, a three-story, 59-unit affordable housing building in Northeast Portland, recently received a high honor from the Urban Land Institute‘s Terwilliger Center for Housing.

The project won the Chairman’s Award as part of the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Awards for 2020. The award recognizes particularly creative projects designed to address a unique affordable housing challenge, according to a press release.

Nesika Illahee opened earlier this year at 6370 N.E. 42nd Ave. It was produced via a combined effort of Community Development Partners, the Native American Youth and Family Center, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz and the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest.

The development was designed by Carleton Hart Architecture and built by LMC Construction.

“ULI has long been recognized as one of the world’s most respected and widely quoted sources of objective information on urban planning, growth, and development so this award is an amazing honor,” Community Development Partners CEO Eric Paine stated. “We undertook this innovative project with our partners to address barriers to affordable housing for Native Americans, especially homeless and low-income families. This is the first time a Tribe has allocated its Indian Housing Block Grant Funds through a sub-recipient agreement in partnership with a Native organization, and established tribal preference on what would have been a traditional low-income housing tax credit project. Nesika Illahee is a project of which all the involved partners and the greater community can be extremely proud.”

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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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A new affordable housing project rising in Northeast Portland is being built to serve the region’s Native American population.

Nesika Illahee, meaning “Our Place” in the Chinook language, is a collaborative development effort by the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest (NARA), Community Development Partners, and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

The historic project marks the first time these groups have partnered to construct affordable housing for tribal members in Portland. The building is being funded in large part through the Siletz Tribe’s Indian Housing Block Grant, which has traditionally been used to build housing within reservation lands.

The three-story, wood-framed building was designed by Carleton Hart Architecture and is being constructed by LMC Construction on a 0.64-acre parcel at the corner of Northeast Holman Street and 42^nd Avenue.

Currently, crews with the Muirlands Corp. and Juan Luis Morales Construction are framing the ground floor atop a slab-on-grade concrete foundation. The building is being outfitted with prefabricated panels from Pacific Wall Systems.

The soils on the property have proved challenging, according to LMC Construction superintendent Tim Williams, forcing crews to employ three feet of over-excavation below each concrete footer.

The 59-unit building will contain 13 studio apartments, 30 one-bedrooms, nine two-bedrooms, and seven three-bedroom units. An exterior plaza and large community room are intended to bring together residents and the surrounding neighborhood, while on-site counseling services will be provided for those in NARA’s rehabilitation program.

Large folding doors and a prominent wood trellis are intended to transition the interior community room to the hardscaped plaza outside. There, curvilinear benches and radial concrete scoring will decorate the space.

Exterior materials are intended to lend a more residential feel to the building with board and batten along neighborhood side streets and wood panels along 42nd Avenue. Elsewhere, carved wood columns, painted murals and additional Native artwork will decorate the building, while designers envision both the lobby and community room as storytelling spaces.

Outside, the plaza will look to fill that same role, while on-site amenities such as a garden, a community room with kitchen and an exterior plaza with bench seating will also be included.

The project is slated for substantial completion this November.

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