A nonprofit’s latest affordable housing project in an area of Portland affected by gentrification is advancing.

The three-building Avenue Plaza apartment complex, at 5025 N.E. Eighth Ave., is being deconstructed to accommodate construction of the new five-story, 78-unit Nicole Sandoval Building. Its address will be 5015 N.E. Eighth Ave., near the intersection with Northeast Alberta Street.

There will be 35 two-bedroom units, 39 one-bedroom units and four studios in the 79,442-square-foot building. Twelve of the units will have accessibility features.

Of the 78 apartments, 22 (via U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development assistance) will be for individuals earning up to 50 percent of area median income, according to owner/developer Sabin CDC, and the other 56 will be for people earning up to 60 percent of AMI.

The project team also includes development consultant Edlen & Co., architect Scott Edwards Architecture, civil engineer Janet Turner Engineering of Lake Oswego, structural engineer VALAR Consulting Engineering of Clackamas, landscape architect DELA STUDIO, and construction manager/general contractor LMC Construction.

The building is named for Nicole Sandoval, a former resident in one of Sabin CDC’s properties and former chair of its board of directors. She also is an artist and children’s entertainer known as Nikki Brown Clown.

“She was instrumental in a key transition period for Sabin when I came on as executive director,” Sabin CDC’s Mary Schoen-Clark said. “Her support was really important during those days.”

The long-term, primarily Black residents of Avenue Plaza provided the motivation for Sabin CDC to tackle the project, Schoen-Clark said. Due to the rising cost of living in the Alberta Arts District, residents started to move out.

Sabin CDC’s long-term strategy is to ensure Northeast Portland residents can continue living in the community. Previously, the nonprofit delivered the Harvey Rice Heritage affordable housing development featuring the Isaka Shamsud-Din complex (on Northeast Killingsworth Street) and Charlotte Lewis complex (on Northeast 72nd Avenue). Two other projects are in the works.

One of the tasks for the design team was to ensure the Nicole Sandoval Building will fit within the Alberta Arts District, Scott Edwards Architecture project architect Sander Kohler said. The building will have a brick façade on the front and fiber cement siding with a board and batten pattern on the back.

Sabin CDC also charged the design team with the task of designing an energy efficient building able to spare residents from the burden of utility costs, Scott Edwards Architecture principal Hayley Purdy said. In fact, tenants won’t pay for any utilities.

In work with the Energy Trust of Oregon through its Path to Net Zero program, the design team identified many sustainable items for the building. These will include a ground source heat pump (the HVAC system), a 114-kilowatt solar array on the roof, a hot water heat pump system with storage tanks, a battery backup system, an efficient building envelope with increased insulation, triple-pane windows, all Energy Star appliances, full on-site stormwater retention including native plants, LED lighting, and more.

A monitoring system will be used to collect data from solar and geothermal systems in a format easily accessible by staffers, according to JT McElrath, cultural events and communications coordinator for Sabin CDC. That will allow system adjustments to ensure efficient energy use.

In addition, peak shaving will go one step further by accounting for when demand for electricity is high and companies’ rates are highest.

“By lowering our demand on the grid at these peak usage times, we lower our utility bill and provide less strain on the electrical grid,” explained Nathalie Hansen, assistant to Schoen-Clark.

The building won’t be net zero due to site constraints, according to Purdy. However, it is expected to receive certification in the Path to Net Zero high-performance tier. The project team is also targeting NGBS (National Green Building Standard) Green certification at the emerald level.

For seismic resiliency, the building will have a post-tensioned slab between the first and second floors. Several areas on the first floor will connect to the battery backup system and be shelter-ready.

Also, there will be 78 bicycle parking stalls, and the site is one-quarter mile from mass transit.

Construction is expected to cost $36 million. Sabin CDC declined to disclose the full project cost.

Funding is from Heritage Bank, Beneficial State Bank, Network for Oregon Affordable Housing, Enterprise Community Partners, Fairview Trust, Oregon Housing and Community Services, Portland Clean Energy Fund, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Metro.

Deconstruction of the three Avenue Plaza buildings began early last month. Sabin CDC is working with the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability on a commercial deconstruction pilot project, Hansen said. Portland YouthBuilders, OregonServes and Meticulous Deconstruction are participating in the effort.

The team has salvaged ovens, fridges and doors from the Avenue Plaza buildings, Hansen said. Windows have been removed and repurposed at a nursery. Studs and ceiling joists have also been salvaged. Some two-by-fours will be used for an accessory dwelling unit Sabin CDC is building in partnership with the city. Some materials are going to the ReBuilding Center in North Portland.

“We’ve also reinvested a lot of material that was on-site into our existing properties,” Schoen-Clark said. “That’s been a nice legacy moment for the existing buildings.”

Construction of the Nicole Sandoval Building is expected to be completed before it receives residents in January 2028.

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A Portland nonprofit plans to put up for sale some prime land on North Mississippi Avenue.

The ReBuilding Center, which operates at 3625 N. Mississippi Ave., will offer a 9,720-square-foot parcel located midblock at the address between North Beech and Fremont streets.

The property sale is expected to take one to two years as the ReBuilding Center evaluates options.

“We are going to try to make every effort to keep it in the service of the community,” Executive Director Jackie Kirouac-Fram said.

The nonprofit, founded in 1997, provides affordable reclaimed building materials to local residents, and teaches home repair and building skills. Its board of directors approved selling the parcel on May 13.

A building on the parcel requires a new roof and truss stabilization to remain safe. The repairs are estimated to cost $500,000, according to the nonprofit. Rather than incur that expense, the ReBuilding Center is opting to sell that parcel, and use the proceeds to strengthen its operating reserves, and to boost wages, training and career development for its employees.

It’s unclear if the building will stay.

“This crisis has highlighted cracks in so many systems, including our own,” Kirouac-Fram stated in a news release. “The sale of this parcel will help us become a stronger, more sustainable organization that can continue to serve our community and advocate for climate justice, reuse and repair for years to come. Our community needs our services, our planet needs less consumption of new materials, and our team needs stability.”

The ReBuilding Center will retain six parcels totaling approximately 40,000 square feet along a highly gentrified stretch of North Mississippi Avenue – a historically black neighborhood that is now home to trendy restaurants, shops and multifamily housing.

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One construction sector is being heavily disrupted because of changing attitudes and new laws: demolition.

Builders and developers in the Portland area are being pressured to . Proponents of deconstruction (i.e., taking a structure apart with recovery of reusable materials in mind) have a host of arguments in their favor: environmental stewardship, salvage, historical considerations, public health and aesthetics. Now Portland Mayor Charlie Hales wants to make the practice the norm.

Hales’ long-term goal, according to spokeswoman Sara Hottman, is to require deconstruction for some structures – starting with houses age 100 or older. The Portland City Council on Wednesday will hear a proposal that would get the ball rolling. The potential ordinance would require deconstruction for structures built in 1916 or earlier, or if designated as historic resources.

The 1916 date was chosen because one-third of homes demolished in Portland were built before that year, and the city’s Deconstruction Advisory Group, which prepared the proposed resolution, set one-third as a target for reducing demolitions.

The DAG was established by the council last summer to devise a plan to incentivize deconstruction. Its meetings were a “lively” affair due to the diversity of the interests represented on the committee, said DAG member Stephen Reichard, who runs the .

“We ran the gamut from folks who would like every single home in Portland deconstructed to those who would like none deconstructed,” he said.

Hales’ support for deconstruction is part of his larger agenda to address the negative effects of demolition, which are said to include harm to health and the environment. Another tool he’s looking at to address this is revising residential infill development standards, according to Hottman.

The group United Neighborhoods for Reform recently issued a statement declaring reluctant support for the Hales’ resolution.

“We are supporting the resolution as written,” the statement reads. “However, we ask the (Portland City) Council to amend the resolution to compress the timeline and more quickly expand the date requirement to affect more houses.”

Last year, approximately 300 single-family homes were demolished in Portland, and the mayor’s office is worried that number will rise as the economy improves.

One barrier to the advancement of deconstruction is that it typically costs between $3,000 and $6,000 more than demolition. To help, the city has offered grants to homeowners. So far, eight projects have received $25,000, and the city has applied for additional grants from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

This is occurring at a time of drastic change in waste recovery. of the SP Fiber Technologies paper mill in Newberg in November set off a chain reaction, according to Wood. The mill burned wood – mainly treated or processed wood – for energy, and received about 85 percent of the Portland-metro area’s wood waste. Wood formerly sold for use as fuel now goes to the landfill, and the cost to dispose of treated or processed wood is significantly higher.

Andy Webber, president of Konell Construction and Demolition Corp., called it a “real game-changer.”

“We went from being able to dispose of wood for free to paying $97 per ton for disposal,” he said. “And that just gets passed right down the line.”

Webber’s business performs both deconstruction and demolition. He said many more downtown clients are now asking to keep materials like timber beams for reuse.

“We started out just doing (deconstruction) for the environmental aspect of it,” he said. “But obviously with the dump fees being what they are in Portland right now, and not being able to get rid of wood waste, I mean that’s obviously a driving factor in this.”

A year ago, approximately 50 to 60 percent of a demolished house in Portland was burned as fuel, said Shawn Wood, the city’s construction waste specialist. “Today it’s closer to 0 percent.”

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Every year, Americans throw away enough steel to rebuild Manhattan, enough aluminum to rebuild the nation’s entire commercial air fleet four times over, and enough wood to heat 50 million homes for 20 years, according to Edward Humes in his 2012 book “Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash.”

Locally, officials at city and regional levels say developers and builders aren’t recycling half as much as they think they are. Portland requires that at least 75 percent of materials from construction projects valued over $50,000 be recycled. But that isn’t preventing a lot of items from landing in landfills.

“The big, shocking component is … around 20 to 25 percent of our landfill material is related to construction and demolition activities,” said Shawn Wood, construction waste specialist for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “It’s even more in some areas. In some areas it’s as much as half related to it.”

Wood said people’s false notions about sustainability are helping to build that mountain of waste. For instance, Portland’s 75 percent requirement allows builders to dump various materials into the same bin. Some people might think that when all project materials go into one recycling bin, all are being recycled – but they aren’t.

After being twisted, compacted and crunched into recycle bins, those “recyclables” go to a material recovery facility – or MRF – and are dumped onto a conveyer belt and sorted by line workers. By the time they get through the jumbled mess, Wood said, they’re typically able to save only about 25 to 40 percent. The rest goes to a landfill.

Some MRFs claim to recycle 80 percent of the materials they receive, but Wood said that’s because they’re counting the residual stuff pulverized in the demolition and delivery process, and used instead of soil for landfill cover. Omit that “alternative daily cover” material and their recycling rates are closer to 25 to 40 percent.

“Recycling is almost at the bottom of the waste hierarchy pyramid,” Wood said. “It’s ‘reduce, re-use, recycle,’ and recycle is at the end of the list for a reason. Other than it going straight to the landfill, it’s the least desirable outcome.”

That is unless contractors separate the waste by material, in which case the amount recycled jumps to 95 to 100 percent. An even more sustainable option is deconstruction – methodically dismantling buildings in the reverse order they were built, and then reusing the materials.

DeConstruction Services – a contracting arm of the ReBuilding Center on North Mississippi Avenue – can typically salvage 85 percent of a building’s major components for reuse. The rest gets recycled.

“Someone was quoted from a construction company saying, ‘That’s great if you want to pay 15 times the amount (of demolition),’ ” ReBuilding Center Executive Director Shane Endicott said. “But we (cost) barely more than the demo.”

Deconstruction can actually be more cost-effective than demolition in some situations, he said. As a general rule, deconstruction of an average house costs about 15 percent more, but that’s not taking into account for donating building materials.

“When you take in tax subsidies, we have clients that come out way on top,” Endicott said.

For instance, DeConstruction Services once gutted a Northwest Portland house for $5,000. The value of the resulting tax write-off was more than $20,000.

Another benefit of deconstruction, Endicott said, is that because of overhead-related costs, it can support eight jobs while demolition may rely on one excavator. He believes this presents an opportunity for excavation companies to grow, and said he would speak with anybody interested to learn more.

Deconstruction was actually commonplace in the first half of the 20th century, but fell out of favor in the 1970s, according to Endicott. He said that’s a shame because there’s a huge market for used building materials. Today, the ReBuilding Center moves an average of eight tons of materials per day. People from all over the world buy its materials; a few weeks ago, a man from Japan purchased 150 light fixtures.

In the past, companies paid the ReBuilding Center to take their large timber beams. Now the nonprofit can’t buy them because they’re in such high demand.

“By simply changing our relationship with (waste) and getting it into reuse, (the ReBuilding Center has) been able to change that same material into an asset that’s benefited the community – socially, economically and throughout the whole spectrum of sustainability,” he said.

The ReBuilding Center sells those used materials for 25 cents on the dollar, and since 1998 has saved customers approximately $75 million, according to Endicott. The self-sustaining nonprofit has totaled approximately $25 million in sales in that time, providing full benefits to roughly 35 employees off of what the community formerly was paying to throw away, he said.

Some ReBuilding Center employees have left to create their own for-profit models, and Endicott said that if others want to do the same he’ll gladly share his business plan.

Other than tax subsidies or resale of materials, however, local municipalities don’t have a lot of carrots they can dangle in front of developers to convince them to choose deconstruction, Wood said. But there is one more benefit. As demolition activity grows in Portland, so does neighborhood opposition. Wood said deconstruction can be a powerful olive branch.

“It’s like capital punishment – we care how things die,” he said. “Standing in front of 20 rifles is different than injection, and it’s kind of the same thing with deconstruction.”

Demolition and waste

According to data compiled by Shawn Wood, construction waste specialist for the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the city in 2013 received 273 applications for single-family home demolitions. That is up from 209 in 2012 and just 140 in 2011. Through June 3, the city received 135 applications, so this year’s total is on track to exceed 300 (not counting remodels, which Wood says account for 85 percent of construction waste).

An average Portland home is approximately 1,119 square feet, and every square foot produces close to 115 pounds of waste, according to Wood. So, if all 273 of those demolitions planned last year were to move forward, they would produce roughly 17,565 tons of waste – with at least 10,539 tons going into landfills (assuming a 40 percent recycle rate).

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Shaina Sullivan, a green building specialist, could dole out sustainability advice all day. But she didn’t know how to do the work herself.

That is no longer the case, however.

The 27-year-old staffer at the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland is one of a growing number of Portland residents who this year set out to put some of their own muscle into building greener homes.

“I had the knowledge but wanted the application,” Sullivan said. “And I have a lot of friends who are not in the industry, but are looking for houses. I wanted to be an example that you can buy a house, do green upgrades yourself, and it will be affordable – you learn more, and it’s not that hard.”

As part of this year’s “” home tour, sponsored by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, Sullivan and 21 other local homeowners on Sept. 24 will have the opportunity to showcase their homes and explain the lessons learned throughout the building process.

The 10th annual, self-guided tour features both new construction and remodels. More projects completed by homeowners – a total of seven – will be featured this year than in years past.

Sullivan installed low-flow plumbing fixtures, windows and flooring into her home in the Southwest hills. She also is customizing and installing cabinets that she found at the . For weatherization, Sullivan received capital from , and contracted the work to .

“(Green Hammer) set me up for success,” she said. “I wanted to finish doing some spray-foam insulation, so they told me about the process and then I could do my own labor. Obviously you pay for the intellectual property and the time it took to teach me, but now I know how to do it. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much money I saved overall.”

Not only penny-pinching, however, is driving homeowners to do their own work.

Tricia Stone and her partner, Lissa Adams, moved from San Diego to Portland in order to live more sustainably. They first bought a home in Northeast Portland. Green Hammer was the general contractor for their green retrofit and age-in-place addition, but Stone said up front that she wanted to be involved in every phase of construction.

“I saw it as a way to learn about my house and contribute to the actual progress and change we envisioned instead of just standing by and watching someone else do the work,” said Stone, who over the past couple of years has completed segments of deconstruction, carpentry, insulation and siding.

Some Portland-area contractors, especially those who specialize in green building, encourage their clients to take on active roles in residential projects.

“We definitely embrace it when clients want to do part of the work themselves – it’s central to how we do a project,” said Zack Semke, director of business development for , which was the general contractor for three projects highlighted on this year’s tour.

While do-it-yourself projects may be on the rise because more people have strained budgets, Semke contends that people interested in sustainability have always been more involved in the construction process.

“Anybody who has the sensibility to think of a building as both a potential environmental liability and an environmental asset already has a deeper relationship with buildings than the average person,” Semke said. “A lot of people are interested in green building, and then once they start doing it, they quickly get engaged and excited by some of the approaches.”

Ultimately, the Build It Green! tour aims to push homeowners past the point of passive interest and into the realm of actual work – whether they complete it themselves, split the project or hire a contractor.

Mary Wilson is one tour-goer who has come full circle. After attending the first Build It Green! tour 10 years ago, Wilson and her husband, Philip, were inspired to build their own green home. Philip Wilson, who owns a contracting company, built the couple’s new home in Southeast Portland; it earned a place on this year’s tour.

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About 85 percent of the materials from the deconstruction will be reclaimed for reuse, according to Shane Endicott, executive director of The ReBuilding Center.

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Two old apartment buildings on the corner of Northeast Sixth Avenue and Couch Street are disappearing slowly. The vanishing act is the painstaking work of The ReBuilding Center, which provides deconstruction services as a sustainable alternative to demolition.

Developer Brad Fowler of acquired the buildings – one with four stories and one with two and a half – in 2006. He has since planned for the half-block between Couch and Davis streets to be transformed into a mixed-use development. But he didn’t want to sacrifice historic materials in the process.

While deconstruction does cost significantly more – up to 50 percent more, according to Fowler – than traditional demolition, the existing buildings’ character led to the decision in favor of the six-week-long deconstruction project.

J.D. Elder, president of , estimated that a traditional demolition would have removed the buildings safely in less than two weeks and would have cost about five times less. Materials would have been recycled rather than salvaged.

Fowler noted that the buildings were constructed in the early 1900s, and had systems and an envelope that were in disrepair. However, he added that many fixtures, trim work and even functional pocket doors with original stained finishes were worth saving.

“It was the right thing to do,” Fowler said. “Our feeling was that it would be a shame to waste all of the old-growth lumber (approximately 105 years old) that could be reclaimed.”

The tax benefit of deconstruction also can shrink a cost gap substantially, depending on the value of reclaimed and donated materials. They will be appraised at the end of the process, Fowler said.

“Given the size of the new project, our feeling is that, although it won’t be easy, we can absorb this difference – especially if the majority of materials can be reclaimed,” he said.

Fowler contacted Shane Endicott, executive director of , to begin deconstructing the combined 11,439 square feet. The team is working backward from the way the apartments were built, systematically removing materials from the roof to the foundation by hand. Salvaged items are then loaded onto custom racks, inventoried and either donated to community projects or transported to the reuse warehouse on North Mississippi Avenue, where visitors can browse through sinks, tubs, tile, lumber, doors, windows, trim and more.

The Couch Street apartments is the largest single project The ReBuilding Center has taken on in the past seven years, said Endicott, who expects that 85 percent of materials from the deconstruction will be reclaimed for reuse.

“Doing this is definitely not the fastest way to get the buildings down, but it’s going to yield the most environmental benefits,” Endicott said. A poster near the work site displays the approximate benefits that the nail-by-nail, board-by-board removal will yield. According to The ReBuilding Center, because deconstruction was chosen instead of demolition, the project is saving the equivalent of 189 mature trees, 2,860 pounds of greenhouse gases from being released and 13,727 gallons of fresh, clean water from being used.

Despite a longer process and larger expense, Fowler was committed to making it work, Endicott said. The sustainable deconstruction is making way for contractor to start work this fall on eight live-work units, 62 market-rate apartments and 3,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

The modern exterior of the building will update the look of the Northeast Portland corner, and will feature a common rooftop deck, rooftop-mounted solar panels to assist in heating hot water and generous bicycle storage. Plus, the Vallaster and Corl Architects team incorporated turn-of-the-century recovered materials into the design.

“It’s a close enough equation where it really makes sense to look at it,” Fowler says of opting for deconstruction. “If you go by the site, you can see how much is being salvaged. It’s remarkable.”

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Open the Door to Sustainability

What: A fundraising event for the ReBuilding Center with live music, local food and an auction featuring 50 doors repurposed by Pacific Northwest artists and a door carved by the father of Northwest wood sculpting, Leroy Setziol.

When: Saturday, starting at 6 p.m.

Where: The Bison Building, 419 N.E. 10th Ave.

Why: To raise money for the ReBuilding Center and its deconstruction services.

Tickets: $75 for a single ticket, $150 for a couple’s ticket in which a bidder number is shared, and $650 for 10 tickets. To purchase tickets, view the auction catalog or learn more about the event, please visit

With eight tons of recycled building materials arriving at North Portland’s each day, only happenstance prevented a door worth $35,000 from joining the store’s general sales inventory after it arrived on a flatbed truck five years ago.

The door, unpolished and scratched up, was set aside to be used in a future remodel at the ReBuilding Center. A couple of years later, an employee pointed out that it not only looked cool, but was designed by the late Leroy Setziol, the Northwest’s father of wood sculpting. Now the ReBuilding Center is auctioning the door as well as 50 other artistic doors inspired by his work to help pay for the nonprofit organization’s operations.

“We rarely set things aside and wouldn’t have for this piece if it wasn’t for the pending remodel,” said Shane Endicott, executive director of the ReBuilding Center. “Then when we found out who carved it and what it meant to the art community, there was no way we could use it.”

Endicott then called Setziol’s daughter, Monica Setziol-Phillips, and Joachim Grube, a longtime friend of Setziol, to verify the craftsman carved the mahogany door. Both confirmed it.

“The door falls into the earlier period of his work, before he started doing mostly commissioned pieces,” said Grube, founding principal at the Portland-based architecture firm Yost Grube Hall. “It’s a free-flowing piece with beautiful curves and vertical lines.”

Setziol’s commissioned work can be found at places like Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood and Salishan Lodge on the Oregon Coast. His work also is shown in exhibits at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Craft.

After verifying the door was crafted by Setziol and discovering its worth, ReBuilding Center staff saw an opportunity. They decided to ask artists from around the Pacific Northwest if they would be interested in donating time to create their own art out of doors from the center. Money raised from the auction will help pay for the store’s general operations and its deconstruction services, in which houses are dismantled in reverse order of how they were constructed and materials are salvaged.

“Here is a great example of something that was junk to one person and a treasure to someone else,” Endicott said. “This piece could have just as easily ended up in a landfill. But now it is going to give us the ability to divert more recycled materials from a landfill and into the hands of someone who can use it.”

Setziol didn’t start his career in art until after World War II, when he and his family moved to Portland from the East Coast. After spending several years in the city, Setziol decided to build a studio and cabin in Sheridan. He constructed his house out of old, rejected oak railroad ties that he purchased for $4 apiece. And instead of using nails, he drilled and pegged every piece together. The house ended up costing him $1,500.

“What exited me most while I was learning about Setziol was his house,” Endicott said. “Here is a guy that took reusing materials to an extreme level before it was popular or convenient.”

Grube added that the cabin and studio were forerunners for green architecture.

“Not only did he use the railroad ties for his studio, (but) he used them in his art as well,” Grube said. “It was common for him to go into old warehouses and turn pieces of wood he found into art. The idea of reuse wasn’t in his foreground, but it was definitely part of his general approach to art and life.”

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