Woody Guthrie, an Oklahoma native known for writing the song “This Land Is Your Land,” spent time in many parts of the U.S. In 1941, he arrived in Portland and was hired to write songs for the Bonneville Power Administration. Now the folk music icon’s name is on a new affordable housing complex in Lents, where he once lived.

Designed by Carleton Hart Architecture to resemble – in shape and color – a line of traditional wood-sided boxcars, Woody Guthrie Place was built by Walsh Construction at 5800 S.E. 91st Ave., near Southeast Foster Road. On the exterior, masonry and metal-panel cladding were chosen to suggest natural wood. The building features wood framing atop a slab-on-grade foundation.

ROSE Community Development‘s new building has 64 apartments – 16 for families with incomes not exceeding 30 percent of the area median income; 21 for those not exceeding 80 percent AMI; 26 for those not exceeding 100 percent AMI; and one for a manager. Each unit – ranging from 570 to 1,410 square feet – has either one, two or three bedrooms.

“It’s completely residential with various income restrictions,” said Erik Pattison, a real estate developer for ROSE Community Development. “The whole ground floor on the west side is three-bedroom townhomes. The entrances are facing the street.”

After the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued permission for occupancy on July 1, tenants were able to start moving in. Apartments are being leased quickly, Pattison said.

Some of the units are coupled with project vouchers funded by Home Forward. Others were funded by Prosper Portland.

“The voucher units obviously go quickly,” Pattison said. “They’re taken immediately, and then the 80 percent units are mostly leased along with a couple of the 100s.”

Amenities include a rooftop terrace, bike parking, a large community room on the ground floor, along with smaller communal spaces and outdoor patios near the elevator lobbies on each floor. An outdoor playground for children sits at the building’s south end, next to the community room.

A Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold rating is officially being sought for Woody Guthrie Place. A large photovoltaic solar array sits on the south-facing roof, and is expected during times of peak output to offset as much as 70 percent of residents’ power usage.

Also, a central HVAC system provides pretreated air to residences.

“All the units are on that one system, which is a little unique but very efficient,” Pattison said.

While the project is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification , the energy use index and other performance measures thus far have led the project team to become confident the building actually could tally enough points to earn LEED Platinum certification.

The building is the last of four projects in the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area to be completed as part of the Lents Five-Year Action Plan approved by the city in 2014. Prosper Portland oversaw development of the $109 million in projects; others are the Lents Commons and Oliver Station mixed-use projects and the Asian Health & Service Center. The urban renewal agency is planning a second round of development in the neighborhood.

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O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders was very busy in 2018, and that hasn’t changed in the new year.

The partnership of general contractors Walsh Construction Co. and O’Neill Construction Group specializes in building affordable housing projects in the Portland-metro area, often with public or nonprofit partners. The latest collaboration fitting that bill is under way at 8118 S.E. Division St. There, ROSE Community Development, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and Metro are developing a new four-story mixed-use project dubbed Orchards of 82nd.

The 51,700-square-foot building will include 48 affordable housing units with one, two or three bedrooms. The ground floor will house APANO’s new headquarters and community amenities for residents. SERA Architects designed the building to Earth Advantage gold standards.

The project’s budget is $11.5 million. Some of that cost is being covered by grants from Oregon Housing and Community Services, the city of Portland and Metro. Metro bought the property in 2014 and leased an existing furniture store to APANO prior to the new development.

Currently, drywall, interior and exterior finishing, painting and other finishing touches are taking place. A temporary certificate of occupancy is expected to be received within the next 30-60 days, according to Walsh Construction project manager Kent Usher and superintendent Ben Bechdolt.

Cascade Management is handling leasing of the apartments, which will be rented in tiers to households of one to eight persons making no more than 30, 50, 55 or 60 percent of the median family income, respectively.

The project fits within the vision for the Jade District – an initiative spearheaded by APANO to revitalize the 10-square-block area around Southeast 82nd Avenue and Division Street. In 2011, Prosper Portland selected the Jade District as a Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative district. The district, according to its website, “focuses on community development work in the neighborhood.”

Ground was broken on Orchards of 82nd in October 2017. The project was originally known as The Jade, but the APANO board of directors voted late last year to change the name as a nod to the history of the area. It once featured a number of orchards and farms owned by Japanese-American families, but then much of that land was seized and the owners were interned during World War II.

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The fabric of the Lents neighborhood, in Southeast Portland, is changing as quickly as the rest of the city, as new residents pour in and trendy businesses open up shop.

This is especially evident at a key crossroads – Southeast Foster Road and 92nd Avenue, near Interstate 205. There, a host of new mixed-use projects have sprung up over the past three years, replacing past fixtures such as the New Copper Penny nightclub with hundreds of units of affordable housing and even a new brewery.

Instead of shiny new glass and metal, however, the newest addition to the neighborhood recalls the Roosevelt-era Public Works Administration and legendary singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, who lived in Lents briefly while writing songs about the Bonneville Dam and other public works projects.

Walsh Construction is building Woody Guthrie Place, a four-story, 64-unit affordable housing project designed by Carleton Hart Architecture, at 5800 S.E. 91st Ave. Its natural wood exterior will set it apart from neighboring properties, while also recalling the rustic character of the places Guthrie once wrote about.

“He lived probably two blocks from here during the time that they were building the dams,” said Earl Carson, Carleton Hart Architecture’s lead designer for the project. “The design came from that era of mobility and trains, so if you look at the detailing of the building it looks like a boxcar set off the ground and held off from each other at connecting points.”

The development team is a consortium of nonprofits and public agencies led by Rose Community Development, Home Forward, Prosper Portland and the Portland Housing Bureau.

Woody Guthrie Place is intended to provide Lents-area families affordable workforce housing. It adds to the adjacent neighborhood of single- and multifamily housing with a blend of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, a community room, an outdoor plaza, a play area and a rooftop deck.

Plans call for 15 units to be made eligible for Section 8 vouchers, as well as four one-bedroom, seven two-bedroom and five three-bedroom units reserved for households with incomes at or below 30 percent of area median income. Also, 48 of the units funded by Prosper Portland will be held for tenants with incomes up to 80 percent and 100 percent of area median income.

The project is part of a massive wave of development taking place in Lents, spurred in part by Portland urban renewal dollars.

“There were a lot of interesting discussions happening early on in this project about this massive rush of redevelopment where it’s just an instant neighborhood,” Carleton Hart Architecture principal Brian Carleton said. “And in some ways that’s a good thing. It’s been very sudden in a place that desperately needed redevelopment.”

Rose Community Development is dedicated to revitalizing outer Southeast Portland. Woody Guthrie Place is one project that stands out, according to the group’s housing developer, Erik Pattison.

“I think this is a little more unique, because it’s the first mixed-income project that Rose has done,” he said. “I think the focus here is for transit and creating a new community node in the neighborhood.”

The project was designed both with a sense of history in mind and awareness of the need to serve working-class families, Carleton said.

“There is a neighborhood there, there is a culture there, and I really feel the Woody Guthrie project started with an understanding of that culture,” he said. “So, the way this development is programmed is with the idea that it’s here to serve families in the neighborhood.”

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Years after the Jade District, in Southeast Portland, was targeted for investment by the city, the neighborhood is about to see some returns.

The largest change on tap is the Jade Apartments and Community Center, a 48-unit affordable housing development planned at Southeast 82nd Avenue and Division Street. The project is a joint venture of ROSE Community Development and Metro, which is donating the land.

The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon plans to occupy some or all of the office space on the building’s ground floor. The organization this week is embarking on a fundraising drive to help pay for the move, said Todd Struble, manager of the Jade District program for APANO.

“It fits in with our strategy of affordable housing and keeping affordable housing in the neighborhood and keeping the residents that are here,” he said.

The Jade District is one of the targets of the city’s Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative that began in 2009. The program aims to jump-start economic development in diverse areas where commercial activity has lagged. Other districts receiving attention include Alberta, Cully, Division-Midway, Parkrose, Rosewood, St. Johns and 42nd Avenue.

“It’s a way of doing urban renewal differently,” said Amy Fleck-Rosete, who manages the Portland Development Commission‘s Jade District efforts.

At the same time, city officials and neighborhood advocates are working to make sure residents aren’t overtaken by redevelopment. A multipronged approach is under way to ensure neighborhood residents and businesses don’t get pushed out by gentrification.

The PDC offers grants to improve storefronts and signage at local businesses through the Prosperity Investment Program.

“They’re really focusing on making sure the businesses that are in the area can stay in the area and participate in the market changes that are coming,” Fleck-Rosete said.

Neighborhood business advocates are also working quietly behind the scenes with landlords to secure longer leases for established businesses.

As Portland grows, neighborhood advocates expect the model of midsize, mixed-use apartment buildings seen throughout the city to come to the Jade District as well.

“We see that development marching east,” Struble said. “We haven’t seen that development quite yet, but we think we will in the future.”

At the same time, Struble said, residents want to make sure that existing housing in the neighborhood stays in place.

“Across the board, Portland needs more housing, and right now we’re in a place where we want to preserve as much housing as we can in the district,” he said.

A key to the Jade District’s future is improving transportation infrastructure. To that end, TriMet is embarking on a $175 million project to make bus travel along a 14-mile stretch of Southeast Division Street “easier, faster and more reliable.” The agency is planning to upgrade bus stops, purchase longer buses that have room for 60 percent more passengers and reconfigure traffic signals to accelerate bus commutes.

The targeted portion of Division Street extends from the Gresham Central Transit Center across Tilikum Crossing and through downtown Portland to Union Station at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Irving Street.

Construction is expected to begin in 2018, with service commencing in 2021.

Neighborhood residents and APANO are also pushing for safety improvements after two pedestrians trying to cross Division Street in December were struck and killed by motor vehicles. One victim, Rong Zhao Zhang, 65, was killed while returning home from work at Wong’s King Seafood Restaurant. Zhang was part of the Jade District’s vibrant Chinese immigrant community.

APANO is asking regulators to consider a “road diet” to narrow Division Street and slow traffic along a portion of it. The group has also suggested installing a crosswalk at 87th Avenue and Division Street, adding street lighting in the corridor and posting culturally responsive street signage as well as performing neighborhood outreach.

Some of the pedestrian crossings, particularly across 82nd Avenue, rank among the city’s most dangerous, Struble said. The area is also deficient in parks and other public spaces, so children often end up navigating the streets.

“We’re essentially asking youths to (use) some of the most dangerous crossings in the city of Portland,” he said. “Infrastructure improvements are things our residents have regularly asked for.”

Local groups are trying to help Jade District businesses in other ways. APANO and the Portland Community College Small Business Development Center recently held a restaurant training program in Cantonese; the focus was how to pass a Multnomah County health inspection. At times, cultural misunderstandings have cropped up between inspectors and restaurant owners in the neighborhood, Fleck-Rosete said.

APANO also organizes the Jade District’s annual Night Market each August. The event, featuring food and retail vendors, attracts approximately 20,000 people to the neighborhood.

“It’s been a great way to draw folks to the district,” Fleck-Rosete said.

The city is simultaneously supporting programs in the Jade District and Old Town Chinatown. Aided by its central location, Old Town Chinatown has seen several major redevelopment proposals come forward recently. Guardian Real Estate Services, for example, recently proposed a 10-story, full-block mixed-use project on Block 33 at 125 N.W. Fourth Ave.

The two neighborhoods have a complicated relationship. Some Chinatown residents moved to the Jade District in recent years as the community grew and the price to live in close-in Portland increased.

The Jade District and Old Town Chinatown have their own distinct identities, Fleck-Rosete said.

“The Jade District doesn’t want to take away from the history and the culture of Chinatown,” she said.

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