The Haseltine Building, in Portland’s Old Town Chinatown neighborhood, has already endured 127 years’ worth of Pacific Northwest weather. Work now under way should help the structure withstand much more.

Melvin Mark Brokerage Company acquired the 48,000-square-foot building in 2007 and then invested in an extensive interior remodel that improved energy efficiency and tenant space. But even though a new cornice was installed in 1980 and the brick masonry was repainted, the exterior needed more attention.

Now the four-story building at 133 S.W. Second Ave. is undergoing a complete face-lift that will touch its façade, glazing and masonry. Work began Sept. 2 and is likely to wrap up by the end of the year, weather permitting.

“It’s not in terrible shape,” said Matt Zeller, project manager for Pioneer Waterproofing, a Portland firm that has specialized in historic building renovations since 1964. “We’ve cleaned the stone, which was super dirty; it had a bunch of carbon on it. We then started stripping all the windows and then started grinding out all the bad mortar joints.”

The quarter-block Haseltine Building features a Richardsonian Romanesque-style design; it’s a contributing resource in the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District. As such, any renovations or repairs are strictly regulated by the National Park Service as well as the city of Portland. With very few exceptions, any work must use matching materials as those in the existing building as well as maintain its existing appearance. This applies to details such as the mortar used to secure brick masonry.

The first part of the job involved grinding out old lime mortar, having its chemical composition tested by an East Coast lab and then creating a new batch of mortar to match the old.

“I replicated what was in there,” Zeller said. “It’s more breathable and it has the same compactive strength, but it just breathes better into the wall. It allows water to seep out a lot better than, say, a type N mortar would.”

The building’s south side, fronting Southwest Pine Street, has borne the brunt of the weather-based wear and tear.

“On this (east) side we didn’t do so much replacing the mortar; this side wasn’t as bad,” Zeller said. “On this (south) side, we replaced 100 percent of it. You can see it’s all brand new mortar. The stone is all chiseled out. There are, I’d say, about 70 patches all throughout that we did to make it blend back in.”

While the building itself has retained integrity against water intrusion from the top, the next step in the job will see every window in the building reglazed and all window frames and sills replaced by subcontractor Stayton Wood Windows due to water damage and rot. Water has leaked through most of the windows during driving storms.

“We went into this project not knowing how bad of shape the windows were in,” Zeller said.

Once the paint was stripped from the wooden frames and sills, however, windows’ conditions became clear.

“Every single window sill is completely rotted,” Zeller said. “If you touch it, it completely falls apart. Before, it was just strip them and paint them. Now we have to fix them. You can’t usually tell until you’re actually up there and going through it.”

After the windows are refurbished, the upper three floors of brick masonry will be repainted by Hunt Painting to match the building’s original rusty red color. Fortunately, the masonry and the sandstone cladding on the ground level are in passable condition and don’t require any serious work.

“It’s getting there,” Zeller said. “It’s almost done.”

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The Burnside Bridge is gaining some much-needed upkeep, but even its overseer, Multnomah County, knows it’s only a stopgap.

The steel-and-concrete bridge, a vital connection between downtown Portland and the Central Eastside, is 93 years old. Crews are performing extensive concrete patches and repairs, removing rust and refinishing hundreds of structural steel beams. Also, sidewalks and ornamental guardrails are being refurbished.

“T��� Burnside Bridge maintenance project is really sort of a Band-Aid project to get another 10 to 15 years out of the bridge,” county public information officer Mike Pullen said. “Multnomah County is considering doing a much bigger project to make the bridge earthquake-ready, and that could even involve replacing the bridge, so the work we’re doing in this three-year project involves concrete repairs, some repainting and a little bit of minor electrical work.”

The project derived from the county’s 2015 Willamette River Bridges Capital Improvement Plan, which identified the Burnside Bridge’s structural and movable components needing major rehabilitation. The county put the bridge at the top of its list of priorities for near-term work, and bidding on the roughly $20 million project took place in early 2017. Springfield-based Hamilton Construction, the project’s general contractor, started work later that spring and is now expected to finish by the end of 2019.

Major issues that are being addressed include rusting steel truss members, cracked concrete, deck surface deterioration and outdated mechanical and electrical systems.

Crews began on the Willamette River’s west side, tackling concrete repairs and other work. West approach girders, bent caps and columns were all rehabilitated, along with steel support trusses.

Meanwhile, the west-side bascule pit and control tower were also renovated, and the span locks and motors also received attention. The west-side control tower, which normally houses the drawbridge operator, was emptied to perform a remodel and address water intrusion. Other issues were addressed in work done by subcontractor Pacificmark Construction.

On the top of the bridge, the deck and expansion joints were renovated, while sidewalks, guardrails and overhangs also were repaired as needed. Many of the issues being addressed were identified when the bridge was most recently resurfaced, Pullen said.

“When they did that 10 years ago, they didn’t do anything underneath the bridge, and that’s where a lot of the repairs have been,” he said. “It’s the concrete mostly; they had nets underneath the bridge to catch the little bits of concrete that were falling, especially around the Saturday Market. One theme of things like this is that it is really a Band-Aid. If I were to show you other things like the Hawthorne Bridge in the late ’90s, in restoring that bridge they repainted every single thing and did new decks. With this, we didn’t invest too much, and when this side opens in February (the public) will notice improvements, but they’ll also notice these patches.”

Masons with Pioneer Waterproofing apply exterior weather sealant to the concrete girders below the Burnside Bridge’s east end.

One new technology being used by subcontractor Pioneer Waterproofing to carry out concrete repairs involves injecting epoxy adhesive into holes in the concrete and then wrapping those areas with carbon fiber reinforced polymer. The polymer then dries along with the epoxy to create a stronger span than the original.

Other discoveries made during the project indicate that the bridge needs more attention.

“T���re were a few things that are bigger scale,” Pullen said. “T���y found a crack in the pier in the river that’s closest to the downtown side on the west side, so this summer we’ll be going in there and dewatering and basically bracing that crack with some steel that goes through the whole thing and tighten it up.”

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For 17 years, Pioneer Waterproofing of Tigard has bought new bicycles and given them to kids at Christmas, and it’s a labor of love, company owner Michael Crawford said.

“We don’t do it for the publicity, and for us it’s just a good thing to do,” he said.

Every year since 1998, the company has bought hundreds of disassembled bicycles from K-Mart and Pioneer employees have put them together. The bikes are then distributed by KGW-TV employees.

Crawford said this year his employees delivered 340 newly assembled bikes to the television station on Dec. 16.

“T���y all come in boxes and our crew comes in and puts them together and makes sure all the tires are (inflated),” he said. “T���n we load them up and take them (to KGW) in three big trucks.”

Crawford said he decided to get new bicycles for kids who can’t afford them because those higher-priced items aren’t often donated in toy drives.

But nearly everyone has a memory of a bike they had (or wanted) as a child, Crawford said, so he decided that was a good thing to encourage.

“Anybody I ever asked if you remember your bike as a kid, everybody does,” he said. “So I thought it would be better if we bought something more expensive and that will become a memory.”

The bikes come in all shapes and sizes, Crawford said, from little ones with training wheels to teenager-size mountain bikes. At an average cost of $50 per bike, he estimates his company has invested well over $100,000 to give needy Portland kids new bicycles.

“It’s a tradition that everybody feels good about,” he said. “T��� crew and everybody start bugging me in October to make sure we’re going to do it, the K-Mart people call, the Channel 8 people call and it gets everybody in the holiday spirit.

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To repair eight deteriorating chimneys atop the historic Pioneer Courthouse in downtown Portland, Pioneer Waterproofing had to dig up some suitable materials.

National Trust for Historic Preservation standards required that the materials match those on the 139-year-old building. That was a problem because the Washington quarry that had produced the chimneys’ sandstone didn’t have any more available, said Michael Crawford, owner of Pioneer Waterproofing.

The courthouse, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977, has received restoration work in several phases; Crawford is hoping this will be the last of it for a while.

“T���y had tried to repair those (chimneys) before, but the stone continued to deteriorate … (and) continued to crack,” he said. “It just got to a point where it’s better to replace the stone because it’s gotten so bad.”

Pioneer Waterproofing benefited from Crawford’s connection with Toronto-based Old World Stone, which had in Nova Scotia a supply of sandstone that matched the courthouse’s stone.

Approximately 75 tons of stone will be trucked in from Canada and then hoisted and put into place atop the courthouse starting in September. The stone weighs 145 pounds per cubic foot, with side stones weighing 400 pounds apiece and cap pieces for the chimney decks weighing upwards of 2,000 pounds each, Crawford said.

“Historic jobs tend to be unique and they bring different challenges,” he said. “I don’t know if I will ever do another one like it.”

Pioneer Waterproofing also is replacing defective mortar joints and patching areas from the second floor to the ground floor on the building’s north and east sides. Other sides were repaired during previous phases. The firm is hoping to finish its work by January.

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Pioneer Waterproofing was recently recognized by the International Concrete Repair Institute for its work on the Port of Portland’s Terminal 5 structural repair and corrosion project. Pioneer repaired more than 7,000 square feet of damaged concrete at the 159-acre terminal site over eight months, and the pier remained in service at all times.

“Being recognized by your peers is always a nice honor, but it’s especially significant when you consider this program received submittals from around the world,” said Pioneer Waterproofing President Mike Crawford. “T��� Port’s work is critical to our region’s export economy so we were pleased to be able to successfully work around their ongoing operations for over 8 months.”

ICRI presents awards annually to recognize projects in the concrete repair and restoration industry. Pioneer Waterproofing received an ICRI award for its work on the John Day Navigational Lock in 2005.

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It took a Great Depression-era program to build the McLoughlin Promenade wall that frames Oregon City’s signature sights. Fixing that badly deteriorated wall took a Great Recession program.

Oregon City got approximately $1 million to repair the promenade wall through the federal stimulus package passed last year, said Laura Butler, Oregon City’s project manager for the renovation.

The promenade wall, a Works Progress Administration project, was completed in 1938. “The money came from President Roosevelt to bring employment back,” Butler said. “And that’s happening again with the stimulus.”

The maintenance project started last August. General contractor Pioneer Waterproofing Co. is set to finish later this month – four months ahead of schedule. With a high bluff as a work site, workers had to take special precautions to stay safe, said Mike Crawford, Pioneer’s president.

They used special brackets to support them as they worked on the bluff’s edge. “They were 70 or 80 feet above the road or above the railroad tracks,” Crawford said.

“We had to custom-build (the brackets) to provide a working area on the outside of the wall that kept workers safe and kept construction debris and tools within the area,” he said. “And we had to make sure nothing could drop on them.”

The work involved cutting out mortar joints and replacing them – called tuckpointing – and replacing the Grand Staircase and mortar caps and railings along the wall. Subcontractor Michael’s Precast made 190 new concrete rails to match the originals, which had badly deteriorated.

Subcontractors Concrete Alternatives and Dale Britton Excavating also worked on the project.

Although Butler said she didn’t know of any pieces of the wall tumbling off and hitting the highway below, the rock wall and concrete railings were in bad shape. “They were covered by an immense amount of moss, and a lot of the wall was deteriorated and crumbling,” she said. “It wasn’t in safe condition.”

The railings were the greatest safety hazard, Butler said. “In a lot of places, the concrete around the rebar had been eaten away and deteriorated, and the rebar had been bent into a V shape,” she said.

While the wall dates from the New Deal, much of the work in the area predates that era. The concrete Grand Staircase replaced an earlier wooden version.

The unusual slope of the steps reflects that earlier era, Butler said. “They have a strange rise and run – a very short rise and long run,” she said. “That’s because they were originally constructed to allow horses to go up them.”

A wooden elevator was built in 1913 and replaced with the existing municipal elevator in 1955, Butler said. Horses still had to take the stairs.

Pioneer kept the original stones in the wall as it replaced the mortar. That replacement took some historical sleuthing.

“The contractor went in and did an analysis of the existing grout mortar, and determined how much rock and sand were in it,” said Wendy Schmidt, a consultant with Wallis Engineering. “Then they matched that with the new mortar they were putting in.”

Older mixes included more whole river rocks and less crushed, mined rock. “They used bigger, rounder rocks,” Schmidt said. “Today you see more fractured rock.”

Once the project started, workers realized the wall needed more work than expected, Crawford said. “As we were cleaning the walls, some deterioration that wasn’t as noticeable before became more noticeable.”

Oregon City officials secured some urban renewal money so they wouldn’t need to return for bigger repairs later, he said. “The city felt it was in their interest to get it done now.”

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Work on Pioneer Courthouse in downtown Portland is nearly finished. The historic structure’s north side is the last one to get an upgrade. The main part of the renovation project is honing and patching the sandstone and then restoring it to its original texture and color. Cherokee Construction Services LLC is the general contractor for the project; Pioneer Waterproofing is performing masonry work.

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