When Eric Lemelson and his development team started to brainstorm the idea that would grow into One North, they knew they wanted the project to serve as an example of what could be accomplished by almost any other developer in the Portland-metro area.

The East and West buildings of the three-building office and retail development north of Fremont Street between North Williams and Vancouver avenues in Portland’s Boise neighborhood were designed with Passive House principles in mind. But no actual certification or designation will be sought for One North.

Instead, the goal for the development is to find systems and approaches that could serve as examples and inspirations, the project team members say. As with any pioneering attempt, though, some parts of the project worked out better than others.

‘Wood’ you, could you?

Finding a source of timber for the extensive cedar siding on the West and East buildings required more than a little brainstorming, according to Cory Hawbecker, an associate and sustainability coordinator at Holst Architecture who is acting as project architect for the West and East buildings in the One North development.

The developers didn’t want to use old growth wood, which meant the siding would have to come from second- and third-growth timber, Hawbecker said.

The project team came up with a list of traditional sources for the wood, but Lemelson and his team rejected those options. The majority of the Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood used in the region comes from British Columbia. The development team was concerned that the wood is sometimes taken from First Nation native Indian land and that often only large companies benefit financially from harvest and sale.

The project team was able to find First Nation suppliers out there that benefit the native communities, but the could not provide the quantities needed for the project. So the team began looking instead for small private landowners in our “backyard”.

General contractor R&H Construction took on the task of finding such a provider, Hawbecker said. After an extensive search, R&H found a small co-op of private landowners that used sustainable logging practices in Washington state.

“The owner said he wanted to be able to shake the hand of the guy who cut the trees,” Hawbecker said. “We actually went up (to Washington) and met the guy cutting the trees and saw his operation.”

Working directly with the source providing the timber offered other benefits for the project. Wood from second- and third-growth timber often comes with knotholes and imperfections, Hawbecker said. By working with the co-op, the project team members were able to handpick what they felt were the best pieces for the project as well as specify which portions they did or didn’t want to use.

Lessons learned

One of the project’s unique sustainable features that was mentioned most often during the earliest days of planning for the One North development is no longer being considered as an operating component of the finished development.

A unique heat reclaim system would have transported heated water resulting from the cooling process for freezers at a nearby New Seasons store through a series of underground pipes. The heated water would have traveled up to the roof of the West building, where it would have been used to heat the building.

While heat reclaim, or heat waste, systems make sense in large structures – i.e., hospitals, data centers and universities – the project team realized that getting the system to be profitable on a smaller project like the West building would require additional equipment and money, according to Grayson Hart, who is serving as McKinstry‘s project preconstruction manager, and development team member Owen Gabbert.

The decision to step away from the heat reclaim system wasn’t made lightly. McKinstry, which is handling mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering and building for the East and West buildings, and the development team tried to make the system pencil out in a number of different ways; it even took a look at whether a nearby hospital could be looped in.

The developers also took several factors into consideration while evaluating whether the heat reclaim system should stay or go. New Seasons was already using some of the heated water from the cooling of its freezers to heat its own offices, Gabbert said, and the current low cost of energy combined with features included in the designs of the East and West buildings were already helping the buildings reach high energy efficiency.

In the end, they decided that investing additional money to finish the system would defeat the overall goal of the project.

“We could have spent the money,” Gabbert said. “But the goal of the project is to say, ‘Here are some systems and concepts (any project) can implement.’

“(One North) is not some ivory tower research project. On our building, we’re getting returns that would be attractive to other developers, and we’re using concepts that can be applied anywhere in the metro area.”

One North’s noteworthy green features

• A variable refrigerant system, or VRF, did not provide only a budget-conscious option; it also meshed well with the project’s design aspects. Holst Architecture created a design that highlighted heavy wood beams in the buildings. Using the ductless VRF system allowed the team to reduce the amount of sheet metal ductwork needed in order to place the visual emphasis on the design.

• Cavity insulation is composed of cellulose, “which is basically ground-up newspaper with a stabilizer to make it flame retardant,” according to project architect Cory Hawbecker.

• By designing and building in accord with Passive House principles, estimates indicate that the East and West buildings will use about half of the energy used by buildings designed and constructed traditionally.

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Crews with R&H Construction are building the fifth and final floor of the West Building at One North, a three-building office/retail development located north of Fremont Street between North Williams and Vancouver avenues in the Boise neighborhood.

Ground was broken last year on the Holst Architecture-designed building, which  will feature four floors of office space over ground-floor retail and total over 35,000 square feet. It will share courtyard space with the East Building, the core and shell of which was completed earlier this month, and the Radiator, which was completed last spring. The full development is slated for completion this fall.

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Adam Petersen has worked on more than his share of projects. But the East Building at the One North development in North Portland may end up on his list of favorites.

“It is so cool,” said Petersen, project manager for R&H Construction, the company serving as general contractor for construction of the four-story mixed-use structure’s shell. “It’s actually breathtaking.”

In addition to being part of an unusual development situation – the three buildings that eventually will make up One North development are being developed by two different companies – the exterior of the East Building boasts curving projections referred to as “apertures.” The unique design, created by Holst Architecture, makes for a visually stunning exterior, but it also posed some obstacles when it came to turning architectural renderings into reality.

But both R&H and Holst had an idea of how they might handle the construction issues inherent in the curved portions of the East Building. The challenge called to mind a past project completed successfully using the services of a firm call Radius Track.

“We knew we had a unique challenge on this project,” Petersen said. “We said, ‘Let’s see what Radius Track can do.’ They specialize in light structure framing for things that are out of the ordinary: high-design, think-outside-the-box construction problems.”

Radius Track Corp., based in Minneapolis, bills itself as specializing in “the art and science of simplifying the curve.” Founder, chief design officer and CEO Chuck Mears started the company in 1996, when he invented a tool called the Radius Track Bender.

The company has since expanded its hand tool line and services to establish itself as one of the leading sources in the world for curved, cold-formed steel framing. Radius Track has worked with Frank Gehry to create the curved interior walls for the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Its engineered dome framing components grace churches across the country.

“Whatever architects can design, whatever they want, we can build it,” Mears said.

R&H and Holst had already worked with Radius Track to create the serpentine walls for the Fields Dining Hall at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. In addition, Radius Track’s 3-D design and modeling services were a perfect fit with the Revit software the project team was already using for the East Building.

Mears always prefers to join a project in the design stages, if at all possible. More than three-quarters of that work was already in place when R&H asked him to help with the East Building project. But even at that later stage, Mears and his company immediately began to identify areas where they could not just help create Holst’s design, but also save money during the building process.

Mears and his team suggested getting rid of the heavy steel cage structures originally planned for decks and trusses on the building in favor of light gauge steel.

“Our decks were at one-third lighter than the original design,” Mears said.

Using Radius Track’s design and system didn’t just reduce the weight of the decks, though. Because the light-gauge steel was a cheaper option than the heavier steel and easier to attach finishes to, it also helped trim the overall construction costs by what Petersen says was a “significant” amount of money.

Radius Track’s 3-D modeling abilities also helped keep the project on track, according to Petersen. The use of Revit allowed Mears’ team in Minneapolis and the East Building team in Portland to hold weekly remote meetings, where everyone could dial up the Radius Track model. Petersen and the project team also traveled to Minneapolis and visited Radius Track.

“We got to see our parts in production and see the process,” Petersen said. “It really helped our understanding in meetings.”

Once Radius Track had fabricated the system components, the material was sent to a prefabrication facility in Las Vegas. The parts were assembled, and then loaded onto a flatbed and trucked to the North Portland job site, where Fred Shearer & Sons handled the actual installation of the structural decks, trusses and over-framing.

“The components were hoisted into place in a matter of days,” Petersen said. “What would have taken maybe four weeks if done conventionally, we did in about a week and a half.

“Early on, we committed to a very aggressive construction schedule,” he added. “All of the prefab and modeling was instrumental in getting us to that date.”

The One North collaboration between Mears’ company, Holst and R&H won’t end with the completion of the East Building’s exterior, though. In addition to the East Building shell, the trio will work together on the shell for the One North West Building, the final building in the development. For that final project, Radius Track is being involved in the earliest design stages, a situation that Mears considers ideal for the best end result.

“The time for us to get involved with (a) project is at the beginning,” he said, “when we can be the most effective partner.”

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A four-story office building in North Portland is one of three in various stages of construction as part of the development. The East Building totals over 43,000 square feet and will feature three stories of office space over ground-floor retail. R&H Construction is serving as general contractor on the project, which was designed by Holst Architecture for developer Karuna Properties II. The project slated for completion this July.

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The Portland Bureau of Development Services on Friday issued a commercial building permit for the third and final building of the One North development. The $6 million, five-story West Building will have office space and an adjacent, 14,000-square-foot courtyard.

One North is north of Fremont Street between North Williams and Vancouver avenues in the Boise neighborhood. It’s being developed as a collaborative effort by Kaiser Group and Karuna Properties II.

Kaiser Group is constructing the Radiator Building, which is nearing completion. The five-story structure has 36,000 square feet.

Karuna Properties broke ground on the East Building in August. When completed, it will have four floors and 43,000 square feet of creative office space. It’s due to gain its roof within three weeks. Tenants will move in during summer 2015.

The West Building, in addition to office space, will offer a community room for use by tenants and neighbors.

The East and West buildings were designed by Holst Architecture, and the contractor for the project is R&H Construction.

The property manager, Tim McCarron of Pingree Northwest LLC, said crews next week will break ground on the West Building. McKinstry has been hired to oversee construction of the West Building’s mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire alarm systems. The engineering firm previously was awarded a contract for similar services for the East Building.

Construction is expected to finish by the fourth quarter of 2015, McCarron said.

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A Portland-based digital creative agency will occupy all 30,000 square feet of office space in one building of a trio under construction in the Boise neighborhood.

The collaborative project, called One North, is located north of Fremont Street between North Williams and Vancouver avenues.

Instrument Marketing Inc. will occupy the top three floors of the four-story, 36,000-square-foot East Building, one of three buildings that will make up One North, according to property manager Tim McCarron of Pingree Northwest LLC. The first floor of the East Building has space available for retail businesses.

One North consists of the East and West buildings and the Radiator Building, collectively adding 100,000 square feet of office and retail space and 14,000 square feet of public courtyard space to an area that’s seeing a lot of residential construction.

“There is a tremendous volume of apartments either recently completed, under construction or up for permit,” McCarron said. “North Portland is very much in transition and we are expecting to find we attract businesses whose owners and employees want to live in the neighborhood.”

Two stories of the East Building are standing, and McCarron said R&H Construction will break ground on the West Building in the next month. The Radiator Building, owned by Kaiser Group Inc., is nearing completion, McCarron said.

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Nels Gabbert and Ben Kaiser knew early on that they wanted to develop a district, and not just a collection of buildings. The partners in Karuna Properties II LLC and Kaiser Group Inc., respectively, wanted their separate projects at to connect both to each other and surrounding North Portland neighborhoods.

Their central idea was to search for a way to share resources between three highly energy-efficient structures: Kaiser Group’s Radiator Building, and Karuna Properties’ East and West buildings.

“The challenge had been: How do we think of this as a neighborhood instead of a single building?” Gabbert said. “How can we utilize various assets that don’t usually get utilized?”

The three buildings, rising between North Williams and Vancouver avenues just north of Fremont Street, each will have a mix of office and retail space and be connected by shared electrical, stormwater and telecommunications systems, as well as a shared public courtyard.

For the latter feature, each developer donated land and resources proportionally into a fund and worked with the city to add an existing public alley to the courtyard. The result will be a better flowing, community gathering space linking One North with the Boise neighborhood, said Scott Noble, project manager for the Kaiser Group.

“It’s kind of a showcase that multiple developers can work with the city to create nice spaces,” he said. “Imagine if they were doing everything on their own. It would be more chopped-up common space.”

Meanwhile, the process to install utilities required significant coordination, Noble said.

Kaiser installed the underground electrical conduits and built a transformer that will feed power into all three buildings. R&H Construction, meanwhile, will do the same for the telecommunications networks. Stormwater systems will be shared between the West and Radiator buildings.

“It will take digging up access into the Karuna site so when that’s going on, it restricts how materials are being delivered,” Noble said. “It means excavating and backfilling as quickly as you can.”

Not all district development plans came together as envisioned. Underground pipes linking One North with the New Seasons Market nearby were installed while the store was being constructed; however, plans to create a district-wide heat redistribution system were scaled back.

Originally, piped water from refrigeration units at the market would have been used to heat One North buildings. But plans were crafted early in the design phase, before it was known exactly how much waste heat New Seasons would generate and how it would be utilized, said Owen Gabbert, Nels Gabbert’s son and a partner in Karuna Properties. Installation costs were higher than expected and a use could not be determined, he said, in part because the One North buildings were more energy efficient than expected.

“We realized it wasn’t going to work in the way that we thought it was going to work,” he said. “Waste heat only has value if you have a use for it. Otherwise, you’re paying money to move water around.”

Other options are still being explored, such as bringing other buildings into the fold. The system could end up being used as an educational tool for other developers interested in installing a similar system, he said. Regardless, the system is available if energy costs spike later, Owen Gabbert said.

As the project teams continue to build their district, R&H and Kaiser Group – the contractor for the Radiator Building – are encountering logistic challenges.

“We’re scheduling major deliveries with R&H along with the neighbors,” Noble said. “It takes constant communication.”

“It often feels like several projects are going on simultaneously,” R&H superintendent Andy Hernandez said.

Plus, site access is constricted and the three One North buildings have different construction timelines. The Radiator Building is slated to be completed by the end of the year and will need its power sooner than the other two buildings. The East Building will be completed by June 2015, and the West Building‘s completion date is still undetermined.

Work will take place on an expedited schedule because R&H by April 1, 2015 will hand over construction of the East Building for tenant improvements to suit digital creative agency Instrument. It will occupy three floors.

East Building at One North
Location: North Portland
Anticipated completion date: June 2015

Owner: Karuna Properties II LLC
Developer: Karuna Properties II LLC, Nels Gabbert, Owen Gabbert

General contractor: R&H Construction
Architect: Holst Architecture
Landscape architect: Lango Hansen Landscape Architects
Engineers: KPFF Consulting Engineers (civil), Froelich Engineers (structural), McKinstry (MEP)

Radiator Building at One North
Location: North Portland
Owner/developer: Deco Diner LLC
Architect: PATH Architecture

General contractor: Kaiser Group Inc.
Landscape architect: Lango Hansen Landscape Architects
Engineers: Munzing Structural Engineering, PAE, KPFF Consulting Engineers

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Portland’s office market is poised to grow, especially along North Williams Avenue.

“There’s very little office (space) and very little new office space that has been built in that area for some time,” said Lucy Corbett, a project manager for Kaiser Group Inc. “The majority of what’s being built now is residential. So we’re taking advantage of that opportunity to differentiate ourselves and add something to the market that is currently missing.”

Kaiser Group – led by Portland architect Ben Kaiser – recently broke ground on an uber-efficient, speculative office building as part of a development along North Fremont Street, between Williams and Vancouver avenues. The Radiator Building and two other buildings will total approximately 115,000 square feet of office and retail at .

Throughout the Portland market, office vacancy rates are down and rents are up. Kaiser Group is hoping to take advantage on North Williams, and build a green gateway.

“We hope that by adding office space it will allow people living in the area to work closer to home, and hopefully be able to walk to work and bike to work, and (meet) all those sustainability goals that a lot of us are trying to achieve – including the city of Portland,” Corbett said.

More than 600 new residential units are planned or under construction along the mile-long stretch between Cook and Going streets. Meanwhile, the bike lane along North Williams is already crowded at rush hour. Corbett has already secured a lease for 16,000 square feet of the 36,000-square-foot Radiator Building to the Kartini Clinic, a treatment facility for children’s eating disorders.

In addition to the Radiator, One North consists of the four-story, 43,400-square-foot East Building, and the five-story, 35,600-square-foot West Building. All are “pushing the envelope” in energy efficiency by employing passive house features like super-insulated exterior walls and triple-paned windows. Notably, the development will reuse waste heat from the New Seasons Market across the street.

Green building certifications won’t be sought for the buildings; however, Nels Gabbert, who is developing the East and West buildings with property owner Eric Lemelson, said the hope is that they will consume only 50 percent of the energy used in standard baseline buildings. Lemelson himself recently built a passive house on his farm in Carlton.

Kaiser sold the land for the East and West buildings to Lemelson in 2011 for $1.65 million, and then purchased the Radiator property in 2012 for $500,000, according to records obtained from First American Title Insurance.

The Radiator Building will have a geometric concrete facade interspersed with horizontal timber beams. The East and West buildings will feature sweeping “S” curves and trapezoidal window wells.

Gabbert declined to share the project’s budget, but said the cost to employ its passive features wouldn’t be prohibitive. He’s seeking traditional financing and talking with a major lender. The objective, he said, is to show that significant energy efficiency is obtainable without spending a fortune.

Another objective is building a community.

“It’s important to know that historically, as a neighborhood, it had a long dry spell and now (growth is) kind of coming in a tsunami,” Gabbert said. “One of the things that we’ve really been focusing on is pulling out the vibrancy in that community that already exists, and giving (the neighborhood) some new opportunities for expressing it.”

So, the development team has been working closely with neighbors to program a 14,200-square-foot community courtyard that will be open to the public. They envision it hosting events like movies in the park and picnics.

The Radiator Building is being developed and built by Kaiser Group, and designed by Path Architecture. The East and West buildings are being developed by Karuna Properties II LLC, Nels Gabbert LLC and Owen Gabbert LLC. The general contractor is R&H Construction Co., and the design firm is Holst Architecture. Lango Hansen is performing the landscaping.

Market trends bode well for the project. According to Colliers’ third-quarter report, demand for office space is growing as the local job market improves – Portland’s unemployment rate, at about 7.3 percent, has dropped 50 basis points over the past year and 400 basis points since the height of the recession in 2009.

The result is that office absorption has picked up in Portland – vacancy has dropped 120 basis points over the past year to 10.3 percent. The lowest vacancy was on the Willamette River’s east side, at 7 percent – 2.4 points lower than in the Central Business District.

Absorption did cool a bit for the first time in 14 quarters, but Colliers reported that was mostly fueled by the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt building reopening, and the subsequent relocation of numerous government agencies inside. Nevertheless, a Unico Properties-led institutional fund purchased the Commonwealth Building in downtown Portland for $41 million.

At One North, Gabbert has leased approximately 40,000 square feet to Portland-based digital creative agency Instrument; he also has letters of intent from two other businesses. Ground could be broken on the East and West buildings next spring, he said.

“We made it complex for ourselves,” Gabbert said. “We have a relationship with Ben (Kaiser and) with the neighborhood. We have the commitment to the courtyard, to pushing the energy envelope, and a commitment to pushing an interesting design. It’s a complicated and wonderful project … If we can continue to make good headway on it, it will be a distinctive effort.”

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Down to Earth Excavation Inc., are demolishing the former LV’s Twelve-22 bar on North Vancouver Avenue in Portland’s Albina district. Developers Kaiser Group, Inc. will be building a five-story, 36,000-square-foot office building on the site as part of the planned three-building Fre+Wil Dock complex at North Vancouver Avenue and Fremont Street.

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