Flooring underpins all of the other elements in a room. Whether it’s hardwood, laminate or carpeting, it’ll help set the space’s tone.

Dennis Stone, the owner of Wilsonville-based Techsource Enterprises Inc., recognizes the importance flooring can have on a first impression. Whenever people walk into a space, he said, it’s the first thing they notice.

Flooring “brings the room to life,” he said.

Before construction, Stone spent 16 years as a computer engineer. He traveled the U.S. and overseas troubleshooting computer systems. Stone said he longed for the day he could work for himself. Then a client offered Stone a contracting opportunity – which he accepted.

Later, in 1996, he started Techsource Enterprises as a contractor. Early on, he rehabbed foreclosed properties. Eventually, Stone transitioned his business to focus solely on flooring, which was his favorite part of the rehab process.

“It’s almost like you’re the closer,” he said.

Flooring is one of the last components of a project. By then, infrastructure has been set, plumbing and electrical portions have been fitted, and the paint has been applied.

“It’s the final piece,” Stone said. “It’s your touch to that space.”

Techsource Enterprises started out installing residential flooring and then 11 years ago shifted to commercial projects. The feeling of transforming an office space and bringing it to life has never faded, Stone said. It was what first attracted him to flooring, he added.

As with any endeavor, Stone said, money has been a challenge. At one point, he said, he sold his vehicle in order to make payroll and pay his employees.

“Getting the capital and getting people to believe in you,” he said, has been the most challenging part.

But along the way, Stone has been able to build more relationships.

One day, when eating breakfast outside of a restaurant in Lake Oswego, Stone was stopped by a man.

“I don’t know (if it was because) both (of us) being Black, he asked what I did,” Stone said. “I said, ‘I do flooring.’”

The man gave Stone his business card. It turned out to be Hermann Colas Jr., founder of Colas Construction. Stone later made a phone call and was able to get back-to-back contracts with Colas Construction.

“I am very grateful to him,” Stone said.

This past year, Stone worked on his first major project – the Meyer Memorial Trust headquarters. The building has 19,800 square feet of carpet tile, hardwood and vinyl. O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders was the project’s general contractor.

Stone “just has a really solid business and accruement on the way he approaches the work,” O’Neill Construction Group owner Maurice Rahming said. “He knows the business and comes up with good recommendations. He usually has the answer for you – and different options.”

Rahming said there was a good indication that Stone was a team player, and then he proved it.

“Really solid guy and really solid company,” Rahming said.

So far, Stone said some of his most memorable projects are the Yacht Harbor Club Apartments, a job for Toyota of Corvallis, and hospital work for Kaiser Permanente and Veterans Affairs.

During this past year, even during the pandemic, the company has continued to grow, Stone said. He has six full-time employees and is bidding on projects nonstop.

Techsource Enterprises is one of the only African American-owned commercial flooring companies in Oregon. But that hasn’t widened the door of opportunity, according to Stone.

“Has it advanced me?” he said. “I don’t see that.”

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O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders has been awarded a $4.4 million contract by Prosper Portland to construct an interim U.S. Postal Service retail storefront in an existing parking structure in Northwest Portland.

The public project is part of a shuffle required by the Broadway Corridor mega-project. Prosper Portland agreed to provide an interim retail presence for the federal agency as part of the 2016 deal to acquire and demolish the USPS facility on 13.4 acres in Northwest Portland.

In January 2019, the USPS relocated sorting and other nonretail functions to a facility on Northeast Cornfoot Road, near Portland International Airport. Relocation of the retail storefront will allow for demolition of the processing and distribution building.

Prosper Portland approved the contract by a unanimous vote on Wednesday.

GBD Architects and Cornerstone Architects have been working with Prosper Portland to plan the postal storefront. It will be located within an existing parking structure at 715 N.W. Hoyt St.

O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders is a partnership between two Portland contractors: O’Neill Construction Group, a Minority Business Enterprise/Disadvantaged Business Enterprise-certified and veteran-owned firm, and Walsh Construction Co.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated that O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders is a registered Oregon minority-owned firm through the Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID). While O’Neill Construction Group is a registered COBID firm, O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders is not.

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The largest affordable housing development to arrive in Multnomah County in the past half century is now open.

The Louisa Flowers is a 12-story, 240-unit mixed-use building operated by Home Forward in Lloyd, at 515 N.E. Holladay St. LEVER Architecture and LRS Architects designed the building to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold standards. O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders, served as the project’s general contractor.

The building has 88 studio apartments, 109 one-bedroom apartments and 43 two-bedroom apartments; all are affordable units. Ground-floor space is occupied by on-site property management and retail shops.

Louisa Flowers and her husband Allen were two of the leaders of Portland’s small African-American community in the 1890s, according to Oregon Black Pioneers. After first operating a farm in the Lents area, Louisa purchased land in lower Albina and built four homes there – not far from the new building named for her.

“The process we undertook to name this building is different than the way we’ve approached it in the past,” Home Forward Executive Director Michael Buonocore said. “We took our time recognizing that the contributions of people of color and women in this city are often disregarded in the naming of our buildings, streets and landmarks.”

Buonocore expressed gratitude to the Oregon Black Pioneers and YWCA for assisting the process.

“Their history, their contributions to this city will not be lost, and we will all understand ourselves a little better as Portlanders for knowing about the Flowers family,” Buonocore said.

Crews in late 2017 broke ground on the building that has provided the local market the most new affordable units since the 286-unit Hollywood East building opened in 1969.

The $74 million project was funded through a mix of public and private sources. The single largest chunk was $28.7 million via federal low-income housing tax credits. An additional $18 million came from bond funding, and $5.1 million more came from the city of Portland.

The Jim Smith Garden open-air courtyard, named in honor of Home Forward’s former board chairman, highlights the ground floor and connects the building’s lobby, commercial spaces and the building’s north and south sides, via covered walkways.

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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.”

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Officials hosted a brief ceremony Monday to celebrate the start of construction on a new headquarters for an influential philanthropic organization.

Meyer Memorial Trust will occupy a three-story, 20,000-square-foot building due to rise on a 0.46-acre lot at 2045 N. Vancouver Ave. Project^ is developing the project, which was designed by LEVER Architecture. O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders is serving as general contractor.

Currently, Meyer Memorial Trust’s 42 employees work in 11,000 square feet of leased office space in the Gregory Lofts building, at 425 N.W. 10th Ave.

The new headquarters will have a 50-kilowatt photovoltaic solar array and other features expected to help gain a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating. A unique roofline is intended to provide as much south-facing area as possible for the solar array, LEVER Architecture project director Chandra Robinson said.

“With a focus on environmental sustainability, the building has been designed to use 30 percent less energy than if it was built to minimum code standards,” Project^ partner Anyeley Hallova said Monday. “In addition, we’ll be sourcing materials that were originally harvested and/or locally manufactured. This includes the mass plywood that will be sourced from a Central Oregon lumber mill and manufactured there.”

Freres Lumber, based in Lyons, southeast of Salem, is the manufacturer of the mass plywood panels. The veneer-based products are customizable, and can be as large as 12 feet wide, 48 feet long and 24 inches thick. Freres Lumber previously worked with LEVER Architecture on the Mass Plywood Pavilion built in 2017 at the Portland Art Museum as part of an exhibition.

The new building’s design, Robinson said, is intended to reflect the late Fred G. Meyer’s values. The team sought to create connections with the community and the natural surroundings, and ensure the building would be sustainable and equitable. There will be a prominent front porch, a plaza, bicycle parking and landscaping.

“It’s creating an asset that doesn’t currently exist in the neighborhood,” Robinson said. “The other thing about the ground floor of the building is it’s very transparent; you can really see through the building and see the activity happening inside.”

Light-colored, metal, folded panels accent the building façade and offer “simple yet dynamic visual interest throughout the day,” Hallova said.

Even the landscaping will bolster the design themes, with plants of significance to native Columbia River tribes.

Inside, a library, an educational garden, gathering space and other amenities will contribute to the same themes, Hallova added.

Officials expect construction to wrap up in about a year. One of the project goals is for at least 43 percent participation by minority-owned or women-owned firms. A similar percentage is being sought for participation by apprentices.

“Meyer has asked us to do much more than just meet goals for equity and inclusion,” O’Neill Construction Group President Maurice Rahming said. “We’re not interested in lip service.”

Meyer Memorial Trust, founded in 1982, is now one of Portland’s largest nonprofits. Since its inception, the organization has awarded grants totaling nearly $800 million to more than 3,300 recipients around the Pacific Northwest.

The group purchased the Vancouver Avenue property for $4.96 million in January 2018 and demolished an old cinder block and sheet metal building previously used by Sergeants Towing. Timber supports from the old building were salvaged for use in the new one.

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The largest single-building affordable housing project in Multnomah County in 50 years, according to developer Home Forward, is well on its way to completion.

The Grand Avenue Apartments, a 12-story, 240-unit building on the rise in the Lloyd area, is being constructed by O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders. The design by Lever Architecture and LRS Architects is intended to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold standards. When finished, the building will provide 88 studios, 109 one-bedroom apartments and 43 two-bedroom apartments; all will be affordable units. Ground-floor commercial space will include on-site property management and retail shops.

Work is currently about 60 percent complete at 1010 N.E. Grand Ave.

“We finished pouring concrete on the roof,” Walsh Construction project manager Meghan Herteg said. “January 11 was the last pour, and we are almost close to punching out the first units on the second floor. Those will be finished in the next three to four weeks.”

Ground was broken in late 2017. The project team is expected to obtain a temporary certificate of occupancy by mid-October.

Calista Fitzgerald, an associate at LRS Architects, said outstanding communication among project team members has expedited progress on issues like materials and costs.

“I don’t think any of us approached this as a ‘find the cheapest solution’ project,” she said. “It’s ‘find the right solution for the context and make that solution affordable.’”

Home Forward senior project manager Julie Livingston and O’Neill Construction Group project manager Ali O’Neill both said the construction manager-general contractor delivery method has played a big role in that communication.

The result, Livingston said, will be an attractive building that will improve the urban fabric of the surrounding district.

“Lloyd has a different urban development pattern than the rest of the Central City,” she said. “This building has an incredibly strong street wall, and this does a lot to create an active streetscape in a neighborhood that does not have a strong active ground floor from block to block. This is doing a lot to push Lloyd forward in its urban development.”

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O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders, a partnership serving as the general contractor for Northwest Housing Alternatives‘ headquarters project, has its hands full.

“We’ve got three different construction types across five different buildings, which makes it a lot of fun and really easy to coordinate,” superintendent Drew Anderson said with a laugh. “They do that to make it easier on us.”

Northwest Housing Alternatives, a nonprofit, builds and manages affordable housing and homeless services throughout Oregon. Its in downtown Milwaukie, fronting Lake Road, includes one office building, three residential buildings and an emergency shelter.

Funding is coming from a variety of sources, including Clackamas County, $8.4 million worth of federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits, private contributions and a $2.78 million NOAH (Network for Oregon Affordable Housing) mortgage.

“A note on the housing buildings is that they are all (being built to) Earth Advantage” (silver standards), Anderson said. “So not only do we have a mix of funding on this project, but we have a mix of construction types.”

Northwest Housing Alternatives’ standard practice is to adhere to Earth Advantage standards for its new projects. This one was designed by . The three residential buildings will provide 28 total units – almost entirely two- and three-bedroom apartments.

The development and management office is actually being built to achieve net zero certification. To do this, a 38-kilowatt solar array will be installed on the roof of the split-level building, with insulation “like you wouldn’t believe,” Anderson said. Even the foundation will be insulated.

“All the slabs that we’ve poured here have two layers of two-inch, staggered, rigid foam insulation underneath the concrete,” he said. “The construction techniques are very similar to passive house because we’re building a highly efficient building.”

To achieve certification, the building will undergo a 12-month audit to demonstrate that it ultimately produces more energy than it consumes.

Then a two-story, eight-unit emergency family shelter will be built with more traditional techniques to provide the same services as the longstanding Annie Ross House, which was one of 11 structures on the 1.75-acre site that were demolished to make way for the new campus. The new shelter will take on the Annie Ross name and provide 60 percent more space than the old facility.

Currently, construction of each building is in a different phase.

Last week, in Building A of the residential trio, crews stocked and installed drywall. In Building C, MEP rough-in took place while roofers completed sheeting. In Building B, crews of carpenters from subcontractor Wood Mechanix busily installed roof trusses and the first pieces of sheeting.

The three residential structures were the first to have their foundations poured. The new office building was next in line and currently is gaining exterior wood-framed walls.

The emergency shelter is the final piece of the puzzle, in a center space surrounded by the other four buildings. Crews have finished pouring the concrete matte-slab foundation and installing utilities.

“It’s all old-school, with minimal production,” Anderson said. “It’s lay it out, shoot them all together, stand the walls and keep going. I’d really prefer to have a crane, but they told me it wasn’t in the budget.”

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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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The O’Neill-Walsh Community Builders partnership is the general contractor on the fast-rising Grand Avenue Apartments, the largest single-building affordable housing project in Portland since 1969. The developer and owner, , is Multnomah County’s public housing authority. Home Forward also operates the 14-story, 286-unit Hollywood East tower block in northeast Portland, which opened in 1969 amid a boom in public housing construction.

In this video, Project Manager Meghan Herteg talks about the Grand Avenue project, which does not yet have an official name, as well as about project participants, which include KPFF Consulting Engineers, Lever Architecture and LRS Architects and numerous subcontractors. Finally, Herteg addresses the company’s reputation for involving itself in affordable housing and other projects that benefit the wider community.

You can also view a photo gallery from the job site by clicking this link. And don’t forget to check back with us for the complete story both online and in print.

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The O’Neill-Walsh Community Builders partnership is constructing a 12-story mixed-use tower for Home Forward, which is Multnomah County’s public housing authority. The building will have 244 affordable housing units along with ground floor retail and a public courtyard accessible from sidewalks. The $74 million project was made possible in part because of a property tax loophole that gives relief to operators of affordable housing.

This gallery of photos was taken on the job site last week and shows trades workers installing rebar and an aluminum concrete shoring system in preparation for pouring the next concrete deck. Project completion is scheduled for October 2019. Don’t forget to check back for the complete story on this project, but in the meantime, there’s a video of the project site to watch.

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