Work is complete on the six-story ArtHouse residence for Pacific Northwest College of Art Students on Portland’s North Park Blocks. The building features 50 units over ground-floor retail spaces, which will be occupied by Glyph Café & Arts Space and retail store Table of Contents. Construction on the $7.3 million project was completed in nine months, in time for students to begin moving in next week.

The building is located on the site of the former Powell’s Technical Books at 33 N.W. Park Ave. and is owned by the Powell family, who are leasing the building to PNCA. Project Ecological Development served as the project’s developer, and Walsh Construction was the general contractor. LEVER Architecture was the design architect, and LRS Architects served as the architect of record. LEED Silver certification is being targeted for the project.

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is finalizing a renovation of the shell of , a new retail center connecting Southwest Stark Street and West Burnside Street in Portland’s West End. purchased two adjacent former nightclubs last summer which have been combined to create a large multi-tenant retail and restaurant corridor. The 10,500-square-foot space, designed by , includes 12 retail spaces of various sizes, the largest being around 1500 square feet. Work on the project, which is slated for completion this week, includes new storefronts, structural and energy upgrades, installation of additional skylights, and replacement of most of the slab.

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Portland’s West End is losing some of its nightlife, but gaining retail space in return.

The Red Cap Garage, a 25-year-old bar, and Aura, a 9-year-old nightclub, recently were purchased by Project Ecological Development. The bar and the club were next to each other, between West Burnside and Southwest Stark streets.

The development firm plans to merge the two one-story buildings into one large retail structure able to accommodate multiple tenants.

“We plan to create a retail development that utilizes the existing structure and shell of each building and creates a place that fits within the context (and) spirit … of the neighboring businesses,” said Jonathan Ledesma, a partner at Project Ecological Development.

The project is still in the design phase, so the firm declined to reveal any details or potential tenants. However, the buildings will undergo “laser-like surgery,” according to Ledesma.

Dan Zilka, who owned both properties and still owns other businesses in the area, said that he sold them to raise capital. However, he added that he wouldn’t have done so if he didn’t think the development plan would suit the area.

“From my understanding, the West End is becoming one of the most desirable retail destinations in Portland,” he said. “We thought it would be right.”

Ledesma agrees that the area is becoming a retail hotspot. In fact, he said the location is “the center of the center of great retail locations in the city,” which heavily influenced the firm’s decision to redevelop the properties.

The neighborhood surrounding Burnside and 10th Avenue has been known for its nightlife. Partygoers often visited both the Red Cap, one of the area’s oldest bars, and Aura, one of the city’s few nightclubs. Before he opened Aura, Zilka owned another club, Panorama, which was eventually replaced by Living Room Theaters; Panorama was the “hot spot” in Portland for years, he said.

But Ledesma said his firm’s project will bring something new to the neighborhood.

“The north side of Stark has been sleepy during the day as the Red Cap was a bar/club and the Living Room Theaters exterior wall does not directly engage the street,” he said. “(The project) will provide something new programmatically,” he said.

The project will be built in the same vein as Blackbox, a 10,000-square-foot mixed-use building the firm developed on Southwest 13th Avenue and Burnside, Ledesma said. Like that building, which has seven tenants, the West End one will use space and size to efficiently blend in with the neighborhood. It is unclear whether the building will look like the Blackbox; however, Ledesma said it would bring something “new, architecturally” to the area.

“Our project will complement the energy of the Ace (Hotel) on Stark, and Powell’s on Burnside,” he said.

Zilka does not plan to close the other businesses he owns around Burnside, such as the Fish Grotto. Money from the sale will go toward redevelopment of the Joyce Hotel storefront, he said.

Project construction is expected to start by the end of September, according to Ledesma.

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, and are teaming up for an apartment project that could become the first housing development in Corvallis to achieve a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating.

But the team is facing resistance from neighboring residents, who say the project should be downscaled and include more parking spaces.

The Harrison Apartments building is planned as a replacement for the former Corvallis General Hospital structure, which has unreinforced masonry and asbestos inside. The building is owned by Samaritan Health Services; it selected Project Ecological Development to redevelop the site.

“The building is old and vacant, and there’s not really a reuse for it,” Project Ecological Development partner Anyeley Hallova said.

Hallova said the site is ideal for student housing because it is about two blocks from Oregon State University, on Northwest Harrison Boulevard – a major Corvallis street with transit access.

Plans call for a 104,947-square-foot building featuring 91 units with either two, three or four bedrooms. The development would include 179 parking spaces and 204 bike stalls. A LEED gold rating is being targeted, Hallova said.

However, the College Hill neighborhood association recently appeared before the city’s planning commission to present its opposition to the project planned near the national historic district.

“As it currently stands, even if it met the code requirements technically, which we dispute, we would see a minimum of 100 cars looking to park in adjacent neighborhoods,” said Gary Angelo, president of the neighborhood association. “Our neighborhood is already dealing with a severe parking problem, as are the neighbors to the north.”

Hallova said that apartment building management will discourage residents from parking motor vehicles. Also, the bike parking spaces are intended to attract students who rely on alternative transportation, she added.

However, Angelo is skeptical that such a plan would work. He said that many students who live in his neighborhood and others who live closer to campus bring their cars to Corvallis when they’re attending the university.

“The current owners and managers of the property may very well be successful themselves at encouraging students to not bring cars to campus, but we don’t know how long these owners or managers are going to own these properties,” Angelo said, adding that in the future, another owner may not follow suit.

College Hill residents also are concerned about the proposed scale of the apartment building, Angelo said. The hospital building that will be demolished is 35 feet high; however, the Harrison Apartments would be four stories, include a gabled roof and stand 51 feet.

“It’s larger than anything in the adjacent neighborhoods,” Angelo said. “It dwarfs not only the houses but the adjacent fraternities and sororities.”

Angelo said College Hill residents would prefer a project appropriate for the small-scale residential area and able to provide housing for not only students, but also families and the elderly.

Project Ecological Development is attempting to address design concerns, Hallova said. Residents expressed concerns about the planned vertical wood siding, which she said can easily be changed to horizontal, with some brick intermixed as well.

The ZGF Architects team is striving to design a building that fits within the context, ZGF associate Heidi Bertman said.

“Creating a pedestrian environment was one of the main focus points during design,” she said. “On the ground level, we pull back from the street a little bit and each unit on the ground floor has a front porch. It’s a long building, but it’s bent or kinked at places to reduce that feeling of scale.”

Bertman said she and ZGF principal Gene Sandoval are passionate about the project, which is one of ZGF’s first midsize apartment efforts and one of its first in the Corvallis area.

“Like anybody else, we’re all learning a lot right now,” Bertman said. “That’s where the industry is.”

Apartments present attractive prospects for developers in Corvallis these days, because OSU‘s enrollment is increasing. A limited number of sites for new projects and an often difficult city approval process have made the apartment market even tighter, Hallova said.

After a long hearing before the Corvallis planning commission last week, it postponed deliberations until another meeting Jan. 4. In the coming days, Hallova said the project team will decide if and how it would adjust the project to meet the neighborhood association’s requests.

If the project were to move forward as the team anticipates, the building would open in 2013, Bertman said.

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Multifamily projects in Corvallis

Seventh Street Station: 82 units specifically geared toward students

Developer: Dallas-based Fountain Residential Partners

Status: Application submitted to the city and under review

Walnut Creek: 80 residential units and 66,000 square feet of industrial development not geared toward students

Developer: Corvallis-based A.B.I. Enterprises

Status: Land-use application approved by city last week

Harrison Apartments: 91 residential units geared toward students

Developer: Samaritan Health Services and Portland-based Project Ecological Development

Status: Application pending – review before planning commission not yet scheduled

Seavey Meadows: Mix of dwelling units, including 24 multifamily affordable housing units

Developer: Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services

Status: Permits approved, project under development

Alexander Court: 24 multifamily affordable housing units

Developer: Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services

Status: Permits approved, project under development

Source: city of Corvallis Planning Division

Year-round residents can sense when students arrive in Corvallis, city Planning Division Manager Kevin Young said. But this fall, people in the city could really feel it.

Enrollment at Oregon State University has grown rapidly in recent years, and the city has not had sufficient housing stock to meet demand. Some students are crowding into townhomes and neighborhood homes, while others are renting in Albany, Lebanon and Philomath and then commuting. Congestion in Corvallis is increasing.

But a solution – a partial one, at least – may be forthcoming. City planners say that in the past six months they’ve seen a sudden surge of interest from local and out-of-state developers to build new multifamily, off-campus apartment units. Also, the city is seeking to work with OSU to address growing pains.

OSU spokesman Todd Simmons said that the school has grown by 5 to 8 percent annually over the past several years.

“We have around 25,000 students this fall,” Simmons said. “And already we were looking at a situation in Corvallis where there wasn’t any vacancy in the rental market.”

Even before the beginning of this school year, the apartment vacancy rate in Corvallis was less than 1 percent, Young said.

The city always plans for the university to grow, Young said, but the rate was “a surprise.”

“It’s a mixed bag,” he said. “For our development services group that is continuing to stay busy with permit applications, it’s a good thing.”

Corvallis associate planner Jared Voice identified three multifamily developments approved by the city; one under review; one in the land-use process; and one the city expects to go before the planning commission in the next month.

Those six developments are a small number compared to the number of possible projects that could enter the application process, Voice said.

“There’s been an abrupt uptick in interest in developing multifamily units,” Voice said. “We’ve gotten calls from people all over the country who specialize in developing student housing.”

One of the developers is Portland-based Project Ecological Development, which is working with Samaritan Health Services to develop a 91-unit apartment building for students near campus, on the site of the former Heart of the Valley Care Center.

“There’s a big demand from the university side, and a lot is being met by infill, townhomes and students in single-family neighborhoods,” Project Ecological Development partner Anyeley Hallova said.

Apartments and similar housing are more appropriate for students than infill types, she said. But students are moving into all sorts of multifamily developments. One is affordable housing, because demand has pushed up rental rates, said Tom Gerding, owner and president of .

“It’s making it very challenging for the year-round residents of Corvallis to find affordable housing,” he said.

Gerding’s company is working on two 25-unit affordable housing complexes in Corvallis. It also recently completed a 135-unit multifamily complex and will soon start work on an 82-unit student housing development. The Corvallis-based firm actually shifted its focus toward multifamily housing construction in anticipation of demand; in the past it built more commercial and medical buildings, Gerding said.

Corvallis resident Louise Marquering has lived in the city for 43 years. She started a group called “Corvallis Matters” to represent residents’ concerns about OSU’s rapid growth.

For her, the increasing student population has resulted in traffic congestion, especially near the campus. She also is concerned about the number of apartments that will need to be built to accommodate more students.

“OSU needs to be involved in planning how they will house the number of students they’re planning to bring,” she said.

Young said that the city and university are working to plan jointly for the future. City Council set collaboration with OSU as one of its four goals for the session. The two groups signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year and have established a scoping committee with representatives from both the city and the university to determine where and how that collaborative planning might happen, Young said.

“Traffic conditions have worsened; that’s anecdotal,” he said. “And there are other issues that come with density: behavioral impacts of rowdy students, and impacts to neighborhood character (where redevelopment is happening).”

The university is already working on an update of its 2004 master plan.

“That will work well to address some of the issues that are happening now, and put in place some more long-term fixes,” Young said.

The college does plan to slow growth, and has plans to build at least one more residence hall on campus in the next few years, Simmons said.

Gerding expects construction growth to slow too. He noted that there is a limited amount of land in Corvallis where apartments can be developed.

“This year was a bit of an anomaly,” Gerding said.

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Comparison

	Weave Building	Blackbox
Square feet	50,000	10,000
Cost	Never disclosed	$1.7 million
Tenants	11+	7
Developer	409 Project LLC	Project Ecological Development

Skylab Architecture‘s much touted Weave high-rise project planned in Portland’s West End has been scrapped.

The firm this week announced that the Blackbox building will instead open at West Burnside Street and Southwest 13th Avenue in April. The project was proposed as a 27-story, mixed-use tower in 2008, but has been scaled down to a 10,000-square-foot retail-and-office space because of struggles to secure financing and tenants.

In 2009, economic conditions were weak for mixed-use projects in Portland, but principal Jeff Kovel was convinced that the visually striking, 10-story, 50,000-square-foot Weave could buck the trend. But Kovel later confided in Thomas Cody, owner of Project Ecological Development, by sharing his development dilemma. Cody previously worked for Gerding Edlen for seven years before starting his own development company, which focuses on student housing and mixed-use projects.

“I started offering advice and (Skylab personnel) were open to retooling the project,” Cody said. “Now, it’s a 10-pound project in a 5-pound bag. The small size lends itself to be viable. The capital required is manageable. It’s a renovation, so construction risks are low. But it’s still been hard, and if a project like this is hard, can you imagine how difficult it is for something larger?”

The shape shift appears to be working; Blackbox already has tenants to fill four of the five ground-floor retail spaces it has available, according to Amery Calvelli, spokeswoman for Skylab. Swedish urban work-wear company Dunderdon, local leatherwear company Tanner Goods, Seattle-based menswear boutique Blackbird and Portland-based women’s boutique Phlox all will move to the West End in April. A fifth tenant should be signed by the end of the week, Cody said. Skylab and Project Ecological Development plan to occupy the building’s second-floor offices.

“Jeff eats, sleeps and breathes the West End,” Cody said. “I wanted to be in a building where we have ownership and be part of a redevelopment project. It reflects our work and values.”

Also, the Portland Development Commission last year stepped in to help the project, citing its potential to attract small apparel companies – one of the PDC’s target industries for job creation. The Blackbox project will receive a $112,000 storefront improvement grant from the PDC. The total project cost is $1.7 million.

“In our work with Skylab, they ran into similar challenges as other projects, which are financing and tenanting,” said Lisa Abuaf, central city manager with the Portland Development Commission. “The retail tenants (moving in) are very connected to Portland’s apparel industry. We’re really excited this building will be reused and will build on other public and private investments in that area.”

Kovel was unavailable to comment on the development change, but in a press release he commented that the success of 12th + Alder led him to the new development scheme. Skylab designed and now owns the former warehouse building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Alder Street, which houses Skylab’s offices and Eastern European restaurant Gruner.

“The vibe at the 12th + Alder building is creative and collaborative, in part due to the fact that we’re constantly surrounded by a few small, like-minded businesses like ourselves,” Kovel said in the press release. “We wanted to extend this concept deeper into the West End.”

General contractor Yorke & Curtis is nearly finished with interior demolition on the Blackbox building, which is expected to be completed in April, according to Milo Curtis, spokesman for the contractor.

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