Ironworkers with Raimore Construction are erecting a steel-framed expansion to serve the main Grant High School building in Northeast Portland as part of an approximately $150 million modernization project. The expansion will widen the existing building by about 50 feet, creating a double-corridor space with three rows of programming space. The structure also includes a new ADA-compliant connection between the main building and the adjacent auditorium, which were previously connected with ramps due to a grade change between the buildings.

The ironworkers have been working on the project steadily since February, and will remain at work on site through 2018. Raimore’s scope of work also includes installation of steel for the seismic bracing of existing structures. Completion of the Mahlum-designed project, being built by the Andersen/Colas Construction joint venture and managed by CBRE | Heery, is slated for summer 2019.

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A bid to bring Major League Baseball to Portland has gotten very serious, very quickly.

The Portland Diamond Project, a group led by former Nike executive Craig Cheek, has submitted formal offers on two large properties in Portland.

One is a Portland Public Schools property north of the Rose Quarter that includes the Blanchard Education Service Center, at 501 N. Dixon St. The property is zoned IG-1 for general industrial uses.

The other is an industrial site in Northwest Portland. While not identified by the Portland Diamond Project, the site matches the description of the former ESCO Corp. foundry that closed in 2016.

Earlier attempts to lure a major league team to Portland foundered because of difficulties finding a suitable site. Portland Diamond Project aims to fill that space in the lineup first.

Besides Cheek, the Portland Diamond Project includes former Trail Blazers announcer Mike Barrett and former state Sen. Jason Atkinson, according to a news release from the group.

The group has retained Kansas City’s Populous Architects, which has designed more than 20 MLB stadiums. TVA Architects is serving as a local design partner. The Portland firm did not return a message seeking comment. A New York-based attorney, Irwin Raij of O’Melveny & Myers, is serving as legal adviser.

The baseball boosters said they want to build multifamily units along with a ballpark. Both sites have “ample room for multifamily development, which can help alleviate Portland’s housing crisis,” Cheek stated in the news release. “We’re planning to pave the way for 8,000 new workforce and market-rate apartments to create a vibrant, walkable community around the facility, wherever it ultimately lands.”

The group is not seeking “new programs” to fund the ballpark, according to the release. Public funding for ballparks has become controversial after several deals across the nation left local taxpayers holding long-term debt.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, in a prepared statement, said he is focused on housing and homelessness.

“It’s my belief that city resources should be directed to these priorities,” he stated. “We will continue to watch the Portland Diamond Project proposal as it develops.”

Portland Public Schools was due to discuss the offer during a closed-door executive session Wednesday.

“The district is not really actively pursuing anything – more in listening mode,” PPS spokesman Dave Northfield said.

The PPS property has the advantage of proximity to existing sports venues – the Moda Center and Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

The area is also targeted in the Albina Vision, a loosely drawn plan for a large-scale redevelopment of underutilized properties. The historically African-American neighborhood was disrupted to make way for redevelopment in the 1960s. Albina Vision proponents did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday.

The ESCO property is close to Interstate 405 and the fast-growing Slabtown area. City leaders have discussed extending Portland Streetcar tracks to that area. The area is likely to become more integrated into surrounding neighborhoods, said Tom DiChiara, principal at Cairn Pacific, a major developer in Slabtown.

“I like the idea of the area north of Highway 30 there becoming more a part of Northwest Portland, more a part of a mixed-use neighborhood long term,” DiChiara said. He noted there are many obstacles to a baseball stadium in Northwest Portland, including zoning, transportation capacity and infrastructure.

Portland hasn’t had professional baseball since the minor-league Portland Beavers were sold in 2010 to make way for the Timbers soccer franchise.

The Hillsboro Hops began playing in 2013. Its 3,500-seat stadium is about 14 miles outside of Portland. Portland also has the Pickles, a summer league team that is mainly for college players.

A 32,000-seat baseball stadium would dwarf any other sports arena in the Portland area.

MLB has two teams that have made noise about moving to new stadiums. The Oakland Athletics just celebrated 50 years in the Bay Area, but their aging stadium has drawn few fans in recent years and generated embarrassing headlines for issues such as sewage problems. The team’s efforts to build elsewhere in Oakland have so far been stymied.

Similarly, the Tampa Bay Rays play in an older stadium and consistently rank among teams with low attendance.

MLB could also opt to expand. The league’s two newest teams, the Rays and the Diamondbacks, began playing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Phoenix, respectively, in 1998.

The post Two properties targeted for possible ballpark appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

With more than $1.5 billion in school construction bonds approved by voters in the Portland metro area in the past year, and the potential for more than $1 billion in additional projects if voters in the Battle Ground and Evergreen school districts in Washington approve two bond measures in February, the education construction market is expected to be hot for local building and design professionals for years to come.

With an eye toward helping local firms in the building industry tap into those opportunities, the Daily Journal of Commerce will kick off a new Builder Breakfast series with a Jan. 31 event. This one, on tap from 7:15 to 9 a.m. at the Sentinel in downtown Portland, will focus on the specific upcoming work opportunities for design and building professionals, as well as suppliers, via several local area school bonds.

The format will feature a panel discussion. Panelists will include:

• Dan Jung, senior director of Portland Public Schools‘ Office of School Modernization ($790 million health, safety and modernization bond passed in May 2017)
• Adam Stewart, chief financial officer and capital projects officer, Hillsboro School District ($408 million capital construction bond passed in November 2017)
• Linda Degman, bond director, Portland Community College ($185 million workforce training center bond passed in November 2017)

Panelists will discuss the types of work they expect will be available, how to find more information on specific projects, what is required of firms to qualify for work on these projects and best practices to obtain and successfully complete education construction work.

The panel discussion is part of the Daily Journal of Commerce’s new quarterly Builder Breakfast series. The event will include networking opportunities, breakfast and a discussion on specific upcoming work opportunities. The cost to attend is $25, or $225 for a table of 10.

Registration is available online at djcoregon.com/builder-breakfast/.

The post 91��Ƶ’s Builder Breakfast series kicks off Jan. 31 appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Construction work is in full swing on the last major project funded by Portland Public Schools‘ 2012 School Building Improvement Bond. A joint venture team of Andersen/Colas Construction is performing a Mahlum Architects-designed upgrade of Grant High School that will modernize and expand the school’s space while maintaining the historic look of the school, which was originally built in 1923.

Crews began work on the approximately $150 million project after the school year ended last June, and have since completed the mass demolition portion of the job – the razing of five non-historic expansions that were not part of the original structure. Interior demolition and abatement is ongoing and about 80 percent complete.

Construction of a new gymnasium has begun; excavation for the two-story structure is complete, and crews are starting to put down the rock pad for the gym’s foundation. The main floor of the new gymnasium is at a level below grade so that the structure fits in with the existing context of the neighborhood without towering over other structures.

Some temporary shoring has been completed, and crews are excavating for new courtyards. Excavation of foundations will continue until next January/February, with installation of structural steel set to begin at that time.

Unlike the previously-completed bond-funded renovations of Franklin and Roosevelt high schools and as a result of community input, the auditorium at Grant will remain in use as an auditorium. Murals and interior décor in the auditorium are being maintained, and the contractors and Heery International, the project manager, are working with the State Historic Preservation Office to maintain historically significant elements.

The construction team is targeting a dry-in date of fall 2018, which will include the new gymnasium and an addition to the building’s west side. Completion is slated for July 2019, and students will return to the campus – which will have a capacity for 200 more students – that fall.

The post Photos: Grant High School bond work in full swing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

At an Urban Land Institute resilience panel last month, architect Ben Kaiser told attendees that, at long last, a school had stepped up to serve as a test case for his patented seismic safety system, .

“The idea that a desk will protect you is ludicrous,” he said, knocking the American Red Cross-advised practice of dropping to the ground during an earthquake and seeking cover from falling material. “We’re adamant with CoreFirst: we protect the person.”

Kaiser, designer-builder-developer behind Portland’s , knows how to innovate – he’s pushed through tough projects where others have failed, like the all-timber Radiator Building and the topped-out, mass-timber Carbon12 condo tower (95 feet). A Midwest native, he grew up accustomed to tornado sirens and storm shelters. He’s passionate about his idea for an affordable partial seismic upgrade involving early detection and structurally-reinforced shelters inside schools. And now, after five years, Beaverton’s small, private (GIS) has put down $400,000 to install the first one.

“Beaverton always wants to be innovative,” Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle said.

But it’s not universal excitement. A number of people are unconvinced of the promise of CoreFirst. They include state and federal seismic officials, Portland-area public school districts and partners at some of the city’s top engineering firms. They say the system is a waste of money that distracts from real solutions. At worst, they say Kaiser is endangering the lives of children with his untested theories about earthquakes.

“I see no engineering advantage,” said Jay Raskin, vice chairman of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC). “This thing has not been vetted by the engineering community. He has an idea and he’s very persuasive about it, but he’s kind of off on his own with this. He has no support.”

Kool-Aid and opera

Doyle, for one, is on-board with CoreFirst. He wants GIS to be a seismic showcase for other Oregon schools. That the system is minimally-invasive, saves money and features seismic detection technology potentially beneficial to the greater community are all pluses for him. He said the system seemed “too practical, too affordable” to pass up.

With thousands of lives at stake and aging facilities throughout , public schools are on the front lines of discussions about resiliency. CoreFirst was created to upend what Kaiser considers out-of-date notions of school preparedness. He’s especially critical of the American Red Cross’ recommendation to “drop, cover and hold on” during an earthquake, because, he says, it’s only natural for people in mortal danger to seek safer ground.

There’s little dispute in engineering that a great need exists for seismic upgrades. Nearly 1,000 Oregon public school buildings have a seismic risk rated “high” or “very high” by the state geologist’s office. Plus, Portland is known to have an outsize number of buildings with hazardous, unreinforced masonry (URM), including around 300 multifamily structures and many public buildings.

Code now mandates full upgrades for certain at-risk structures. Owners can elect to bolster their properties, but due to the eye-popping price, most do so only when absolutely necessary. But CoreFirst, with an advertised cost of 25 percent of a full seismic upgrade, is meant to put resilience within reach for cash-strapped school districts and other owners.

A full seismic retrofit is often so invasive that owners must evict tenants or pay to relocate them, but CoreFirst seismic enclosures are designed to be quickly flown in from above. Also potentially attractive to schools: a build time of three months, or, one summer break.

According to Kaiser, the system consists of three elements working in concert:

1. In-ground early-detection sensors that warn schools of incoming quakes. (One of these systems is . Kaiser says it’s able to text seismic warnings to tenants.)
2. Kaiser’s deployed at strategic locations around a school. It’s to these “sanctuaries” that teachers are to muster their classes in the seconds after an earthquake’s initial rumblings.
3. Shored-up exits to prevent material from falling on fleeing people. (This is widely regarded by structural engineers as a good idea.)

Another CoreFirst believer is GIS Head of School Blake Peters. Following publication of Kathryn Schulz’s 2015 watershed article in The New Yorker about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest, Peters was inundated by worried parents. And he listened.

“Doing nothing wasn’t an answer,” he said.

Knowing a full upgrade was financially out of reach for the small school (200 students), Peters looked online for alternatives. He contacted Kaiser based on online materials.

“I’d already drank his Kool-Aid before he even tried to sell me anything,” Peters said, laughing.

Private schools pay for capital projects through reserves, bank financing and, of course, private donations. In this case, the fundraising campaign got a big assist from Kaiser himself, Peters said.

In late October, the school held an opera-themed fundraiser for a CoreFirst seismic upgrade in the Brewery Blocks. The event was a “huge success,” according to a , and reportedly exceeded its goal.

A week later, in , Doyle can be seen accepting Kaiser’s stamped design drawings at City Hall dressed for Halloween as Kylo Ren from “Star Wars.”

“We’re excited to be leading the way on innovative approaches to keeping children safe!” reads the post.

A static response

Raskin, a resiliency-focused architect from Cannon Beach, said it’s unfortunate the first CoreFirst school will be located in Beaverton – the Beaverton School District (BSD) has perhaps the strongest seismic resiliency program in the state. Its building specifications go beyond state mandates, and new buildings are expected to serve as community gathering places following a major emergency.

“It should be the plan for all schools in Oregon,” Raskin said.

CoreFirst, he said, should not.

Critics say, for one thing, that Kaiser’s comparisons of earthquakes to tornadoes miss the mark. Earthquakes are the sudden release of pent-up pressure along a geologic fault. And while detection technology has improved, they say there’s no reliable way to detect seismic emergencies fast enough to matter.

Kaiser started promoting his idea around the time Portland Public Schools (PPS) planned its previous bond program. With help from KPFF, he developed a conceptual plan to use his enclosures to strengthen schools in North Portland. But when his team applied for a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), it elicited a stark rebuke from FEMA’s head of Building Sciences, and PPS backed away.

That official, Edward Laatsch, sent a expressing “very significant concerns” with CoreFirst. For one, Laatsch said he knew of no technology capable of detecting earthquakes and issuing warnings the way Kaiser describes. Further, Laatsch said Portland is threatened by a number of geologic faults smaller than the well-known Cascadia Subduction Zone, and Kaiser’s system doesn’t seem to account for them.

“The CoreFirst system … is significantly flawed and it is very doubtful that this system would meet the technical feasibility criteria for FEMA mitigation grant funding,” Laatsch wrote.

Seismic experts, including Laatsch, worry that once a CoreFirst system is installed, districts might sit back, believing their problem fixed. Experts wonder why, in the case of GIS, a seismic system is needed so urgently in a two-story, wood-framed building (the nearly 50-year-old structure was built as an administrative space for Phil Knight’s Nike-precursor Blue Ribbon Sports).

Structural engineer Jeffrey Soulages, an Intel employee, echoed a common critique: “What this approach does is provide a false sense of security.”

Kaiser insists his plan works. Beyond that, he said, a small step is better than nothing.

“A static response will get a static outcome,” he says.

Support system

Kaiser thinks the discussion over CoreFirst has gotten “political.” He’s frustrated with FEMA, which he says is “not cutting-edge at all,” citing its botched handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Additionally, FEMA has been unresponsive to Kaiser’s outreach. He said he’s called Laatsch more than 10 times “to no avail.”

“I think he took about 15 minutes and then he wrote that response,” he said of Laatsch’s letter, which PPS and BSD officials told the 91��Ƶ was a reason they’ve avoided Kaiser’s system.

“I have begged FEMA to have a real discourse about this,” he said. “It really confuses me.”

One man whose opposition he’s especially “confused” by is Blake Patsy, head of KPFF, the largest structural engineering firm in Portland. Kaiser describes a productive rap session near CoreFirst’s inception, when the two met for coffee and Patsy helped Kaiser “create” CoreFirst.

Patsy tells it different. He said he was initially interested when Kaiser came to him for support, but only if CoreFirst concepts were included as part of a larger, phased seismic upgrade plan. KPFF did assist on a conceptual plan for PPS, he says, but declined further involvement when it became clear Kaiser was interested only in “selling his product.”

“He’s basically a salesman,” Patsy said. “He wants to sell his product, and that doesn’t align with our engineering philosophy of doing what’s right for the project and the client.”

Patsy said Kaiser brought to their meeting a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for him to sign, indicating to him that Kaiser was after his endorsement, not his input.

“You don’t bring an NDA if it’s not your idea,” Patsy said.

But the “line in the sand” for Patsy was when he read Kaiser quoted in a 2013 91��Ƶ article calling KPFF a partner in CoreFirst. After that, he told Kaiser, “we’re done.”

“If you have to read about what’s going on with your partner in the paper, that’s not a partner,” Patsy said.

KPFF is not alone in asking Kaiser to cease using its name in connection with CoreFirst. His prospective steel supplier for the GIS project, Pleasanton, California-based , has done the same.

“We told him flat-out, we stand behind our product 100-percent, but we don’t get into the end application,” said Jeremy Gilstrap, Simpson Strong-Tie’s vice president of engineering. “We are not in a position to support what he’s doing.”

Amit Kumar, senior structural engineer with the city of Portland, has heard Kaiser’s pitch several times, once when Kaiser approached the city about joining him. Kumar said he feels compelled to warn parents that while CoreFirst might improve a school building, it is not a seismic upgrade.

“We have told him that he cannot use the city of Portland to sell his product in any of his propaganda,” Kumar said.

Kaiser still touts the endorsements of local structural engineering firm Nishkian Dean, as well as Art Johnson, the retired founder of KPFF and, incidentally, Patsy’s father-in-law.

Johnson and Nishkian Dean Vice President Edwin T. Dean in 2013 defended two aspects of CoreFirst in a , writing that there is merit in the notion of incremental seismic strengthening, and that examples of predictive seismic monitoring do exist.

“CoreFirst is a new approach to looking at a big challenge that we have long faced,” they wrote.

Creeped out

The latest on the GIS CoreFirst upgrade is that it’s still up in the air. On Wednesday, days before work was to start, Peters learned the cost had doubled to around $800,000. He said he was told by Kaiser it was the result of rising labor and material costs and price creep transferred through their chosen contractor, R&H Construction.

“Nobody knows with this new technology, so the cost keeps creeping,” Peters said.

R&H directed all questions to Kaiser.

A building permit with the city of Beaverton is still valid, and Peters said work will get done when the funding is in place, if not this summer, then next.

“Everyone is probably going to have to dig into their pockets a little deeper,” he said. “We will do this project.”

Frustrated with the pushback his idea has received, Kaiser admits he set out thinking, optimistically, that CoreFirst would “just get adopted.”

“The logic seemed so straightforward to me,” he said. “Perhaps that was illogical on my part.”

The post Affordable innovation or dangerous idea? appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The revitalization of Grant High School, in Northeast Portland, took a step forward with a ceremonial ground-breaking event last week.

The $116 million project will include demolition of five non-historic expansions and new construction to expand academic areas. The money came from a $482 million bond approved by Portland voters in 2012.

“Currently we are in construction documents,” said Alyssa Leeviraphan, project manager at Mahlum Architects. “We will start the construction in July, as soon as the students are out.”

Students will spend the next two years at the Marshall High School campus and return when the improved building reopens in fall 2019.

Grant High School was built in 1923; expansions were built in the 1950s and ’60s. Approximately 30 percent of the structure will be demolished and 70 percent modernized. Originally there was discussion of demolishing the entire structure and constructing an entirely new one. But the school’s historic nature and the substantial cost to build anew prompted the current plan.

“There was a lot of discussion around demolition,” Leeviraphan said. “There was a design advisory group that met over seven months. Through that process, the history of the building was a focus of the community.”

Now, the plan is to preserve historic portions.

“One thing that was important to Grant was to keep the auditorium intact,” Leeviraphan said. “So we are doing a full upgrade.”

Portland Public Schools officials focused on cost. Modernizing a school rather than building a new school can save the district millions of dollars.

“We look at building envelope,” said Jerry Vincent, PPS‘ chief operating officer in charge of school modernization. “If the slab, roof and walls are good, we save ourselves about 20 percent of the cost by modernizing.”

Cost isn’t analyzed strictly in terms of dollars spent on the structure. Vincent said that the price per square foot and the time involved with demolition versus modernization are also taken into account. Officials also must account for facilities’ historic nature.

“Some of these buildings are on a historic list or (are considered) historic as far as the community was concerned,” he said.

The educational needs of today forced the designers to come up with new uses for some parts of the school. For instance, the existing gymnasium will be converted into a visual arts complex that will house all of Grant’s art programs.

“I would say providing students with a 21st century learning facility has been a challenge,” Leeviraphan said.

“Not knowing entirely what is there until we get to work on site is a challenge,” she added. “Just having to detail the building on drawings that aren’t always accurate is tough. We have to figure out how to make it work.”

A two-story common square will include a student eatery and a community gathering space. A new 1,700-seat gym, an auxiliary gym and a weight room will be added to athletic facilities.

“A lot is happening with the building,” Leeviraphan said. “The way we designed the building, we have given them flexible learning spaces.”

Designers dumped the existing unconnected basements in favor of below-grade classrooms with sunlight exposure and access to the outdoors.

However, interior renovations aren’t the only changes planned. Exterior alterations will include new outdoor learning spaces and courtyards.

The post Grant High School modernization on tap appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The passage of Portland Public Schools‘ 2017 bond measure this month means a mint’s worth of new money in the construction ecosystem over the next half-decade. This will surely have a huge impact on the construction industry.

Growing firms are preparing to enter the public sector for the first time. Others are puzzling how to expand while contending with ongoing material and labor shortages.

The $790 million bond, the largest in state history, will include four big-ticket school projects, plus pipe and fixture replacements and other smaller, health and life safety improvements at all 90 PPS facilities. And it’s not the only bond out there; a number of programs passed in May or are ongoing from prior elections.

Professionals say it’s difficult to imagine work in the public sector – which is already cruising – slowing any time before 2020.

“2019 is going to be a pretty busy year; we’re going to be hot and heavy at that point,” said Brian Shoemaker, senior project manager for P&C Construction. “What’s going to be interesting and challenging for us is just managing all that work.”

Major builder Andersen Construction will likely go after one of the bond’s big-ticket projects, according to Senior Project Manager Erin Storlie. Tackling a catalog of projects with diverse funding mechanisms helps ensure long-term stability. Andersen even recently got into the development game at the behest of third-generation president Joel Andersen.

Private development deals come together in seemingly myriad permutations, whereas bond money is set aside for specific projects. That’s one reason to pursue public work, Storlie said. Another is the company is seeing fewer private job opportunities – specifically housing.

“It’s nice that something else is coming up when something else is kind of receding a little bit,” Storlie said. “This fits well with our model of having a backlog of real stable work.”

Midsize companies like P&C, which does about half its work in the K-12 sector, will try to expand while battling ongoing and extensive labor and material shortages. In particular, the firm reports difficulty finding professionals with around five to seven years of experience.

“It’s easy to find new people coming out of school, inexperienced people, both on the construction and design side,” Shoemaker said. “And you can also find those seasoned, experienced people that have 15-years-plus, because they’ve weathered the recession. It’s that gap in between that we’re having trouble finding.”

An abundance of work has led to material scarcity and scheduling headaches. Lately, manufacturers are having trouble getting gypsum to make drywall.

“But it’s not limited to one product,” he said. “It’s just that lead times are getting longer. What used to take six to eight weeks, now takes 12 to 14 weeks.”

With so much work now available, firms can be choosy with regard to project owners. P&C prefers an owner that embraces the construction manager-general contractor delivery method. About 90 percent of its volume is performed this way. And firms like hard-bid specialist Todd Construction will have greater freedom either to stick to its established business model, or branch out into CM-GC (which it also has experience with).

Todd Construction is wrapping up work on Faubion School in Northeast Portland, collaborating with PPS and Concordia University, which borders the school. The experience has been a good one, vice president Ken Dixon said, meaning the firm, which prioritizes working with a good team, will pursue more PPS work.

Several small and midsize contractors said their participation in the 2017 program will hinge on the “manageability” of the bid packages. Packages too large may present unappealing risk for some companies; those too small may not be worth the effort.

“We’ve got to do a good study to get those down to manageable packages,” said Ken Fisher, program manager for Heery, owner’s representative for PPS’ 2012 bond. “But then it comes down to what’s the definition of ‘manageable,’ and what’s that sweet spot for some of these contractors?”

What’s unique about PPS’ 2017 bond – and the reason it is so large – is the sizable sum dedicated to health and life safety upgrades across the district. Around $150 million will be spread around for spot fixes at the district’s 90 facilities (the remaining $640 million will go to the four major projects.)

For years the district’s approach apparently was to select a few large builders and leave it to them to spread the wealth among their sphere of subcontractors, according to Todd Hess, president of Todd Hess Construction. This left a lot of people feeling left out.

“The feedback that the industry has given them is they really need to break it up in smaller pieces that are more approachable to more companies,” he said. “If they heed that advice, I think a lot more companies will be able to get some of that work.”

PPS is preparing to release an RFP to prequalify firms to bid on job order proposals for water pipe and fixture replacement and potential partial pipe replacement districtwide. This could help get smaller firms in on the action, according to Emily Courtnage, director of contracting and purchasing for PPS.

The district is still providing students at many facilities bottled water due to fear of lead in the drinking water pipes.

“The 2017 bond will get us off bottled water,” Courtnage said.

Another way the district hopes to get more small firms to participate is by encouraging large firms to partner with smaller ones. A well-known example is large builder Andersen Construction partnering with Colas Construction, a large minority-owned firm. That joint venture is nearly ready to break ground on the modernization of Grant High School.

The district has equity goals intended to get smaller firms to participate and grow larger. For projects over $200,000, builders have to comply with the district’s workforce equity requirements. That means 20 percent of qualified hours must be worked by apprentices.

Prime contractors also must meet PPS’ lofty business equity goal of 18 percent of total dollars going to COBID-certified firms (COBID is Oregon’s catch-all term for businesses that are woman- or minority-owned, are emerging small businesses or owned by a service-disabled military veteran).

It’s likely these goals will remain merely aspirations throughout the 2017 program. The minority participation is at about 50 percent achievement on the 2012 bond, said to be due to the volume of work available to firms and the relatively small number of COBID firms available to do the work.

The post Back to schools appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The north end of the Pearl District is one of the last areas of central Portland to fill with high-density apartment buildings and offices.

As the Slabtown area grows to the northwest and the Pearl continues to see new development to the south, more developers are taking a chance on the industrial blocks in between.

“It’s kind of a transitional zone, like the Central Eastside, and that makes it interesting,” said Tom Cody, whose development firm project^ has several investments in the area.

Yet the neighborhood faces a range of challenges as it develops. The Interstate 405 overpass acts as a dividing barrier for pedestrians and traffic. It’s less proximate to downtown and isn’t served by light rail. And some believe public infrastructure, from parks to schools, has lagged behind private investment.

“It’s the last part of the Pearl to develop, but it’s kind of developing along with the Con-way site, so ultimately those are going to come together,” said Don Vallaster, a member of the Portland Design Commission.

The area near the interstate overpass bears the signs of an industrial past. Many of the buildings have loading docks, and long-disused railroad tracks stretch down 15th Avenue. The area has a grittier feel than neighborhoods to the north and south, where high-end grocery stores and exercise studios cater to wealthy residents.

“It is the in-between,” Cody said. “It has quite a bit of character. It’s not homogeneous like the Pearl. There’s older buildings. There’s newer buildings. There’s low-lying buildings. There’s taller buildings.”

As construction sites blossom with work, public infrastructure has not kept pace with private growth in the neighborhood, Cody said. Despite the millions of dollars generated in system development charges and related fees, there’s been little public work in recent years.

“You don’t see a proportionate level of infrastructure investment,” he said.

Troy Doss, senior planner for Portland’s Central City, said the city provided for today’s growth with earlier infrastructure improvements.

“The reality is the area was a railyard,” he said. “It had no parks. It had no streets, no water, no sewer. It had a viaduct that had to be removed. There’s been hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements to get it to where it is today.

“It’s not like it’s behind,” he added. “We were ahead.”

Cody said the neighborhood needs other public investments, including parks. The Fields Park, the area’s newest park, at Northwest 10th Avenue and Overton Street, was completed in 2013.

Perhaps most acute is the situation at Chapman Elementary, a neighborhood school at 1445 N.W. 26th Ave. that has long experienced overcrowding. Last fall, as residential growth reached a crescendo, Chapman moved kindergarten classes off-site to the Ramona, an apartment building at 13th Avenue and Quimby Street, to give grades 1-5 more room at the original elementary buildings. The four kindergarten classrooms at the Ramona site are isolated from the rest of the school.

“There’s no mentorship anymore,” Cody said. “They’re not part of the school community anymore.”

Enrollment at Chapman grew 42 percent from fall 2007 to fall 2014, peaking at 674 pupils. With kindergarten moving off campus, enrollment at Chapman dropped last fall to 584 pupils, according to Portland Public Schools.

The neighborhood could be heading toward a political backlash, Cody said.

“It’s ripe for some kind of an uprising,” he said. “It’s not a neighborhood of need, but it’s being subjected to so much growth without any investments from the public sector. I think it’s kind of a time bomb in that way, and the canary in the coal mine is Chapman Elementary.”

The city needs to re-examine traffic in the north Pearl, including on 14th and 15th avenues, said Tiffany Sweitzer, president of Hoyt Street Properties. Northrup and Overton streets are becoming major thoroughfares, and some of the neighborhood’s one-way streets are not working well, she said.

“I do think we need to take another look,” she said. “This area tends to get forgotten because people think it’s built out, but we need to take another look at it after all of these years.”

Developers are approaching the neighborhood in various ways. Land prices remain high, so new projects tend to be large so they are worthwhile.

Paul Rudinsky’s Overton 15, an apartment building designed by Vallaster Corl Architects, will have small and relatively affordable units, compared to others in the Pearl.

“We are catering towards a younger demographic,” he said. “What we’re envisioning there is not your typical Pearl renters.”

The project won approval from the Design Commission last week; Vallaster recused himself from the hearing.

The 68-unit development will have a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units. And they’ll be small: a little more than 400 square feet for a studio, 550 to 625 square feet for a one-bedroom and less than 800 square feet for a two-bedroom apartment.

Vallaster, in designing the building, made efforts to mitigate noise from I-405. Overton 15 will use noise-resistant windows, noise-reducing packing beading within the walls and double the usual amount of insulation. The top floors of the seven-story building will be roughly even with the overpass.

The ground floor will have three commercial spaces totaling 3,000 square feet. The spaces are likely to be creative office, not retail, Rudinsky said.

That points to a potential role for the developing neighborhood as an employment center. The area is already home to a Legacy Health System office and a field office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, among others.

“In that location and being next to (Interstate) 405, I just think creative office will be better received than retail,” Rudinsky said.

More office space is coming. Field Office, from project^, is under construction with Lease Crutcher Lewis as general contractor. The two-building development on Northwest Front Avenue will bring about 300,000 square feet to market later this year.

The development is happening not far from what’s been branded as Slabtown, the former Con-way shipping site in Northwest Portland. Developers including Cairn Pacific and Capstone Partners are building a fast-growing mixed-use district centered along Raleigh Street. A New Seasons grocery store has provided a core asset to the neighborhood.

Other developers are playing off of that success and extending its reach.

Rudinsky, a Eugene-based developer, purchased the quarter-block parcel for Overton 15 from developer Tim O’Brien in November 2016 for $3.3 million. It’s the latest project for Rudinsky, who was also involved in developing 11 Marché and Couch 9, and has ownership interests in the Lower Burnside Lofts and Hawthorne 44.

The area “just has everything we’re looking for,” Rudinsky said.

A Safeway grocery store and an L.A. Fitness are nearby, and the Portland Streetcar provides a public-transit option.

A few blocks north, at Northwest 14th Avenue and Pettygrove Street, crews are building Modera Pearl. The building will offer 290 market-rate apartments.

Broadstone Reveal is under construction at Northwest 14th Avenue and Raleigh Street. The project from Alliance Residential Co., based in Phoenix, will bring 147 luxury apartments to market in summer 2018.

Also under construction is Vista, Hoyt Street’s 21-story condominium tower on Block 20. The project designed by Bora Architects is on schedule for delivery in October 2018, Sweitzer said. Andersen Construction is the general contractor.

Presales of the condominium units begin this week.

Hoyt Street has built approximately 2,800 housing units in the Pearl District. The company originally held 34 acres in the neighborhood.

More development is in the works for Hoyt Street.

Sweitzer is partnering with local developer Joe Weston to build a five-story self-storage facility on Block 29, at Northwest Savier Street and 13th Avenue, under the Fremont Bridge. That project is scheduled to go before the Portland Design Commission for a design advice hearing on Thursday.

The self-storage units are targeted for use by condo and apartment residents nearby.

After Vista, Hoyt’s next project may be a senior-living facility on Block 24, just north of Vista.

“We’re doing our own homework on that and looking at the interest level,” Sweitzer said.

The facility could be a destination for seniors already living in the north Pearl, she said.
“They’re happy with the neighborhood,” she said. “They’re here to stay.”

The post Neighborhood growing pains appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The modernization of Franklin High School is the largest school construction project going in the Portland area and the largest of the four main projects funded by a bond approved by voters in 2012, in both size (279,000 square feet) and dollar amount ($112 million). Much effort has gone into preserving the exterior appearance and layout of the 100-year school, but crews are otherwise building anew.

“We’re trying to match all the brickwork to keep the historic look from the outside,” said Johnny Metoyer, senior project manager for owner’s representative Heery International. “Internally though, it’s pretty much a full gut.”

To comply with historic preservation guidelines and mandates to comb out all lead and asbestos – as well as the nostalgic will of the Franklin community – the team renovating the school has had to walk a fine line to deliver Portland Public Schools a modern facility.

New track on track

Architect DOWA-IBI Group emerged from meetings with the project’s Design Advisory Group with two main directives: keep as much of Franklin’s historic colonial revival look as possible, and – as reiterated many times – replace the running track.

“I sat through many DAG meetings and the community was very adamant about that track,” said Ken Fisher, Heery’s program manager for the PPS bond program.

One of Franklin’s quirks has long been its four-bank, “NASCAR-style” track – think: four straightaways – that have prevented the school from hosting official athletic events. A new oval-shaped track will enable state records to be set at the school. Other new athletic amenities include new batting cages for the ball fields and new grandstands for the football field.

The State Historic Preservation Office also had lots of input on project design. It required that all historic windows be cleaned and renovated. Also, the main building’s “spine” must remain intact.

David Mayne, PPS spokesman for the bond program, said preserving the building’s historic appearance is a priority, but not just because it’s required by the state.

“We’re doing it because that’s what the community wanted,” he said. “We designed the project around what the community wanted.”

Skanska was brought on early in the design phase as construction manager-general contractor to advise on constructability and pricing. Portland Public Schools has an aspiration project goal of 18 percent participation by minority contractors.

Franklin High School is scheduled to “go online” in time for the 2017-18 academic year. In late August, Franklin staffers and students began their second school year in the Marshall High School facility, in Southeast Portland. When that contingent moves out, its counterparts at Grant High School will move in while a modernization of its facility takes place; that project is still in the design phase.

For now, Franklin houses 200-plus predominantly-union construction workers a day. The old track serves as their parking lot.

Expecting the unexpected

A major aspect of the project is the new gymnasium building, which will contain athletic space and biomedical classrooms, to match an expanded academic focus on health and wellness. The culinary curriculum, for instance, will be expanded to better prepare students for careers in food service. Large exhaust hoods – like those found in a commercial kitchen – were installed in the Franklin teaching kitchen.

The gym itself is massive – 45 feet from floor to ceiling – and large enough to hold the school’s 1,700 students collectively. This month, a tangle of temporary plastic ductwork was piping in heat to condition and dehumidify the space ahead of gym floor installation.

“What you don’t want to have is moisture when you’re putting in a wood floor,” Metoyer said.

Elevators were being installed in the gym building. Upon project completion, Franklin will have five elevators (an existing one is being brought up to code) and two wheelchair lifts (one will access the auditorium’s orchestra pit). The project contract also calls for returning the clock in the school’s landmark tower to working order.

The language of the 2012 bond also calls for seismic remediation of Franklin. Less than half of the project is new construction, so shear walls are being added – basement to roof – in the old education building, and the roofs are being tied together.

When adapting old buildings to modern use, original plans don’t serve as the best guidance, Metoyer said. Fewer building codes and safety concerns existed a century ago, though the quality of craftsmanship was high.

“The challenge with an old facility is when you open it up, you find things that aren’t documented,” Metoyer said. “Sometimes it’s not built the way it’s documented. So you have to adjust your designs a little to meet the requirements of the project. It’s been one of the biggest challenges we’ve had on this project. But that’s why the team is here, to work through all that.”

Removing all asbestos and lead from the building has represented another significant challenge. Franklin was built under a city mandate for fireproof schools. As such, it’s chock-full of asbestos – a fire suppressant now known to be a health hazard.

“We spent a significant amount of money on asbestos abatement,” Fisher said.

All the building’s piping will be replaced, from the connections at the street to the fixtures inside. Most of the old walls containing lead paint have been taken down. What remains will be sealed and painted over.

Skanska was impacted a little by the ongoing construction labor shortage, but managed to work with unions enough to avoid schedule impacts. Three to five days were lost in the past winter when wet weather rendered the site inaccessible, but workers have made up the time and are on track for substantial completion on May 25, 2017. At that point, the standard close-out procedure will begin.

First is the punch list, where scuffed floors and flickering lights will be given attention. Then furniture will be loaded up and items like the school’s wooden Ben Franklin statue will be removed from storage and reinstalled. Also, the building’s heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems will be tested prior to certificates of occupation being granted by the city and other regulatory agencies. The buildings should be “student-ready” by Aug. 1, giving teachers and staff a few days to adjust to all the changes.

“It’ll be here before we know it,” Fisher said.

Franklin High School

Size: 279,000 square feet

Cost: $112 million

Owner: Portland Public Schools

Contractor: Skanska

Architect: DOWA-IBI Group

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Over the first two weeks of the 2016-17 academic year, administrators at Roosevelt High School reportedly dealt with only one disciplinary incident. Usually, staffers address many, many more, according to Vice Principal Daniel Malone, who thinks he knows what’s behind such a sudden and significant behavioral shift.

“This is a different kind of space,” he said. “Maybe they’re asking themselves, ‘Does this feel like a place to work or a place to play?’”

Crews scrambled night and day to turn over the first construction phase of the $92 million renovation and modernization effort at Roosevelt – one of four large projects funded by the 2012 Portland Public Schools bond. As the second phase gets out of the gate, Roosevelt is very much still a construction site, but district officials maintain that’s not a bad thing.

Visible changes

In August, Roosevelt students returned to a completely different facility. Gone are the dark and dingy pink-tiled restrooms, and “vermin,” to use Malone’s term.

New construction created a two-court main gymnasium, an auxiliary gym, a weight room, 33 general education classrooms, plus several career-technical classrooms for industrial arts/construction courses, a STEM/robotics laboratory and a writing/digital media publishing center. The new facilities will house three new community program spaces.

Renovation work is complete on the former auditorium building, which will now serve as the new media center / library with many new classrooms below. In just a few months, additional new facilities will open. These include the commons/cafeteria, band room, theater and “black box” theater classroom.

But the contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, isn’t quite ready to hand over certain areas, so the existing cafeteria wing will continue to house theater and band programs. The performing arts and commons wing, originally scheduled to open in the fall, now won’t do so until winter.

Another reason for the jockeying is tied to the 135-foot-high boom crane needed to renovate parts of the 95-year-old building. The iconic clock tower has limited options for positioning the machine, which is needed to convey materials for the renovation. The district will postpone opening areas under the crane’s swing radius – the new cafeteria and commons area, as well as the band room.

School first

With the school year under way and half of the project finished, Lease Crutcher Lewis crews are at work on the distinctive U-shaped original building.

Adding to an old building is always a challenge, PPS‘ Chief of Modernization Jerry Vincent said. Plus, with 900 high school students, teachers and staff, and upwards of 250 construction workers across 202,000 square feet, the site is rather constrained.

“It’s a very tight site,” Vincent said. “Plus there’s kids.”

The decision to keep the school occupied was a financial one, Vincent said. Acquiring portable classrooms or other swing space would have cost the district between $5 million and $6 million. The agreement is for the project to be completed in two years, but the team was under the gun to complete 65 percent of the project within one year. To finish within that demanding time frame, crews worked six days a week, with a swing-shift outfit performing work on space otherwise used for school activities. Crews even worked seven days a week in June and July.

There’s one choke point near the back of the school where builders and students cross paths. A guard stands there most hours of the day, allowing students to pass during their six-minute breaks between classes.

“It’s a school site first, and a construction site second,” Vincent said. “A key component of the project is that operations have to stay up and running for the school and safety is maintained and we do construction around that. So it’s not like they’re on our site – We’re on their site.”

Remnants of the past

Roosevelt is one of two high schools now under construction via money from the 2012 bond; the other is Franklin. Construction also is taking place at Faubion School, a K-8 facility. The fourth major bond-funded project is an update of Grant High School; it’s now being designed.

Despite the years of planning involved, old buildings like those at Roosevelt contain mysteries that keep contractors on their toes.

“When you can expose the undercarriage of your building, you start to see what your template is and if it actually matches the drawings,” Vincent said. “One of the biggest unforeseens we’ve had is all the changes over 80-plus years weren’t recorded, so we’re running into a lot of surprises in here.”

Crews have found unreinforced masonry (URM) as they go about adding shear walls and tying them in. As written into the bond language, seismic remediation is a major element of work all around the district. URM walls discovered in Roosevelt aren’t supposed to be load-bearing, but many of them appear to have been holding something up.

As crews tackle demolition, they are pulling tile and removing windows for cleaning. Lead pipes and lead fixtures are coming out by the Dumpster-full, and other environmental and health hazards are being addressed. Asbestos is a major concern, in part because it’s found in so many historic materials like magnesite, which was used in the original construction and in some cases was covered with three levels of overlays.

“It’s another of those seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time materials,” said David Mayne, communication manager for the bond program.

On a tour of the construction site, Vincent was pleased to see it being used as a school – i.e., kids studying, posters adorning the walls.

“I love to (see them) taking ownership of it,” he said.

The post An education in construction appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.