Two apartment projects are moving ahead after the Portland Design Commission issued its approval on Thursday.

Commissioners OK’d FFA Architecture and Interiors‘ design for the 125-unit Tess O’ Brien Apartments in Northwest Portland and TVA Architects‘ design for the 61-unit Jefferson 14 Apartments in Southwest Portland.

They also offered feedback on two planned projects during separate design advice hearings. The first was for initial designs by Behnisch Architkten and SRG Partnership to renovate and expand the Portland State University School of Business Administration building. The second featured discussion of YBA Architects‘ design for Front 17, a Northwest Portland mixed-use development that includes separate residential and office buildings with ground-floor retail space.

The commission voted 3-1 to approve the design of the Tess O’Brien Apartments, at 1950 N.W. Pettygrove St. and 1953 N.W. Overton St. Commissioner Tad Savinar cast the lone dissenting vote.

“I feel there is an opportunity missed,” he explained. “I don’t think it quite meets the mark for me.”

Plans for the $15 million project call for two six-story apartment buildings with a large courtyard in between that includes outdoor seating, stormwater planters and bike storage. Construction is scheduled to start this spring, said Marty Kehoe, the project’s developer and owner of Portland-based Kehoe Northwest Properties. A general contractor has not yet been hired, he said.

Thursday’s hearing was the fourth for the project, which has been criticized by design commissioners and neighboring residents. The FFA Architecture design team presented several design modifications based on feedback from the neighborhood and the Design Commission during a previous hearing last month. This included elevating the stoops with stairs leading to the ground-floor residential units, proposing a darker brown color on the stucco end walls and steel canopies instead of cloth awnings.

Kehoe told the commission that the project team worked extensively to ensure that city design guidelines would be met and address neighbors’ concerns that the six-story apartment buildings would be too tall.

“The buildings are blending in (with the neighborhood),” he said. “It’s obvious … We’ve responded to just about everything we could have done. We’d like your approval.”

Commissioners said they appreciated the changes to the design. The revised color scheme and sturdier metal canopies worked especially well, Commissioner David Keltner said.

“I just think it’s more coherent,” he said. “I’m ready to approve this project.”

Commissioners later unanimously approved the design of the Jefferson 14 Apartments, at 1450 S.W. Jefferson St. Construction is scheduled to start this summer or fall, according to Everett Custom Homes President Vic Remmers, the project developer. His company will construct it using in-house labor, he said.

Project plans call for a six-story building with an entry courtyard between the building and the east property line with stormwater planters and access to long-term bike parking. The minimalist facade features a board-formed concrete ground floor with upper floors clad in ribbed and smooth metal panels, TVA Architects principal Bob Thompson said.

“This is a very simple plan stacked vertically,” he said. “We’re trying to create rhythm with the elevations by basically creating shrouds around the windows.”

Commissioners said they liked the look, but several expressed concerns with plans to place the garbage and recycling access for the apartment building next to the main lobby. As a condition of approving the design, they asked TVA designers to move the trash door elsewhere.

Commission Chairman David Wark said that placing garbage access adjacent to the lobby devalued the building.

“It just seems like the wrong place to me,” he said. “I can’t support it up front.”

Commissioners responded overwhelmingly positively to the plans to renovate the existing 100,000-square-foot PSU business school building and construct a 29,700-square-foot addition on the north side. They praised the design team’s plans in collaboration with Portland-based landscape architecture firm Mayer/Reed to enhance a plaza in front of the building that will welcome pedestrian and bicycle traffic on Southwest Montgomery Street.

“I really can’t wait for the next visit to see how it comes to reality,” Wark said.

General contractor Skanska is scheduled to start construction on the project in August.

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“It feels like the thawing of a long winter.”

Executive Vice President Bart Eberwein and others expressed relief today, when announced that in late 2013 work will resume at Park Avenue West, a downtown Portland high-rise project that stalled more than two years ago.

The scheduled restart date for the project, considered by some people to be a symbol of the recession’s impacts, is based purely on an expectation that large tenants will seek space in late 2015 and early 2016, TMT Development President Vanessa Sturgeon said.

Complete construction financing for the project was procured within the last 90 days, Sturgeon said.

Park Avenue West is planned as a 27-story office and retail building in a prominent location, on a block bounded by Eighth and Ninth avenues and Yamhill and Morrison streets. TMT Development halted the project, estimated to cost more than $100 million, in April 2009 because of financing problems. The big “hole in the ground” has since generated no work except for occasional adjustments of a towering crane that occasionally blows over the neighboring Nordstrom store.

“It’s a symbolic hole in our downtown, and getting this tower under way is a positive sign for everyone,” said Scott Andrews, chairman of the Portland Development Commission’s board and president of . “And alternatives (for leasing) are good for the marketplace.”

Activity is scheduled to take place at the site soon. To make the work-free zone more attractive, crews will soon take down the crane and install an 8-foot-high wall around the site. TMT has partnered with New Avenues for Youth for homeless and at-risk youth, under the direction of an artist, to create a mural.

Meanwhile, the project team will actively seek tenants for the building planned to offer more than 500,000 square feet of Class-A office space. Presently, no lease agreements are signed and no discussions are under way with prospective tenants, according to Sturgeon, but the team believes its opening date is on target because some large corporations and law firms are expected to shop for office space around that time.

“If we target toward that date, we’ll have exactly what they’re looking for,” said principal Scott Madsen, who is marketing Park Avenue West to potential tenants.

Madsen said the project could move forward earlier if tenant interest was to surge at the right time. The project did generate interest from prospective tenants, including law firms and , looking to lease space beginning in 2013 or 2014, but timing for construction didn’t work out for those tenants, and they stayed where they were.

Madsen said he doesn’t expect a big, local tenant to sign before 2015. The team wants to be prepared for that wave, however.

“When we look into our crystal ball … the next wave is happening in the 2015-2016 range. It makes a lot of sense just to prepare for that timeline,” Madsen said.

And in the fourth quarter of 2013, the team will be ready, said founder and principal Robert Thompson, who designed the building.

“There is steel sitting here in Portland, and curtain wall systems in Korea ready to erect,” he said. “The building is ready to go.”

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Denver-based is planning to open a bar, restaurant and bowling alley in Portland’s downtown Pioneer Place mall next year, said Seasoned CEO Robert Thompson.

The development will be part of the . The firm is opening the first Punch Bowl location in Denver in two months, Thompson said.

Thompson said that design of the project is currently in the schematic phase and will kick into full gear in January, when the firm plans to hire a local architecture firm to partner with Colorado-based architects .

Thompson called the design for the Punch Bowl chain “dirty modern.”

“It encompasses a marriage of Victorian, industrial and modern design elements,” Thompson said. The store will include a high-volume bar, bowling alley and modern diner.

The selection of a Portland-based partner architecture firm will be a collaborative decision between Seasoned and Studio Lemonade, Thompson said.

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When Robert Thompson‘s three-year-old architecture firm was invited in 1987 to bid on design work for the Nike World Headquarters project in Beaverton he knew it was a monumental opportunity.

But what Thompson didn’t know was that the project, which his firm eventually got, would lead to 34 additional projects – including private residences, Nike retail stores, an airport hanger for the worldwide athletic apparel company and even a $200 million basketball arena for the University of Oregon.

The firm, now known as TVA Architects, has designed structures ranging from a 40-story high-rise in China to an interpretive museum commemorating Muhammad Ali in Louisville, Ky. But Thompson says the company’s success starts with the relationships built here in Oregon. And while times have been tough over the last three years for both local and national architecture firms, TVA has bucked the trend by leveraging these relationships to actually grow its business.

“We look at it as if this business all starts with building good relationships with successful clients, not just designing good buildings,” Thompson said. “The question then becomes: How do you build and maintain those relationships?

“You build those relationships by performance. By designing high-quality buildings through listening to your client, putting their ideas into concept and solving their building problems.”

In 1987, one of those relationships helped TVA land the opportunity with Nike. TMT Development‘s Tom Moyer, who was beginning to work more with Thompson, talked up TVA while speaking with Nike CEO Phil Knight.

“(Tom) Moyer was actually one of my very first clients,” he said. “At the time he was developing a lot of retail centers, movie theaters and small office projects, which are some of the types of projects we were capable of doing.”

The relationship with Moyer has led to nearly as much work as with Nike, and probably even more diversity. TVA designed the 27-story Fox Tower in downtown Portland, and the 26-story Park Avenue West tower, where construction is presently stalled. The firm also has designed homes for the Moyer family and even a nondenominational meditation center dedicated to Moyer’s wife, Marilyn.

“We haven’t just built relationships with people and companies; we’ve built lasting relationships with great people and high-quality companies,” he said. “As they’ve grown and built a reputation, it’s allowed us to do the same.”

Nike, for example, was a $750 million company when TVA was hired to design its first group of buildings at the company’s Beaverton headquarters. That year, 1987, also was when Nike introduced its Air shoe sole concept and signed basketball player Michael Jordan. The company has grown at a rate of about $1 billion annually since 1987, even posting a 22 percent earnings increase in the second fiscal quarter of 2010-11.

“I think Phil (Knight) saw TVA as a similar company to Nike when he first hired us,” Thompson said. “He had passion, big dreams and a good work ethic – just like us.”

TVA presently has 32 employees; four are architects with eight to 10 years experience who were hired in the last week of 2010. This year is expected to keep the firm busy. It is under contract to finalize the design for a new alumni center that will be built next to the Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene. The firm also is working on six Nike retail stores across the country, including a new one in Portland.

“We are incredibly optimistic about this coming year and I’m not just saying that,” he said. “Plus, it couldn’t get much worse than it has been these last couple of years.”

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The Matthew Knight Arena project at the University of Oregon began during the best market for construction anyone had ever seen. Now, it is being completed in one of the worst recessions the construction industry has seen in decades.

Following up on my article on how architecture firms think they’ll fare in 2011, TVA Architects principal Robert Thompson has recorded a video discussing how his firm designed and saw the Matthew Knight Arena built during the recession, and how it affected his firm. Like other architects I interviewed, he is hopeful for 2011 but doesn’t expect the market to ever return to the way it was in 2006.

The post How a mega-arena survived the recession appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Matthew Knight Arena project at the University of Oregon began during the best market for construction anyone had ever seen. Now, it is being completed in one of the worst recessions the construction industry has seen in decades.

Following up on my article on how architecture firms think they’ll fare in 2011, TVA Architects principal Robert Thompson has recorded a video discussing how his firm designed and saw the Matthew Knight Arena built during the recession, and how it affected his firm. Like other architects I interviewed, he is hopeful for 2011 but doesn’t expect the market to ever return to the way it was in 2006.

The post How a mega-arena survived the recession appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.