Southeast Portland residents won’t have to worry whether two new buildings going up in the area will have parking.

That’s because the buildings will actually be pieces of art funded by the new eastside streetcar loop.

The buildings, which will be located along Southeast Grand Avenue, will be towering sculptures shaped to mimic the appearance of the old industrial buildings in the Central Eastside Industrial District. The sculptures will be made out of weathered steel angle iron.

The artists behind them, Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Seattle-based , call them “ghosts” of two buildings that use to stand in the area.

The sculptures will be part of the Percent for Art Program, which requires that two percent of all city construction projects go toward public art. They are expected to be completed by the end of this year, according to the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

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Streetcar commuters were greeted to the platforms this morning with a message that read “POWER OUTAGE SYSTEM WIDE. NO SERVICE UNTIL POWER IS RESTORED.”

Apparently, the streetcar is running again as of 9 a.m., according to Portland Streetcar spokeswoman Julie Gustafson, though some of the platforms are still displaying that message.

The power outage happened because of a faulty connection in the overhead wiring to the , which would extend the streetcar over the Broadway Bridge, down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue, and back across the river to the South Waterfront ().

“Apparently there was something that was just slightly off,” Gustafon said. After several trains had gone through the area where the connection was made near the Broadway Bridge, the entire system shut down.

Construction crews still have work to do to the overhead wiring – or electrical hardware as the Portland Streetcar calls it. Expect to see crews working on Oct. 10 and 17.

Construction on the streetcar loop project is expected to be substantially completed by the end of this year. The Broadway Bridge will be closed for the weekend Oct. 22 and 23. Lanes on the bridge will also be closed periodically from Oct. 24. to Dec. 31. .

The streetcar should start running across the Broadway Bridge in September of 2012, though the loop won’t connect to the South Waterfront until the new bridge for the is completed.  is the construction manager/general contractor for the project.

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Portland City Council today approved a handful of changes to the Eastside Streetcar Loop project. The changes to contracts and intergovernmental agreements reflect complications in the project that will delay its completion and reduce streetcars on the 3.3-mile from six to five.

City project manager Vicky Diede told Portland City Council today that complications have arisen in the manufacturing of streetcars by Oregon Iron Works, a company new to the streetcar-making business.

Conditions attached to grant funding for the project require that the streetcars be made locally. Oregon Iron Works had planned to use a propulsion system manufactured by Czech company Skoda, which manufactured the city’s other streetcars, but Skoda was unable or unwilling to meet the requirements for documentation and testing necessary to certify the new cars, Diede said. The Portland streetcar team decided that it would instead use a propulsion system being developed by Wisconsin-based Rockwell International in the new cars. While that system is being developed, a propulsion system from Austria-based firm Elin will be used in a prototype.

The propulsion system complications have introduced new costs as Oregon Iron Works conducts engineering to fit the Elin motor to its cars. This cost will be initially paid for by Portland Streetcar funds but will be partially offset when Oregon Iron Works sells Elin-powered cars to other cities. The city recently received almost $1 million for seven streetcars Oregon Iron Works sold for $150,000 each to the city of Tuscon, Ariz., Diede said.

The Eastside Streetcar Loop project’s total $148.3 million cost is not expected to change because additional costs are being offset by cost savings – the city will reduce the number of streetcars – and the project’s contingency fund. The project will open five months later than previously scheduled with a completion date of Sept. 21, 2012.

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Construction on a bridge is never easy, but building streetcar tracks across the nearly 100-year-old Broadway Bridge brought challenges to a new level, contractors said.

That part of the $148 million Portland Streetcar Loop project, which broke ground in August 2009, is almost finished. The rest of the track installation is set to wrap up on time by the end of the year, said Rick Gustafson, executive director of Portland Streetcar Inc., the company managing it.

“The streetcar construction on the east side is going really well,” Gustafson said. “What we define as ‘going well’ is that we’re on budget and on schedule.”

When finished, the existing Portland Streetcar system will be extended by 3.3 miles from the Pearl District across the bridge and south to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

With the bridge work – the hardest part – now mostly behind them, workers shouldn’t face anything else that would slow them down, said Steve Wood, project manager with Stacy and Witbeck, the prime contractor for the job.

“We’ve just got a little bit of work left on the Broadway Bridge, a few structural modifications of the deck and some work on two more spans, which will be finished in April or May,” Wood said. “But most of what’s left is just getting track work done in the streets now.”

During the bridge work, crews had to be prepared to take everything off of the lift span with 72 hours notice, because boats still needed to be able to get through, Gustafson said.

The century-old mechanical aspects of the bridge challenged workers, and many accurate weight measurements were required to make sure the bridge still opened and closed correctly during the process, he said.

“It had to stay the same weight the whole time, or it wouldn’t lift correctly,” Gustafson said. “So they had a full-time structural engineer there doing nothing but weighing the bridge constantly.”

A subcontractor, Hamilton Construction, performed some of the more technical parts of the process. The firm replaced the bridge deck with fiber-reinforced concrete panels, worked with steel structures and handled mechanical systems during the track installation.

“About 90 percent of that track is now in,” Wood said. “We still need to install the overhead centenary system – the overhead power wires – which will start in spring and go into summer, but that won’t be nearly as involved.”

Workers will continue to move through east-side construction in three-block chunks. As of mid-February, underground prep work was almost finished and the project was approaching the MLK Viaduct and Oregon Route 99E.

The two remaining challenges for workers will be to build track over the main line railroad near OMSI and to integrate the streetcar loop with TriMet tracks at Holladay Street and Grand Avenue, Gustafson and Wood said.

“We have to be very careful going over the main line railroad, because (if) you have an incident, well, the main line railroad doesn’t like to be interrupted,” Gustafson said. “It’s always hard working on a bridge, but we’re not expecting any problems.”

The tie-in with TriMet shouldn’t be difficult, but it will be intense, Wood said. The work has to be finished over a weekend.

“We’ll have from 1 a.m. on a Saturday to 4 a.m. on a Sunday to wrap it up, because that’s how long TriMet is able to shut down that spot for,” Wood said. “We’ll be working 24/7 during that two-day time slot – no rest, just go-go-go.”

The opening date for the whole line was originally set for April 2012, but that has been bumped back a bit because crews need more time to test the lines once they’re installed and also because some time may be needed to acquire the trolley cars needed for the expansion, Gustafson said.

“The proposal is to have the line open on Sept. 21, 2012, but that has not been adopted by anybody yet,” Gustafson said.

Cars are scheduled for delivery in July 2012, he added.

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Construction on the Portland Streetcar Loop will restart Jan. 4 in the city’s Lloyd District after being on hold for the holiday season.

The next part of the project, which should take about four weeks, will reduce traffic to two lanes on North and Northeast Weidler streets from North Ross to Northeast First avenues.

North Vancouver Avenue will also be closed to cars from North Tillamook Street to North Broadway during that period.

After that, construction on the project will continue to move eastward on Weidler Street, said Kay Dannen, a spokeswoman for Portland Streetcar.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation is warning drivers of potential traffic delays and is notifying bicyclists that the bike lane on Northeast Weidler Street will be removed during the construction.

Cyclists can ride on sidewalks and through crosswalks and should yield to pedestrians during the work period.

The $148.27 million Streetcar Loop Project, which broke ground in August 2009, will extend the existing Portland Streetcar System from the Pearl District across the Broadway Bridge and south to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Stacy and Witbeck, Inc. is the general contractor. The loop is set to open to the public in late 2012.

For a map of the detours, visit the .

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Two cranes, one from Campbell Crane & Rigging and one from Mowat Construction Co., placed four 115-foot-long, 80,000-pound girders to support the middle of the Portland Streetcar flyover bridge in Southeast Portland. The bridge, a part of the Portland Streetcar Eastside Loop project, will extend to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The 425-foot-long span will be supported by 47 piles that are up to 120 feet long. Mowat Construction is the contractor on the bridge while Stacy & Witbeck Inc. is the general contractor for the entire 3.3-mile project.

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Tracks are finished and streets reopened in the Pearl District today after almost two months of construction that shut down several areas for the Portland Streetcar Loop Project.

Traffic patterns have changed in the area and two former two-way streets have become one-way streets, said Dan Anderson, a spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

The only remaining street closure from the work is the Lovejoy ramp on the west end of the Broadway Bridge. The ramp is scheduled to reopen on Nov. 19.

PBOT wants to make sure cyclists and other vehicles are aware of the changes, Anderson said.

“We want to make sure people get through this area as smoothly and safely as possible,” he said.

The Portland Streetcar Loop Project is a 3.3 mile extension of the existing streetcar system. The $150 million project will extend the system from the Pearl District across the Broadway Bridge and south to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Extended streetcar service isn’t scheduled to begin until 2012.

Traffic changes in the area include:

• Northwest Lovejoy Street between 13^th and 10^th avenues is a one-way eastbound street that is closed to vehicles traveling westbound from the Broadway Bridge
• Northwest Northrup Street between 10^th and 16^th avenues is a one-way westbound street
• Northwest Marshall Street between 9^th and 16^th avenues is a two-way street with a new bikeway that is the preferred route for cyclists accessing the west end of the bridge.
• Northwest Lovejoy Street between 9^th and 10^th avenues has multiple streetcar tracks that present obstacles to cyclists.
• A new “Copenhagen Left” turn box on Northwest Lovejoy Street and 9^th Avenue has been added for cyclists traveling westbound from the Broadway Bridge turning southbound on 9^th Avenue.
• Bicycle lanes on Northwest Lovejoy Street between 9^th and 13^th avenues have been removed.
• Northwest Johnson Street between 14^th and 9^th avenues will have shared lane markings for cyclists installed in the near future.

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The Broadway Bridge will close from Tuesday at 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. Wednesday morning.

The closure is due to the latest round of work on the $148 million Portland Streetcar Loop project.

According to Kay Dannen, spokeswoman for Portland Streetcar, the bridge will need to be raised Tuesday evening for construction crews to work on the span locks. Crews will work to finish welding the span locks of the bridge.

Dannen said the bridge will close again in the future for streetcar construction, but contractors are not sure of the exact dates.

Two lanes of traffic will reopen on Wednesday, with larger vehicles such as RVs and buses remaining banned from the bridge until 2011, when construction on the bridge is scheduled to finish. Both bike and pedestrian lanes will also reopen on Wednesday.

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The Broadway Bridge will do what millions of Americans can only dream of – add 240,000 pounds without changing its weight.

When two of the four lanes of the Broadway Bridge reopen to traffic Saturday, drivers will travel along a bridge that has been following a rather complex weight-loss plan: For every pound the bridge added in the form of steel streetcar tracks, it had to lose a pound of existing materials.

The tracks had to be added to the bridge as part of the city’s $148 million Portland Streetcar Loop Project. But the Broadway Bridge is a bascule bridge, which uses counterweight and balance to lift the spans. The added weight of the steel tracks could throw off the balance, preventing the spans on the bridge from lifting high enough for boats to pass underneath. So engineers had to calculate how to maintain the delicate balance of weight required for the bridge to operate.

The logical answer was to reduce the basic weight of the spans themselves. Engineers examined the materials and components of the bridge spans in order to determine which, if any, could be switched for newer, lighter materials. Their attention soon focused on the roadway, bike paths and various support structures.

A significant portion of work went into confirming the actual weight of materials that crews removed from the bridge and comparing that real-life information with the weight listed in the engineering plans, said Mark Bodyfelt, structures manager for Stacy and Witbeck Inc., the construction manager/general contractor on the project. More than once, materials were placed on a scale to ensure that what was going on the bridge was equal to what was coming off.

“You’re working on a 100-year-old bridge, so some things aren’t exactly what you would anticipate because parts of it have changed over time,” Bodyfelt said.

The first round of trimming came in early July, when all four lanes were closed to automobile traffic. Bodyfelt said crews began pulling up the polymer material that makes up the roadways on the lift spans of the bridge and replacing it with a lighter, thinner polymer. Older steel structural components also were removed from the lift spans and replaced with lighter steel components.

Additional weight was cut after the bridge was closed to pedestrians in mid July. The pedestrian areas on both sides of the bridge spans were gutted, according to Kay Dannen, community relations manager for the Portland Streetcar Loop Project. The old galvanized steel panels which lined the pedestrian and bike paths were pulled up and replaced with lighter reinforced fiberglass decking. Heavier steel components used to make hand and guard rails along the paths were also removed and replaced with lighter materials.

The bike and pedestrian path along the south side of the Broadway Bridge will also reopen on Saturday, but the north section will remain closed until construction on the path concludes Sept. 16.

This weekend marks the first time cars will use the Broadway Bridge since it closed in July, but only two of the bridge’s four lanes will be open. Streetcar tracks are still being laid on the two closed lanes.

Larger vehicles such as RVs and buses are banned from the bridge until 2011, when construction on the bridge is scheduled to finish.

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A blocked sewer pipe at the construction site for the Portland Streetcar Loop Project caused 1,400 gallons of raw sewage to overflow into the Willamette River this morning.

Stacy and Witbeck Contractors are contracted with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services to rehabilitate sewer lines for the streetcar project, according to Linc Mann, spokesman for the Bureau of Environmental Services.

During sewer rehabilitation, contractors install a liner to extend the life of the pipe. When the liner is installed, the contractor must pump sewage out of a manhole and run it through a temporary above-ground pipe to a manhole downstream where the water flows back into the underground sewer. The liner is then installed in the section of the sewer being bypassed, Mann said.

However, as a subcontractor performed that procedure today, the wastewater overflowed a diversion structure and flowed through a combined sewer outfall pipe into the Willamette. As soon as a flow monitor on the diversion structure set off an alarm, city maintenance operation crews responded and had the contractor immediately shut down the operation.

The incident has been reported to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Mann said. DEQ staff will investigate the discharge to see if it violated environmental law, according to Esther Westbrook, a compliance and enforcement officer with DEQ’s Portland office.

“It takes some time to determine whether there has been a violation,” Westbrook said. “In spill situations, sometimes we pursue cases against the contractor or against the city. We won’t know who is to blame until we receive all of the facts.”

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