A new 141-unit student housing complex is now open in Southwest Portland. But first the project team – including developer College Housing Northwest, architect SERA Architects and general contractor Pavilion Construction – had to overcome a significant site challenge.

The Amy, an $18 million project, was built at 2031 S.W. 10th Ave., slightly south of Interstate 405. The property’s west side, which borders a Portland Bureau of Transportation right-of-way, has a slope with over 50 feet of elevation change.

A roughly 20-foot-tall retaining wall was constructed to hold up the hillside. But it was deemed inadequate, so engineers decided to use a soil nail system. This was accomplished by drilling holes into the exposed wall face and placing tension-resisting steel bars into the holes.

Then winter arrived in 2017, when the retaining wall actually moved beyond established tolerance.

“We had to buttress it and redesign it and go in and pour this additional shelf which goes up to the road,” College Housing Northwest development manager Ryan Sturley said.

So a second retaining wall was constructed.

“We kept the original one and we poured the new one up top,” Sturley said. “Part of the issue up there is Cardinell (Drive). Even though the original wall was 15 or 20 feet below the road, PBOT would not let us put soil nails underneath the right-of-way, or tiebacks.”

As a result of the slippage, the entire project was delayed while the shoring wall was redesigned.

“We had to put more, smaller soil nails in, and it was a definite challenge,” Sturley said. “We had to pause the project, we had to redesign, and then pour an even larger wall. It was the biggest challenge we faced and it was a big undertaking.”

The Amy, near Portland State University, is the first new development in many years for College Housing Northwest, a nonprofit. It has primarily built apartments in Portland and Corvallis, around Oregon State University. All of the housing units are open only to registered college students.

In fact, at The Amy, units are available only to students registered at least half time at an accredited institution, which includes trade schools.

“It’s been over a decade, and our last one was a partnership with OSU on their campus,” Sturley said. “It was actually a remodel of an existing apartment building, so this is our first ground-up construction since the ’90s.”

A post-tensioned concrete podium at The Amy supports five stories of wood-framed residential space. There is one level of below-grade vehicle parking. Exterior materials include metal and fiber cement panels chosen for economy as well as energy efficiency.

The building has 139 studio apartments and two one-bedroom units. Communal kitchens are featured on each floor to promote social interaction.

“One of the things we’re always thinking about is this statistic that says students that connect with one another are much more successful and have higher grades,” Sturley said. “We did that by putting in as much common space as we could.”

The building was completed in the spring and already occupancy is approaching 60 percent, site manager Josh Merrick said. He credited that statistic to the common spaces, among other things.

“We’ve only been open for three months, but we’re already seeing that manifest in students organically connecting in those spaces,” he said. “In the kitchens and elsewhere it’s a great connector.”

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A pair of apartment projects completed recently mark the first forays into new development in the Portland-metro market by The ConAm Group, a San Diego-based multifamily development, acquisition and management firm. Pavilion Construction and Shapiro Didway served as the respective general contractor and landscape architect for both projects: Cadence Apartments, a 166-unit mid-rise structure on North Williams Avenue in Portland’s Eliot neighborhood, and Haven Apartments at Orenco Station, a 150-unit garden-style development on five acres in Hillsboro.

SERA Architects designed the Cadence Apartments, which last week was granted a temporary certificate of occupancy and will be turned over in August. The building features five stories of wood-framed apartments, ranging in size from studios to two-bedrooms, over a below-grade parking garage with 85 vehicle parking spaces, bicycle storage and repair space, and a dog wash. The U-shaped building also features a courtyard with a projection screen and amphitheater seating as well as outdoor grilling space. Also, a top-floor “Rhythm Lounge” includes a kitchen and “kegerator,” plus a deck with panoramic views of downtown Portland.

The Haven Apartments at Orenco Station consists of eight buildings of one-, two- and three-bedroom units built on a former nursery property around the 111-year-old McGill-Pitman House. The project included relocation of a garage to be closer to the still-occupied farmhouse. A towering old oak tree was kept in place as part of a condition of development of the property. The units began leasing in February, and a grand opening celebration was held last week to mark the recent completion of the final building in the complex. The project was designed by Seattle-based NK Architects, and features amenities including a swimming pool, a hot tub, a billiards room, a fitness area, conference space, and outdoor fire pits and grilling stations.

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Portland is well on its way to spending the city’s $258.4 million bond and achieving a goal of providing 1,300 affordable homes, Mayor Ted Wheeler said Tuesday.

“I have confidence we’ll deliver them ahead of schedule,” Wheeler said at an event to mark the near-completion of the Housing Bureau’s latest project.

Portland officials on Tuesday unveiled the latest product of the affordable housing bond, a 51-unit apartment complex on East Burnside Street that will house families transitioning out of homelessness.

The project aims to accomplish two goals: stabilizing very low-income families and adding to the stock of affordable housing in Portland.

The five-story building is in the final stages of construction and is expected to open in July. It will house approximately 167 people, according to the Housing Bureau. The building includes 24 two-bedroom, 20 one-bedroom and seven studio apartments.

The property at 10506 E. Burnside St. was until recently a one-story, single-family home, with a child’s basketball hoop out front of the one-car garage. The house was surrounded by apartment complexes.

The project was conceived as a market-rate apartment complex. The owner is a limited liability company that lists Richard T. Miller of Portland as manager and registered agent. Representatives of the seller approached the Housing Bureau about selling the building, city officials said. The $14.3 million sale is expected to be approved by the City Council next week.

“We were able to act swiftly on this opportunity thanks to the housing bond,” Wheeler said.

The building was designed by Ankrom Moisan. Pavilion Construction served as general contractor. Home Forward will manage the building. The public housing agency will contribute Section 8 housing vouchers to help low-income residents pay rent.

Rent would be a maximum of $549 in a two-bedroom unit for a family at 30 percent of area median income (Housing vouchers would cover a portion of those costs). A studio apartment at 60 percent of area median income would cost up to $855, according to the Housing Bureau.

The building was originally designed to attract market-rate tenants, and as such it has amenities such as a pet wash, ample bicycle parking, in-unit laundry and quality finishes that are not typical of affordable-housing projects.

The building has 16 vehicle parking spaces. The project is also steps away from the MAX blue light-rail line, enabling easy mass-transit access for residents.

The East Burnside apartments mark the third major project paid for with proceeds from the affordable housing bond that was approved by voters in 2016. The Housing Bureau purchased the Ellington apartments for $47 million in February 2017, preserving 260 units, including 44 affordable apartments. The bureau also purchased the former Safari Club property at Southeast 30^th Avenue and Powell Boulevard for $3.72 million.

The Powell Boulevard project is in predevelopment – the lot was recently scraped – and is expected to be home to 200 units, Housing Bureau interim director Shannon Callahan said. The development could be a mix of stick-built and modular housing.

More affordable housing is coming, Callahan said. “We have more acquisitions we expect to announce in the coming weeks,” she said.

Wheeler said Portland will be able to generate more housing units if a constitutional ballot measure passes in November that would allow public housing agencies to commingle tax dollars with private development projects.

Wheeler is also supporting Metro’s proposed $652.8 million affordable housing bond. The agency is poised to vote today to refer that issue to voters.

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Among the housing issues facing Portland presently is the lack of affordable units for college students.

One project expected to contribute to a solution is The Amy, a development under way near Portland State University. The project is the brainchild of College Housing Northwest, a nonprofit that works to make housing more affordable for Oregon college students.

One aspect that will set The Amy apart from similar buildings is that its residents will be exclusively students. Managers of many “student” complexes give preference to students, but may allow nonstudents to rent units.

“Our organization is committed to renting to college students,” College Housing Northwest Executive Director David Garnand said. “You have to go to a public or not-for-profit institution.”

The five-story building will be constructed at 2031 S.W. 10th Ave., where a 30-unit, decades-old, wood-framed complex sat previously. The Amy will include 139 studio apartments, two one-bedroom apartments, 32 vehicle parking spaces, 230 bike parking spaces and 3,000 square feet of community space.

One of the biggest challenges for the project team surfaced in the permitting process: how to hold the hillside up. The slope of the lot caused problems with the planned retaining wall. The lot has more than 50 feet of elevation change and borders a Portland Bureau of Transportation right-of-way. Also, a 115,000-volt power line crosses a corner of the lot.

“There were some challenges with the shoring system to hold the hillside up across the PBOT right-of-way,” said Joshua Lupkin, a project architect with SERA Architects. “We had to redesign that system a couple times to where we aren’t encroaching on their right-of-way.”

The engineers devised a way to use a soil nail system to help stabilize the hillside. The system involves drilling holes into the exposed wall face. Then, tension-resisting steel bars are inserted into the holes and grouted.

“The city planners were skeptical of our system working,” Lupkin said. “We had to do continuous inspections and have a geotechnical engineer on site.”

The permitting issues delayed the project near the beginning of construction.

“Permitting took about 10 weeks longer than we thought,” Garnand said.

SERA Architects and Pavilion Construction helped straighten out those design issues. Each unit will average just 300 square feet – bigger than a so-called tiny house, but smaller than most studio apartments. Each unit will be furnished, and include a bathroom and a small kitchenette featuring a sink and a microwave. One of the major goals is to give residents a sense of privacy not found in other student housing environments.

Durability became a major factor in choosing everything from décor to building materials.

“When you are designing for students, you want everything to be more durable,” said Ryan Sturley, internal development manager at College Housing Northwest. “Being nonprofit, we want it to be as affordable as we can, but we want something that we are going to be able to hold for 20 years or more and be able to stand up to the abuse of college students.”

“Door frames and the quality of the paint was considered,” Lupkin added. “We wanted to make it easier to patch and paint.”

Accomplishing those goals while keeping within the price target for a nonprofit organization hoping to provide affordable student housing was another challenge.

The $18 million project was funded through bonds that were arranged by the Oregon Facilities Authority. Funding such facilities is often a difficult endeavor.

“That was a complex process, but (Oregon Facilities Authority) really helped us and made a complex process go really well,” Garnand said.

While the apartments will not meet Portland’s technical definition of affordable housing, the group is aiming to keep rents 15 percent below market rate. The median rent for a studio apartment near the PSU campus was $1,655, according to a February 2016 study by the Scion Group. A one-bedroom unit went for $1,571, according to the study.

“At the core of our mission, it is to provide more affordable housing,” Garnand said, “and make it really close to campus.”

College Housing Northwest manages developments totaling 725 housing units throughout Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood and in Corvallis, near Oregon State University.

“The rents are going up, up, up,” Garnand said. “It is tough to find any place at all. You have a lot of new housing, but it is mostly market-rate housing.”

The nonprofit’s hope is that The Amy will make living in Portland a little easier for its studious residents – presumably sophomores through grad students. Despite the hurdles, the building is expected to be completed in time for students to move in for the 2017 fall term.

“Other than the permitting hiccup, we are really excited about this project,” Garnand said. “It is going to be great for the students.”

The Amy

Location: 2031 S.W. 10th Ave.

Cost: $18 million

Owner: College Housing Northwest

Architect: SERA Architects

General contractor: Pavilion Construction

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Pavilion Construction is nearly finished building a 4-story, 12-unit apartment building in Southwest Portland’s Homestead neighborhood. The 3939 S.W. View Point Terrace Apartments were designed by COLAB Architecture for owner VPT, LLC, a partnership between fourth-generation members of the Schlesinger family and COLAB founding principal Mark Engberg.

Ground was broken on the $2.146 million project last November. Extensive excavation work was required due to the steep grade of the site and the prevalence of rock at the site, which had to be broken up for construction of the foundation and the elevator shaft.  Excavation and construction of the foundation lasted until late March of this year, at which point wood framing started.

The building features ten 1-bedroom units and two 2-bedroom apartments, as well as individual storage spaces for each unit and a 500-square-foot outdoor patio area.  It is clad in 4-inch Longboard vertical aluminum siding and fiber cement paneling. The units feature open floorplans, quartz countertops, and stainless appliances. Construction is slated for completion in the coming weeks, with leasing handled by 45 North Properties.

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In her 15-year career handling finance and accounting tasks for companies involved in real estate and construction, Sonja Saporito has spent more than a few years with firms at the top of the industry ladder. But while the view is impressive, she finds it far more fulfilling to be involved in the ride to get there.

That’s why Saporito, an Oregon native, decided to leave her position as director of finance and accounting at Vancouver, Wash.-based Holland Partner Group to accept the role of chief financial officer at Portland-based Pavilion Construction.

“Working for mid-sized firms … I feel like you can get more involved in more pieces,” she said. “When I got involved with Holland, that’s where they were at. It was exciting to watch them grow. But in the end, it was time for a change.”

That change didn’t come overnight. Saporito and Pavilion president Brian Gerritz first connected about two years ago. Although they both agreed that the timing wasn’t exactly right to join forces, they found that they had what Gerritz considered “shared backgrounds.”

“We were really looking for somebody with an understanding of the construction industry … somebody who understood all the way to the front of the business – estimating, contracting, purchase and operations, and how it all connects and flows through to the back-end financial reporting,” he said.

Saporito fit the bill. After graduating from the University of Portland with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, she took a job as a tax manager in the Portland office of Deloitte & Touche, where she managed a team specializing in small business and real estate partnerships. She then expanded on her real estate experience in positions as a senior financial analyst at PNC Multifamily Capital and director of finance and fund management at Homestead Capital.

In 2010, Saporito joined Holland Partner Group as director of finance and accounting in the company’s construction and development divisions.

“The construction division was only a twinkle in their eyes when I started there, something they were thinking of going after,” she said.

When the division started, she was the only person assigned to handle the financial aspects of a single project. By the time she and Gerritz reconnected and decided to join forces, Saporito had grown her team in just three years to 30 people handling the finance and accounting aspects of more than 25 projects in four different states.

Her team at Pavilion is smaller – a group of about six employees focused on between 10 and 15 projects. But a smaller staff doesn’t mean Saporito’s workload has shrunk. Just three months after joining Pavilion, she’s helping the company find new ways to tap into technology to increase efficiency, including moving Pavilion’s monthly billing cycle online.

“By going paperless, we’ll reduce the workload on our direct staff, and make (the process) more friendly for sub-tiers and vendors,” Gerritz said. “We feel that’s one way to certainly position ourselves in a better place with our sub-tiers, to reduce those tasks and let them focus on what they do best.”

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The Monroe Apartments project in Northeast Portland is back on the rise. The five-story, 48-unit apartment project at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Monroe Street was near completion of the framing stage when it was destroyed by arson last summer, sparking new city fire protection regulations for some wood-frame projects.

General contractor Pavilion Construction returned to the site in May to begin the rebuilding process. Work on the Tahran Architecture & Planning LLC-designed project is slated for completion by late February 2015.

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Pavilion Construction is building Moreland Station, a four-story apartment project at the corner of Southeast Tacoma Street and 23^rd Avenue in Sellwood for Urban Evolution Development, Inc. The building was designed by BAMA Architecture and Design, and will contain a total of 68 units ranging in size from studios to two-bedrooms. Completion of the project is expected this fall.

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Not long after a fire destroyed a five-story wood-frame building under construction in Northeast Portland this past August, Portland Fire & Rescue began reviewing its security requirements for jobsites.

Federal and local investigators eventually determined that fire was arson, and requirements at the time – including installation of a chain-link fence around the site’s perimeter – had not deterred someone from igniting the blaze, Assistant Fire Marshal Doug Jones said. The structure, at the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Monroe Street, and two adjacent homes were destroyed.

“It got our attention and we decided to do something about it,” Jones said. “Before, we required fencing, but we decided that was not good enough.”

Multistory wood structures, often in residential neighborhoods, are particularly vulnerable to arson, he said.

“They are like a pile of kindling sitting there,” he said.

Now, contractors constructing a four- or five-story wood-frame building in the city must have full-time site security, either with a work crew present or someone on patrol. Other new rules require that fire doors and sprinkler systems be installed as buildings are being erected.

The rules are flexible so that builders’ individual needs can be met, Jones said. Nevertheless, contractors are concerned about they will affect construction cost and practicality.

In February, the week the new regulations were issued, the fire marshal started showing up at one of Walsh Construction‘s jobsites, said Marty Houston, the company’s quality director.

The on-site security requirement could cost between $800 and $1,000 per week to implement, Houston said. Other regulations, such as installation of automatic sprinkler piping and heads upon completion of each floor, are not practical from sequencing and scheduling standpoints, he said.

“We’re not going to put a sprinkler system in during winter and have it freeze,” he said. “We’re also not going to add sprinklers as the building goes up. Everything has to be framed before the system is put in place.”

Walsh executives met with the fire marshal’s office to discuss alternative ways that the intention of the new regulations could be accomplished. A lot of gray areas still exist, Houston said.

Erik Timmons, a principal with Beaverton-based Yorke and Curtis, said he heard about the new requirements through an architect who was filing plans for a four-story multifamily project with the city of Portland.

Yorke and Curtis typically does not employ a 24-hour security watch, but does use a perimeter fence and cameras as deterrents, Timmons said.

“I understand where it’s coming from, but to require something like that seems a little heavy-handed,” he said. “For an average 10-month project, to have that every night and all weekends – that’s a pretty significant cost.”

At the Northeast Portland site where the fire was set last summer, Pavilion Construction is preparing to begin building a new five-story, 46-unit apartment complex. Its previous effort was about 60 percent finished at the time of the fire, company President Brian Gerritz said.

Since the fire, Pavilion has met with the fire marshal and updated the security on all of its projects in the Portland area, Gerritz said.

“We’re holding dialogue prior to going vertical with wood-frame (construction),” he said.

Pavilion will build the project with tighter security – including night patrol – on the site, Gerritz said.

“Given the history, Pavilion will have staff and guards (there) during periods of vulnerability,” he said. “We feel at this site an active body is going to be our best method.”

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General contractor Pavilion Construction is expecting to wrap work on the $11 million MW8 apartments in mid-October. The eight story building at Southwest Fifth Avenue and College Street will contain 54 units with 143 bedrooms for Portland State University students. The project was designed by architect Barry Smith for developer Master Capital Management.

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