Proposed legislation that would create a state historic rehabilitation fund to help offset the cost of restoring and upgrading aging commercial buildings could encourage more renovation projects throughout Oregon.

The Revitalize Main Street Act is in the queue to be introduced in the Oregon Legislature by the Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue for consideration during the 2015 regular session, Restore Oregon Executive Director Peggy Moretti said.

The Portland-based nonprofit advocates for historic preservation and is lobbying for the legislation as a way to help revitalize downtowns in cities throughout the state. The proposed state incentive program would help break down the financial barrier for property owners considering seismic upgrades and other costly measures to rehabilitate older buildings, Moretti said.

“It always boiled down to money,” she said. “Oftentimes, it’s just out of reach. When we realized Oregon lacked a financial incentive we realized this was the single most important thing we could do to encourage preservation and revitalize main streets. We’re responding to the need we saw in the field.”

The bill would create a fund with revenue from the auction of state income tax credits at a capped amount. This money would be used to provide developers or property owners a 25 percent rebate – administered through the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office – on restorations of historic commercial buildings. The fund would operate much like the Oregon Production Investment Fund, which encourages film production in the state.

Presently, 35 other states offer historic restoration incentives similar to what is being proposed in the Revitalize Main Street Act. Such an incentive in Oregon would join federal incentives as a way to spur restorations of historic buildings, Moretti said.

“The goal is to have an impact on small main streets as well as larger urban settings,” she said.

Restore Oregon commissioned consulting firm ECONorthwest to complete an economic analysis of the proposed incentive. The state historic preservation fund would dramatically increase the number of building rehabilitation projects in Oregon and create hundreds of new jobs in construction and other related fields, the analysis said.

The fund would be especially helpful to building owners facing the high cost of retrofitting unreinforced masonry buildings, said Walt McMonies, a Portland property owner and senior real estate attorney with the Portland office of Lane Powell. He serves on the Restore Oregon board and is a member of a steering committee backing the Revitalize Main Street Act.

“It’s going to help the construction industry if we pass this because it’s real money that will be spent on these buildings,” McMonies said. “There will be a lot more people renovating their buildings. It really will start a renovation boom.”

Fellow steering committee member John Russell, founder of Portland-based Russell Development Company Inc., said he supports the proposed incentive for similar reasons. It cost between $400 and $500 a square foot for his company to seismically retrofit a 157-year-old building near the corner of Southwest Naito Parkway and Oak Street in Portland, he said.

“It sat vacant for two years because the costs to restore it were enormous,” Russell said.

The fund wouldn’t just be a boon for development companies that own multiple properties, said George Kramer, principal of Ashland-based historic preservation consulting firm Kramer & Co. and a Revitalize Main Street Act steering committee member. The legislation is geared toward owners of smaller commercial properties in downtowns throughout the state that wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to fix up their aging buildings, he said. The proposed incentive program could also help these property owners secure financing from private lenders for restoration projects.

“Those kinds of smaller projects don’t really have anywhere to go in Oregon for assistance,” Kramer said. “This program will directly target those types of property owners. I think we will make quantitative improvements on main streets across the state.”

Kramer, who has three decades of experience working on historic preservation projects, said he has long pushed for the state to set up a restoration incentive program. The Revitalize Main Street Act will encourage developers to invest in restoring historic buildings and create jobs, he said.

“If you look at the big picture, there are few things that we can invest in as Oregonians that have so many positive paybacks,” Kramer said.

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Restore Oregon is backing legislation that would create a state historic rehabilitation fund to help offset the cost of restoring and upgrading aging commercial buildings.

The Revitalize Main Street Act is being drafted by the Office of the Legislative Counsel and is expected to be introduced in the Oregon Legislature in January through the Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue, Restore Oregon Executive Director Peggy Moretti said.

The Portland-based nonprofit advocates for historic preservation and is lobbying for the legislation as a way to help revitalize downtowns in cities throughout the state. It would help break down the financial barrier for seismic upgrades and other costly measures to rehabilitate older buildings, Moretti said.

“So many of these wonderful historic downtown buildings have not had enough upkeep,” she said. “It’s often been too much of a financial nut to crack.”

The bill would create a fund with revenue from the auction of state income tax credits at a capped amount. This money would be used to provide developers or property owners a 25 percent rebate – administered through the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office – on restorations of historic commercial buildings. The fund would operate much like the Oregon Production Investment Fund, which encourages film production in the state, Moretti said.

Presently, 35 other states offer historic restoration incentives similar to what is being proposed in the Revitalize Main Street Act, Moretti said. Such an incentive in Oregon would join federal incentives as a way to spur projects that restore historic buildings, she said.

“Here in Oregon, the state has been that missing partner, and that’s often left that gap in funding for projects to move forward,” she said.

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Renovating the old Seaman’s Bethel building in Portland’s Old Town/Chinatown into a European-style hostel will start with the foundation and move all the way to the roof.

That process begins with removing a rubble foundation that has supported the long-vacant 12,000 square-foot, four-story building on Northwest Third Avenue and replacing it with a modern seismic, support system without losing the building’s historic nature.

A development group called KeyMar LLC is remaking the currently unreinforced building into the Society Hotel, a 39-room hostel that will include a ground-floor café and rooftop terrace.

“Seismic is the challenge,” said Matt Siegel, a KeyMar partner and the principal of Building Blocks LLC, which is the design-build contractor on the project. “We are wrapping our heads around the massive seismic upgrades that have to be done to bring it up to a place where it will last another 100 years.”

Massive footings will be poured into two corners of the building and a third seismic support – a concrete and steel elevator shaft – will run up through the center of the building.

Hundreds of metal straps will be tied into the building’s brick walls and ceilings, creating a system that will absorb the shock of a major earthquake, Siegel said.

As the seismic work proceeds, no alterations will be made visible from the exterior of the building except a fresh coat of paint, Siegel said. Instead of adding diagonal cross braces on windows, Building Blocks basically will build a building inside of a building, with eight-inch-thick concrete shear walls bracing the building from its footings all the way to the roof.

“We elected not to use the cross braces because it disrupts the historic look of the building,” Siegel said. “Instead, we will build new concrete walls inside of the old.”

Seismic work will represent about 20 percent of the total construction costs, said Jonathan Cohen, a partner in KeyMar. Cohen would not disclose total project costs because the design and some permits are still in process.

The project will involve significant energy upgrades that will allow the developers to apply for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold designation, said Cohen, who also is a principal of Imagine Energy LLC, a Portland-based energy consulting and design firm.

KeyMar is looking to place the building on the National Historic Register, which could garner a 20 percent tax credit against improvement costs upon completion of the project, Cohen said.

With an eye toward earning a spot on the register, the project team worked with Heritage Consulting Group, a national firm with offices in Portland, to determine the historic use of the building and how the building would be preserved.

For example, KeyMar will preserve and maintain several aspects of the building, particularly those in the most public parts of the building, Cohen said. An aged handrail along the stairwell that currently does not meet code requirements will be kept in place and wrapped with a higher guard rail that meets code, Cohen said. Additionally, about three tons of Douglas fir wood stripped from the ceilings throughout the building will be remilled and reinstalled on the ground floor.

The National Park Service and the State Office of Historic Preservation approved the team’s submitted preservation plan, which will be monitored throughout the project. Placement on the registry would be made upon completion of the project, Cohen said.

Energy efficient systems will be installed throughout the building without causing significant changes to the building’s historic nature, including energy-efficient features, rooftop photovoltaic panels and a heat recovery ventilation system that recirculates air throughout the building, according to Cohen.

Laser-cut window inserts will be placed inside the building’s single-paned windows, sealing out air loss, Cohen said. The inserts will keep the windows intact for historic preservation, he said.

That process of creating energy efficiency without altering the historic aspects of the building is critical for the success of historic preservation, said Peggy Moretti, executive director of Restore Oregon, who has toured the future Society Hotel building and called the project “a good catalyst” for other projects that could follow in the Old Town area.

The building’s natural ventilation features and windows lend themselves to technology upgrades, Moretti said.

“There are lots of ways these ways buildings can be made very energy efficient,” she said. “There’s a lot of old technology, but you can build in energy efficiency without losing the historic nature of the building.”

Project: The Society Hotel

Address: 203-209 N.W. Third Ave., Portland

Construction start: November 2013

Completion: May 2015

Project owner: KeyMar LLC

Architect: Integrate Architecture

Engineer: DCI Engineers

General contractor: Building Blocks LLC

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When Scott | Edwards Architecture principal Peter Grimm started designing mid-century home renovations several years ago, he was immediately struck by the architectural style.

“A lot of that stuff is kind of cool again,” he said. “It’s an interesting aesthetic. It’s kind of fresh … The geometry is really serving the occupants.”

Homes in pockets of the Portland-metro area are now considered historic because they were built during the 1950s and ’60s in mid-century modern style. As the properties age, renewed appreciation for the style and demographic shifts in ownership are driving a surge in renovations. Commercial and public buildings from the era also are being renovated so that original architecture is preserved.

“It is a remarkable era, that post-war 1950s and ’60s,” Grimm said. “(Building owners) have high-quality space that is due for an update or a restoration.”

Mid-century buildings are younger than most historic properties, but Portland-area architects who’ve contributed to their renovations say they still need plenty of work. Insulation is either slim or nonexistent and single-pane windows often need to be replaced. Many properties have never had their interiors or mechanical systems upgraded. Some of the building materials were experimental and have begun to deteriorate; others, like composite asbestos panels, are now considered hazardous.

“These were the first use of these materials and some of them worked and some of them didn’t,” Hennebery Eddy Architects principal David Wark said. “Then it’s about finding an appropriate substitute material.”

The Portland-based firm’s work with mid-century buildings includes a renovation and a penthouse addition to The Reserve. The downtown Portland office building, formerly the Federal Reserve Building, was designed by renowned modernist architect Pietro Belluschi.

FFA Architecture and Interiors, meanwhile, has worked on upgrades of mid-century buildings for the National Park Service, associate partner Barbara Clement said. One, the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center in Olympic National Park in Washington, was built in the early 1960s during a building boom for the federal agency, she said.

“It’s a building that’s being treated as historic even though it’s considered mid-century modern,” she said.

Restoring the original building materials is much more important in renovations to older historic properties than mid-century modern structures, Clement said.

“It’s not about the material as much as the form of the architecture, preserving that modern character,” she said. “That’s been an interesting change of how we’re working as historic architects.”

Restore Oregon, a Portland-based organization that advocates for preservation, has spent a lot of time educating people about the historic value of mid-century properties, Executive Director Peggy Moretti said. It’s still rare for a mid-century modern building to be on the National Register of Historic Places, and Restore Oregon is encouraging more home and commercial building owners to get their properties listed, she said. A listing qualifies a building’s owner for federal tax credits that can help pay for a renovation that preserves historic character.

“Where we are as an organization is in that awareness mode of, first of all, think of your building as historic (and) then you can tap into historic tax credits,” she said.

More mid-century properties are receiving historic designations. About a year ago, the Oak Hills neighborhood in Beaverton was added to the national register as an excellent example of a 1960s master-planned community. In 2009, Portland’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum, completed in 1960, was saved from demolition and added to the register.

Portland architect Peter Meijer pushed for the listing for the coliseum. He is president of the Oregon chapter of Docomomo, a growing organization that advocates for the preservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods exhibiting modernism.

“Mid-century modern is in the mainstream now,” he said. “There are several generations of modern architects who were trained in the modernist movement. There is a real surge in affinity to that type of architecture.”

Today’s architects have a much easier time relating to a modernist’s building than a much older historic one, Meijer said.

“The spaces themselves lend themselves to current architecture, so that’s why you’re seeing a renewed interest (in renovations),” he said. “When you get mid-century modern where the lines are clean, the renovations are much more compatible.”

Grimm said he’s designing several mid-century home remodels in the Portland area. He expects more such work as aging homeowners sell the structures to young families.

The open floor plans and airiness of mid-century modern homes remain desirable, Grimm said. They’re also easier to expand than are houses from other eras, he said.

“I’ve done a couple additions where we were able to do some fun geometry,” he said. “It’s hard to add onto a Cape Cod or a colonial (home).”

Work with mid-century homes has enlightened Grimm.

“It’s so different to live and work in a mid-century building than a prewar building because they really released the structure,” he said. “For me as an architect, it’s a great lesson.”

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To the preservation-minded, surface parking lots and new construction can be serious blights to the fabric of historic neighborhoods. And there are at least 500 such commercial properties in Oregon’s historic districts, according to the State Historic Preservation Office.

Through a series of roundtable discussions, the Historic Preservation League of Oregon has urged people to start talking about the “dos” and “do nots” when it comes to infill design.

With the support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, HPLO is working to establish baseline standards for new construction and clear guidelines for the design of new infill projects. The roundtable brought together architects, historians, landmarks commissioners and property owners in The Dalles in June, Ashland in July, and will culminate in Portland today.

HPLO executive director Peggy Moretti said one of the objectives is to define what it really means to say that some infill is “compatible.” While most people would agree that new construction in a historic district should be “compatible” with the existing buildings, no clear principles translate that idea into construction standards.

Some components of compatibility brought up at the first two roundtables are scale, massing, materials, setback, and some other conceptual characteristics. On Oct. 13, HPLO will issue a final report laying out their findings.

If you want to go to the “Synthesis Session” tomorrow, go to the Architectural Heritage Center, 701 S.E. Grand Ave. by 8:45 a.m. The HPLO is currently expecting about 30 attendees but plans to have room for some walk-ins. The cost is $10.

If you can’t make it, but want to provide feedback or stay updated on HPLO event, more information can be found on .

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