percent of MFI.

Isabella Court is REACH CDC’s seventh apartment community in Southwest Washington and the first to incorporate money from the City of Vancouver Affordable Housing Fund approved by voters in 2016. The $13.9 million project was designed by MWA Architects and built by general contractor Team Construction.

The post Affordable housing project opens in Vancouver appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Several months after installation of a massive dry well, construction of the Argyle Street Apartments, in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood, is in one of its busiest stages.

Crews are framing walls, installing mechanical and electrical and plumbing systems, placing windows, and wrapping the building with a weather barrier expected to help the project gain Earth Advantage gold certification.

Walsh Construction is the general contractor for the affordable housing project at 2133 N. Argyle St. REACH Community Development Corp. is developing the project, which was designed by MWA Architects.

Plans call for a single four-story building; however, the complex will more closely resemble a pair of buildings connected via a three-story sky-bridge spanning a ground-floor breezeway. The 189 apartments will be studios, or have one, two or three bedrooms.

Crews are working their way through the building from the ground floor up, Walsh Construction project engineer Scott Rascoe said. MEP subcontractors are not waiting for framing crews to get more than one floor ahead of them, either.

Currently, Wood Mechanix carpenters are framing the second story. Tapani Plumbing and O’Neill Electric employees are working on the ground floor while KO Contracting workers are installing double-glazed vinyl windows.

Use of prefabricated wall panels by Pacific Wall Systems of Olympia, Washington, has significantly reduced the number of carpenters needed, according to Rascoe. Instead of a crew of 30 to 40 carpenters framing walls by hand from scratch, barely half that number are not only framing walls, but also installing joists and sheeting walls, he said.

The post Affordable housing construction keeping crews busy appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In east Multnomah County, near the edge of the Columbia River Gorge, winds can sometimes become especially strong. The city of Gresham accounts for that in its development code.

The team building Archibald Grove Apartments, a 37-unit complex at Southeast Stark Street and 202nd Avenue, now knows that.

“There’s a 135 miles per hour wind load zone out here,” LMC Construction Superintendent Cameron Grieb said. “One block down it’s 120, so we had to completely re-engineer everything at a huge cost to the owners.”

LMC Construction is serving as general contractor for the project; it’s being led by Gibbins Kaplan Development, a relatively new firm founded by a pair of former executives from Williams/Dame & Associates. MWA Architects designed the complex.

Footings measuring 4 feet wide and 18 inches thick – far larger than the usual 18-inch-wide and 12-inch-thick footings used for three-story buildings of this type – were used for Archibald Grove.

“There’s a lot more hardware, a lot more hold-downs, a lot more straps,” Grieb added. “Even inside the floor system, I’ve never had to put hurricane clips and blocks on the floor joists before.”

Breezeways will connect the seven buildings at Archibald Grove and host apartment entrances, which will be shielded from surrounding street frontages. Wood framing is being used over slab-on-grade concrete foundations. Glass-fiber-reinforced concrete wall panels and metal panels are planned for the exterior.

On Monday, Precision Truss & Lumber began delivering roof trusses to Archibald Grove as a contingent of carpenters from Wood Mechanix continued to frame and sheath the buildings.

“Right now it’s just the framers,” Grieb said. “The plumbers want to work from the top and work down, and they should be in here soon.”

Grieb noted that Gibbins Kaplan Development did not necessarily choose the cheapest design or look to excessively value-engineer the project. He cited the roof as an example.

“It has huge gable ends,” he said. “If they went to a hipped roof type they would have saved themselves a lot of money. It’s a lot more lumber, a lot more braces, a lot more hardware. It’s going to give it a good look, but they could have saved a lot of money.”

Slightly north of the Archibald Grove project site, Gibbins Kaplan Development is working on a similar project – the 25-unit Douglas Grove Apartments. Both projects are expected to be completed by February 2020.

The post Construction with Columbia River Gorge winds in mind appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.