Mamook Tokatee may seem like an odd name for a new affordable housing structure rising in Northeast Portland. But its meaning – “make beautiful” in Chinook Wawa – will surely be important to its future residents.

Community Development Partners and the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) have joined forces for their second housing project in the Cully neighborhood. Carleton Hart Architecture designed the project, and it’s being built by LMC Construction.

The four-story, 56-unit building is being constructed at 4636 N.E. 42nd Avenue, at the intersection with Northeast Going Street. By the end of this week, the long shoring pillars supporting the recently poured concrete deck will be removed, marking completion of the four-month concrete phase.

Currently, rods upon rods are laid out, waiting for construction crews to come by to posttension the concrete. Forty truckloads of concrete were used to fill the deck, LMC Construction Senior Project Manager Ken Bello said.

The structure will be three stories of stick framing over concrete. Timeframe Inc. is doing the wood framing. Crews plan to begin in early March, and finish in three months – one month per floor.

The building will feature studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units as well as a community room and an art studio.

LMC Construction is using an old bakery storefront as its on-site office. Afterward, the plan is to turn the space into an art gallery for the residents to display their artwork.

Mamook Tokatee is one of three affordable housing projects that Community Development Partners and NAYA are bringing to the neighborhood. The first was Nesika Illahee, at 6370 N.E. 42nd Ave. Work on a third building, Hayu Tilixam, is expected to begin in mid-March near the intersection of Northeast Prescott Street and Cully Boulevard.

The team’s focus is to house the urban Native American population in Portland, “which has been an underserved community for years,” Bello said.

The goal, Community Development Partners Development Manager Lucy Corbett said, was to locate the buildings near each other and the NAYA campus so residents can easily access services there.

The new housing will provide affordable options in Cully, where home prices have risen to around $400,000.

“I think Cully used to be one of the more affordable neighborhoods close to the core of Portland,” NAYA Director of Community Development Oscar Arana said. “(It’s) no longer affordable to the average Native American … just because the prices are so high.”

Creation of affordable housing has become really important to NAYA, Arana added, so Native Americans aren’t pushed out of the city.

Bello has witnessed a demographic change in Cully. He moved to the neighborhood in 1994, when it was inhabited mostly by working-class people, but has since seen it become more gentrified. He has focused his career on affordable housing projects, he said, and by chance was selected to work on these three projects near his home.

“(I) consider it a privilege and absolute joy to be part of the neighborhood,” Bello said.

LMC Construction is working with Zavala Corporation (concrete), Solid Form (structural steel), Union Drywall, MSI (plumbing), Andersen (HVAC systems) and Cox Electrical. The site was excavated by Lauzon Contracting.

The project team broke ground in August 2020 and is expected to finish in December.

Financing was provided from the sale of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and $2.36 million from Oregon Housing and Community Services. The Siletz Tribe contributed a $1 million Indian Housing Block Grant, which will secure 20 of the building’s units for Native households. Also, Metro provided a $300,000 Transit-Oriented Development grant.

“(It’s) really important for the Native American community to have housing that’s designed and created by and for them because that’s how we will effectively reach the population that we’re trying to serve and that’s tailored for their needs,” Arana said.

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Rarely do architects get to incorporate significant artwork into their designs. But for the Nesika Illahee affordable housing development in Northeast Portland, Carleton Hart Architecture had such an opportunity.

“I think the main inspiration for the design came from the Chinook Tribe, which were local to this region,” said Julia Mollner, a Carleton Hart job captain. “We did a lot of research on the language and how it is dying – there are only a handful of people who can speak the language now – and that became a force in bringing in different tribal traditions into the design.”

Nesika Illahee means “Our Place” in the Chinook language, which is fitting for a collaborative project involving Community Development Partners, the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest (NARA) and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. This is the first time these groups have partnered to construct affordable housing for tribal members in Portland. The 59 residential units are intended for families and individuals from the Siletz and other Native American tribes.

General contractor LMC Construction built the three-story, wood-framed building at 6370 N.E. 42nd Ave. An exterior plaza and large community room are intended to bring together residents and the surrounding neighborhood, while NARA will offer on-site substance abuse counseling services.

The artwork, meanwhile, is evident both inside and outside of the building. The highlights are a two-story mural on the west-facing façade by artist Toma Villa of the Yakima Nation, and a stone installation of basalt columns embedded with intricate, inlaid glass designs by artist Lillian Pitt.

This sculpture highlights the courtyard, which is accessed using large folding doors that sit beneath a prominent wood trellis intended to bridge the indoor-outdoor transition.

Inside, a third main piece is a large wall mural inside the main entrance crafted by artist Greg Robinson. This incorporates a sculpture mockup Robinson submitted in response to a request for proposals for the project. Though he wasn’t selected, he was asked to retain the wooden mockup for use indoors.

“The big pieces like the sculpture and murals and the wood ceilings, as well as the art piece at the elevator lobby – those were pieces that were integrated into the design from the beginning,” Mollner said.

Meanwhile, dozens of paintings, historic photographs and other visual items can be found throughout the building. All of the artwork, including the largest pieces, were procured through a competitive RFP process run by the development partners through the Kimberly Kent Art Brokerage.

Also, the generous use of several different types of wood in glulam beams and columns, signage, ceiling panels and more was intended to imbue a natural feel to the building. A large Douglas fir, for example, was cut down as part of early site work. Wood from the tree, however, was crafted into tables and other small furniture pieces now in the new building.

“It helps with the whole notion of storytelling, which came from the client side, and how we can touch the land and contribute to the notion of family, which is integral to the site,” said Carleton Hart’s Martin Segura, who recently was promoted to project manager.

Designers were able to join the Siletz Tribe and other development team members for those initial conversations.

“That informed the rest of our decisions in the architecture down to things as small as unit signage,” Mollner said. “And it helped us pick things up that maybe we had not accounted for.”

During early consultations, she added, the importance of textures – particularly those created by traditional basket weaving – was expressed. So three different woven patterns were incorporated.

“That’s a big one that we heard,” Mollner said. “But it fits the culture. So some made it into unit signage – there are some in the elevator signage; some got cast into concrete and some got spray-painted on the lobby floor, which doesn’t look like spray paint at all.”

There are obvious ways the building was designed with large art installations in mind. The main mural by Villa, for instance, is painted not on a flat surface but on an inset portion of the building that was designed to increase the amount of courtyard space in front of the building. This extra space, in turn, allowed room for Pitt’s work.

“The whole side of the building on the west is exposed and one of the ideas was to have it peel away and create a gathering space,” Segura said. “But setting that edge and making it comfortable was always challenging with cars flying by.”

This is the second project the firm has designed for NAYA. The first was the NAYA Generations campus in Southeast Portland. That project also incorporated a large deal of artwork.

“Each project is so unique to the partners and resident population,” Carleton Hart Marketing Director Robin Moodie said. “And having done so many we are still able to say there’s nothing like this one.”

Certainly, the artwork helps make Nesika Illahee truly unique.

“The art has been very central and significant to the population and the partners in creating a place that’s a home,” Mollner added. “There’s a lot of positive energy put into this project and making people feel comfortable and making them feel it’s their place to be.”

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