It’s no easy task to transform a 105-year-old building into a modern health center focused on providing services to the homeless.

It’s even harder to make it sustainable.

Yet the proposed Multnomah County Behavioral Health Center is on track to be rated Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold, according to members of the project team.

A number of trade-offs and compromises were made for the sake of functionality. The lowest-flow toilets, for example, were a no-go. The county’s experience with other homeless shelters was that clients would use the toilets to wash items, or flush items that would cause plumbing problems.

Carleton Hart Architecture and Multnomah County also wanted to use showerheads with timers to save water; however, the timers weren’t available in the lowest-flow showerheads. The timers won out, paired with strong air pressure.

Those examples underline the trade-offs architects and other team members routinely wrestle with in complex projects in which an environmental certification is being pursued.

“The county has been very focused on we need this to work,” said Corey Morris, a Carleton Hart Architecture senior associate who is designing the project. “Let’s not compromise something (functional) for the sake of saying this is more sustainable.”

The Behavioral Health Center, which is still in the design phase, is meant to bridge the gap between homeless shelters and facilities such as the Unity Center for Behavioral Health, which provides acute care for patients in crisis.

“There hasn’t been anything sort of in between,” Morris said.

Multnomah County acquired the building at 333 S.W. Park Ave. in April 2019 from developer Tom Cody for $4.34 million. The county also purchased an adjacent parking lot for $1.5 million. In September 2019, the county’s Board of Commissioners approved plans for the project. The projected cost is $15 million to $20 million, including the property purchases.

The project will be subject to a Type III design review process before the Portland Design Commission. Mortenson Construction will be the general contractor.

The building presents a number of challenges that would be absent in ground-up construction.

“When you have this dilapidated existing building, how sustainable can you make it?” said Summer Fowler, president of ecoREAL Solutions, an environmental consultant on the project. “We focused on making it a super tight, super insulated envelope.”

With a tight envelope, air exchange becomes necessary. The building will have “way more ventilation than you would typically have,” Fowler said.

The building will have a 30-ton air handling unit providing 100 percent outdoor air.

Daylighting and photometric sensors will reduce the need for artificial light. In making design and equipment choices, the project team is trying to accommodate building users.

“It’s going to be a sensitive environment for people under high stress, or who have mental issues,” Fowler said.

EcoREAL Solutions has developed sheets that point contractors and others on the project team toward eco-friendly materials such as paints and finish materials low in volatile organic compounds and PVC-free furniture.

The project team studied but rejected installation of a solar array on the roof. The available area was too small and poorly oriented for solar, Morris said.

Instead, a green roof designed by NNA Landscape Architecture will be made solar ready in case an installation makes sense in the future.

The main floor and second floor are designed as a drop-in day center where users can shower, use restroom facilities, speak with staff and access additional services. The building will have 26 bathrooms and 17 showers.

The third floor’s group shelter space will be geared to serve users with persistent mental and behavioral health issues. The fourth floor will be dedicated to transitional housing.

A full seismic retrofit will take place to brace the building.

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Hundreds of people turned out for a celebration held Wednesday to mark the opening of the Asian Health and Service Center, a cultural, educational, health and social service hub in the Lents neighborhood. The three-story, 30,000-square-foot building contains treatment space for physical and behavioral health, the Asian Cancer Resource and Support Center, a 6,000-square-foot multipurpose room, a healing garden, and small multipurpose rooms for classes and group programs. The building also holds a ground-floor commercial space occupied by Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic.

The Holst Architecture-designed project was built by O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders, which broke ground in early 2017. The building features a distinctive metal sunscreen structure along the south façade consisting of prefinished aluminum attached to color-matched steel columns. The building’s southwest corner contains a three-story curtainwall system, which provides ample daylight for a stairway from the ground-floor lobby to the third-floor public spaces.

The building is one of four in the Lents Town Center urban renewal area to receive partial funding from Prosper Portland. Others include the now-complete Lents Commons and Oliver Station mixed-use projects as well as Woody Guthrie Place, a mixed-income apartment project now under construction.

The development team includes Asian Health and Service Center, Housing Development Center, Mark Sherman Consulting and Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic. The project team includes civil engineers KPFF Consulting Engineers, ABHT Structural Engineers, MEP engineers MFIA Inc., and NNA Landscape Architecture.

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