The Portland Bureau of Transportation will seek to introduce a construction manager/general contractor during the design phase of the 82nd Avenue Major Maintenance project. Portland City Council on Wednesday passed an ordinance authorizing exemption to use of the city’s standard low-bid contracting process.

PBOT will issue a request for proposals. The contract is estimated at $30 million to $40 million, funded primarily with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.

Significant improvements will be made to 82nd Avenue between Southeast Foster Road and Mill Street, Northeast Schuyler and Siskiyou streets, and at the Northeast Fremont Street intersection. The work will include repaving the roadway, widening sidewalks, constructing ADA ramps, adding pedestrian crossings, improving signals, and planting trees, PBOT capital project manager Briana Orr said.

Crossings will be added at Southeast Harrison, Lafayette, Bush and Center streets. Existing crossings at Southeast Mitchell Street and near Portland Community College‘s Southeast Campus will be upgraded.

“These are just six out of 17 total crossing improvements that we’re going to be making through other projects on 82nd Avenue,” Orr said.

The council in June authorized a contract for project design. The first design concept will be available online in the spring. PBOT will seek public comment on the design concept by holding an online open house and sending mailers to property owners and stakeholders.

PBOT would like to add the general contractor to the project in early 2023. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025 and take two years to complete.

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The growing Portland Bureau of Transportation has reached agreement on a five-year lease of space at a downtown office building.

The transportation agency will take additional office space at Sixth + Main (formerly named the Congress Center), at 1001 S.W. Fifth Ave. The building is diagonally adjacent to the Portland Building, PBOT‘s usual office, which is undergoing an extensive renovation.

PBOT is already using portions of the fourth, fifth and sixth floors at Sixth + Main. That space is fully occupied, according to a draft City Council ordinance to authorize the lease.

The bureau is “experiencing unprecedented growth in terms of workload and staffing,” the draft ordinance states. PBOT plans to hire 72 additional employees this year. The Portland Building cannot accommodate the increased staffing, according to the draft ordinance.

There are no city-owned buildings with sufficient space to meet PBOT’s growth, the ordinance states. Leases by city bureaus must be brought to the City Council for approval.

It’s not clear how much additional space the bureau is seeking. A PBOT spokesman did not respond Wednesday to a message seeking comment.

The lease is estimated to cost $612,500 a year, or more than $3 million during the lease period.

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The Portland Bureau of Transportation plans to complete three construction projects to help ease passage of oversize truck loads through Portland streets.

The projects are part of a larger effort undertaken in 2015 by the city and other metro-area governments to formalize the area’s system of 34 corridors for hauling over-dimensional loads. No such study had ever been undertaken, said PBOT project manager Robert Hillier.

“We wanted to have a better understanding of how these corridors affect our region, because we had no idea,” he said.

The Portland City Council on Wednesday accepted the outlining a strategy for improving oversize truck loads through Portland. Setting the construction schedule will be Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees PBOT.

The city has laws requiring amenities like light posts and trees for certain development projects. Haulers like Steve Bates of V. Van Dyke Inc. said the study was important because it draws a “line in the air” so the truck corridors are protected from future encroachment.

“If it were up to the engineers and developers, they’d put a lamppost right in the middle of the corridor,” Bates said.

Jana Jarvis, head of the Oregon Trucking Association, is involved in several efforts devising standards for hauling oversize loads, including with Oregon Department of Transportation. She said the OTA sometimes has to advise governments on which types of trees to plant because some will eventually prevent passage even to regular tractor trailers.

“We’re trying to get city planners better informed in advance, (rather) than after the fact,” she said.

The study identified preferred safe routes for over-dimensional loads through Portland and gaps in the system, and noted required clearances under overpasses and weight limits on bridges. Several projects are recommended, including three for PBOT, which will be included in the next update to the city’s Transportation System Plan.

In all, the study outlines 24 projects, including:

• Lowering Northeast Columbia Boulevard where it passes underneath the Union Pacific Railroad. The underpass is a snug 16.5 feet from the road, nearly a foot shorter than the recommended standard. Complicating the project is a jet fuel pipeline that passes under Columbia Boulevard.

• Raising the pedestrian bridge at George Middle School on Columbia Boulevard. The bridge is currently 16 feet above the road and the clearance standard is 17.4 feet. The highest permitted load recorded by ODOT between 2012 and 2015 was an 18-foot-tall transformer that traveled between Happy Valley and Oregon City.

• Retrofit or replace the North Portland Columbia Slough Bridge, which is constrained by a weight limit of 10,500 pounds, which prevents most permitted oversize loads from crossing. The heaviest load approved by ODOT between 2012 and 2015 was a transformer weighing 662,212 pounds.

ODOT requires a permit for loads with a width exceeding 8 feet 6 inches, a height exceeding 14 feet, length exceeding 40 feet or a gross vehicle weight exceeding 80,000 pounds.

About 30 percent of permits issued by the agency from 2012 to 2015 were for heavy construction equipment, including excavators, cranes and log loaders.

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The project to improve the city-owned SmartPark garage at Southwest 10th Avenue and Yamhill Street returned before Portland City Council this week, and an architect was chosen and a collaborative building approach approved.

The council on Wednesday approved two measures – one authorizing a contract with FFA Architecture and Interiors to begin designing the $25 million project, and the other to approve use of the construction manager-general contractor alternative delivery method (in Oregon, public entities must prove the need to use a method other than the traditional low-bid method).

Officials said the CM-GC method will lead to more accurate cost estimates as well as better design and communication between the city and the project team. Both measures passed unanimously and with little discussion from the council.

The downtown building has 799 parking spaces and first-floor restaurants and shops. The project is intended to preserve the building and improve the retail area. The garage nets the city $1.2 million annually, but rents for the retail spaces are below market rate because the building needs extensive repairs and maintenance.

The property’s future has been uncertain for most of the past decade. In 2008, the Portland Development Commission was prepared to move ahead with a plan to raze the building and allow developer John Carroll of Carroll Investments to build a mixed-use mid-rise replacement.

Officials hope to pursue Parksmart green garage certification for the renovation.

“It’s the equivalent of LEED, for garages,” Portland Bureau of Transportation project manager Chris Armes said.

An intergovernmental agreement with the PDC was approved in June. City staffers will now work to finalize construction specifications before returning before the council next summer to approve a guaranteed maximum price with the selected contractor. Construction would start in the fall and take approximately one year.

FFA has listed partners it intends to work with on the project, including engineering firms KPFF, Akana Inc. and Cundiff, and lighting designer O-LLC.

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Contractors in Portland will be asked to do more to protect pedestrians and bicyclists near their jobsites.

The Portland City Council on Wednesday voted to support administrative rules intended to reduce construction’s negative impact on street users by restricting use of detours to cases of “last resort.” The change was initiated by complaints by pedestrians and cyclists who’ve said road closures due to construction have left them with dangerous conditions to navigate, said Faith Winegarden, the city’s temporary street use permit manager.

“The solution is to provide walkways adjacent to jobsites wherever practicable,” she told the council on Wednesday.

The council voted 5-0 in favor of a resolution formalizing the new rules. Neither contractors nor building community representatives testified at Wednesday’s council meeting. Winegarden said her office has been in contact with several contractors of various sizes. Most have been supportive of new rules, she said.

Another vote is required before the rules can become law.

Currently, a contractor who wants to use the public right of way adjacent to a jobsite to facilitate construction must draft a traffic control plan and apply for a temporary street use permit through the Portland Bureau of Transportation Permit Center.

Under the new rules, contractors should, under normal conditions, provide pedestrians and cyclists with a “reasonably safe, convenient and accessible route that replicates as practicable the most desirable characteristics of the existing route.” The temporary routes should be clearly marked and ADA-compliant.

The rules likely would not apply to projects currently under way, Winegarden said.

The resolution coincides with the “Vision Zero” initiative – supported by the council in June 2015 – that seeks to eliminate loss of life on Portland streets. It’s also consistent with the latest version of the city’s Comprehensive Plan approved by the council recently.

Much of the discussion Wednesday centered around use of the word “should” in the code, instead of the more prescriptive word “shall.”

“It makes it seem like a suggestion, not a requirement,” said Reza Farhoodi, a member of the Bicycle Advisory Committee.

An amendment proposed by Commissioner Nick Fish would change the wording to “shall,” but add “to the extent practicable.”

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At times, being a contractor can be a thankless job. So it was a pleasant change of pace when Cascade Bridge LLC learned that the Balch Gulch Bridge at Northwest Thurman Street Rehabilitation project had won the American Public Works Association Project of the Year Award for historical restoration and preservation projects under $5 million.

“As a contractor, there’s not a lot of, ‘attaboys’ out there,” said Shad Huber, project manager with Cascade Bridge LLC, which served as general contractor for the bridge renovation. “It makes us feel good to be a part of that project.”

The restoration of the bridge, a project for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, began in April 2014 and the bridge was reopened to the public in October 2014. The project cost $4 million.

The 400-foot-long bridge was originally built during the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and World’s Trade Fair as a gateway to Portland’s developing Willamette Heights neighborhood.  The bridge, which is Oregon’s oldest intact bridge, originally carried an electric trolley line.

Bridges that are 110 years old can be a bit like 110-year-old spaghetti – very rare, but not particularly useful. Before the restoration, uneven wooden sidewalks caused pedestrians to trip or slip during rainy days, according to PBOT. Structural deck elements that included wood stringers and deteriorating steel floor beams caused potholes and cracks along the bridge deck surface, making for an unsafe and uncomfortable ride.

It was a complicated process to make the bridge functional, while also keeping its aesthetic integrity.

“The challenge with the project was you’re dealing with a truss that was built over 100 years ago and how that truss has reacted to the environment and the climate,” Huber said. “It had shifted and sagged and things weren’t exactly where they (should be). The project required that we remove the deck, replace it with new floor-beam stringers and a new deck. We had to realign the bridge and keep it one straight line across that little gulch there. Every floor-beam stringer had to be custom built to fit into that truss so it stayed true and on line.

“We were able to preserve the bridge and return it back to its original condition, or very similar to its original condition as far as the aesthetics go.”

The bridge becoming functional again is more important than simply having another pretty bridge in Portland. Before the renovation, city engineers were forced to place restrictions on the bridge to slow its deterioration. That meant that fire trucks were prohibited from using it, so Portland’s Fire & Rescue emergency responders had to take a longer route to enter the neighborhood. The completion of the renovation has now reopened the bridge to fire trucks, shaving over four minutes off response time in many areas of the neighborhood.

“Every minute counts,” said Dylan Rivera, public information officer for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “For them to get large fire trucks to the neighborhood four minutes faster is a huge improvement for fire and life safety.”

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The recent dissolution of a Vancouver, Wash.-based land planning and civil engineering firm has spawned two new businesses, including one that has ventured south of the state line.

After 15 years in business, MGH Associates‘ principals decided late last year to pursue separate ventures. The firm officially closed its doors on Dec. 18, 2014.

Immediately following MGH’s closure, two former principals, Fred Garmire and Dave Humber, founded their own companies. Garmire started Vancouver-based planning, civil engineering and construction consulting firm 2G Associates, at 400 Columbia St. Humber’s new urban civil engineering firm, Humber Design Group, moved earlier this month into offices at 117 S.E. Taylor St. in Portland’s Central Eastside.

MGH had a great run for more than a decade, Humber said, but its leaders reached a point where they were ready to move on to other business pursuits. He also wanted to run a business closer to many of the clients he and his team served while at MGH.

“It was a good opportunity for me to open something up down here (in Portland),” he said. “It was a very successful 15 years. Change is opportunity.”

Since MGH disbanded, Garmire said he decided to stay in Vancouver close to MGH’s former office, and lead 2G Associates, a small three-person firm working on engineering and planning projects in both Washington and Oregon.

“One of the partners decided to scale back on his work,” he said. “Dave and I looked at it (as an opportunity) to move into a little different situations … I’m fortunate to work with some of the clients I worked with at MGH.”

Humber, who started his engineering career in Portland at KPFF Consulting Engineers, said he was pleased to return to the city. He hired six former MGH civil engineers, and the clients they were working with prior to the company’s closure have opted to continue to do so with Humber Design Group.

“My heart has always been in Portland and, frankly, that’s been where the client base has been,” Humber said.

Garmire said he’s also happy with the decision to close down MGH and start his own smaller firm.

“My goal is to stay fairly small and get back to where I’m directly involved in all the projects,” he said. “I’m having a great time doing everything.”

2G Associates’ services include site evaluation, feasibility studies, land planning, urban design, parks and urban space engineering, stormwater management, construction management, cost estimating and construction inspection.

Humber Design Group serves architectural clients and has expertise in urban infill and redevelopment projects, Humber said. Firm staffers have experience working on a diverse array of project types, including market-rate apartments, low-income housing, mixed-use buildings, education facilities, medical office space and creative office space.

Many of the more than two dozen projects the firm is tackling are in the Portland-metro area, Humber said. While at MGH, he and other firm staffers also became intimately familiar with gaining city of Portland project approval, including close work with Portland Bureau of Transportation officials on public works permits, Humber said.

“We’ve involved in Portland,” Humber said. “It just made a lot of sense to locate an office here … We are very knowledgeable about getting through and understanding the permitting process in Portland.”

He’s also learned a lot about the process and the issues affecting his clients as a volunteer member of the city’s Public Works Appeal Panel and Development Review Advisory Committee.

“There’s a lot of people that gripe about Portland being a difficult jurisdiction,” Humber said. “I think it’s one of the easiest because we have so much experience with it.”

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Portland State University architecture students this spring will build a “parklet” on two parking spaces near campus following a to finance the project.

The campaign led by the School of Architecture, PSU‘s Institute for Sustainable Solutions and the South of Market EcoDistrict Steering Committee exceeded its $15,350 goal at the end of last month by raising $15,640. The donations will cover the costs of building materials, maintenance and city fees for lost revenue from the former parking spots where the small park will be built near the intersection of Southwest Fourth Avenue and College Street.

The funding will help realize a project designed by students last fall in a class taught by PSU assistant architecture professor B.D. Wortham-Galvin. In collaboration with residents and businesses in the South of Market neighborhood surrounding PSU, the students chose the park location and gained city approval last summer through the Portland Bureau of Transportation‘s Street Seats program to occupy parking spaces on Fourth Avenue in front of a block of food carts.

In the spring, Wortham-Galvin plans to teach a course to finalize the design, construct most of the components on the PSU campus and later assemble the park on Fourth Avenue over a weekend. It should be complete by June, she said.

“Hopefully students can see that not everything is abstract book learning,” Wortham-Galvin said. “I also think it’s great that a whole new crop of students will be able to help build it.”

Designing the parklet last year in Wortham-Galvin’s class was such a meaningful experience for PSU alumnus Michael Coon that since graduating from the architecture school and starting to work for Portland-based GBD Architects he’s stayed involved in the project. Coon volunteered his time over last summer to complete the construction documents. He also led efforts to get the project through the city permitting process. When PSU students start constructing the park this spring, he will help oversee the work as the project manager.

From the start, Coon said he was attracted to the concept of creating a new pocket of public space in the neighborhood.

“It’s become this really great community project,” he said. “It’s just a really interesting project as a student. Having it actually be tangible is really great.”

Community involvement in the project was coordinated through the Institute for Sustainable Solutions’ Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative, which connects PSU students and faculty with neighborhood organizations to collaborate on sustainable projects.

“We want to be part of the broader downtown and making that more sustainable,” said Christina Williams, the institute’s communications director. “PSU is a major part of the eco-district, but we’re trying to work with our neighbors.”

ISS facilitated a partnership between Wortham-Galvin’s architecture class and the SoMa EcoDistrict Steering Committee, a group that includes PSU and 13 other major property owners in the southern portion of downtown Portland who have committed to implementing projects that help create a more sustainable neighborhood. Building a parklet fit perfectly into one of the group’s goals of place-making or creating more public space in the neighborhood, said Erin Flynn, co-chairwoman of the steering committee.

“Fourth Avenue is a very active place,” she said. “You will see gobs and gobs of people at the food carts, but they don’t have anywhere to sit, so we thought it would be cool to create a parklet.”

The planned parklet will include high tables and stools, low benches with tables and a U-shaped bench, Coon said. The idea was to provide a variety of seating to foster the social activity of students, people who work in the area and others visiting the food carts in groups, he said.

To fit the theme of creating a more sustainable neighborhood, the park will also have stormwater planters with native plants and be constructed using recycled materials, such as reclaimed lumber and used rubber escalator handrails, Coon said.

He said he’s learned a lot through the process of designing the parklet, including how to stick to a tight budget. He is looking forward to seeing how the completed project enhances the food cart block.

“It would have been great to have when I was (a student),” Coon said. “It’s great to know as a new designer that I’m already giving back to the community.”

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Susan Keil will retire as director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation on May 1 after helping her replacement, Tom Miller, transition into his new job.

Keil has served as director since 2005. She had been thinking about retiring for more than a year, but put off her plans when PBOT Chief Financial Officer John Rist retired from the agency in September. She decided to stay on to help train Rist’s replacement, Ron Geason, she said.

“I’ve got 30 years in the PERS (Public Employees Retirement System), and I’m 64, and I had told Sam last year that I was thinking about retiring,” Keil said. “But with John retiring I felt I needed to stay to get Ron up to speed first.”

She will be replaced by Miller, who is Mayor Sam Adams‘ current chief of staff. Adams selected Miller for the job.

Miller will move his office to PBOT on Jan. 25 and will work with Keil until her retirement in an effort to make the transition run smoothly.

“Tom knows a lot about transportation, but he doesn’t know as much about internal financial management, internal controls and personnel management, so we’ll be working on that,” Keil said.

Miller is also familiar with many of the large projects, like replacing the Sellwood Bridge and the Columbia River Crossing, but Keil said she wants to help him meet more of the players and get a deeper working knowledge of the issues, she said.

“He is smart, he likes transportation, and he’s got an aptitude for it,” Keil said. “He’s a quick study.”

When she retires, Keil expects to do some management consulting and enjoy her hobbies of traveling, gardening and singing, which she does both as a solo performer and with her church choir, she said.

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A financial arrangement between Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services and Bureau of Transportation for sewer maintenance may need to be reconsidered, according to an audit released today.

Since the mid 1980s, the BES has paid $19 million annually to PBOT for maintenance of the city’s sewer system. But auditors have found that the BES could perform the same services itself, for about $1 million less per year. If PBOT were to stop doing the work, however, it would face a $2.5 million funding gap. Now, further study is needed to determine whether a change would be feasible.

The money paid to PBOT is nearly 20 percent of the BES’ budget, according to Dean Marriott, director of the BES. He said he fully supports the BES taking over sewer maintenance operations.

The savings would result from reduced overhead costs. PBOT charges for labor and to cover the indirect costs of managing maintenance staff.

“We believe it should be a core function of our bureau to be able to maintain our own facilities,” Marriott said. “The plan made in 1983 was fine for then, but today, we’re more sophisticated, and our system is bigger and more complicated. We’re ready to take over.”

PBOT director Susan Keil, however, said in a memo to the city auditor that she believes the audit overestimated the potential cost reductions of dissolving the arrangement. She cited a 2008 evaluation in noting that the BES would need to spend $30 million to design and construct a stand-alone maintenance facility if it were to take over maintenance.

Keil’s memo also notes that the BES would face additional costs, including some related to staff and software. Marriott, however, said no new staffers would be needed and that maintenance staffers presently performing sewer work could simply begin reporting to the BES instead of PBOT.

Financial considerations alone may not justify ending the partnership, however. According to the audit, crews and shared equipment under PBOT’s management may mean quicker response time to sewer emergencies during flooding, snow or ice. Director of Audit Services Drummond Kahn said the bureaus have been directed to work together to find the best solution and report back in six months.

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