Builders generally want to be good neighbors. But circumstances have been trying this fall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, where Andersen Construction is completing an $18 million medical-dental training facility.

About two dozen Andersen employees were on campus on Oct. 1, when a gunman killed nine people in the deadliest shooting in Oregon’s history.

“It was a pretty heavy-duty deal,” said Dominic Puccinelli, a senior project manager with Andersen. “You’re on campus, and you hear the shots. Later, you associate the shots with, you know, people’s death.”

After a long, fraught journey from the drafting board to the physical realm, the Bonnie J. Ford Health, Nursing and Science Center is a few months from completion. It’s the first new construction in the campus’ core since UCC was built in the 1960s.

To accommodate a new mood on campus, workers have stopped using a Hilti tool – a powder-actuated fastener that can sound like a shotgun firing. The move to a soft-welding strategy has added time to the project schedule, but Puccinelli said it was part of being a good neighbor.

On Oct. 1, sometime after 10:30 a.m., Puccinelli was in one of the job trailers downhill from campus about to wrap the weekly meeting with various stakeholders. He remembers some of his workers in full sprint, running to say there was gunfire on campus.

“That was pretty much the end of the meeting,” he said. “Our mission became to get everyone out safe.”

They abandoned the jobsite until the following Monday, when campus reopened. That Saturday, a few Andersen employees set up temporary fencing laced with black Visqueen sheeting around Snyder Hall, the scene of the shooting. This provided a powerful image of a blacked-out crime scene.

The day campus reopened, Andersen employees drove past well-wishers lining the road to campus. The company retained a counselor to meet with employees.

The first week back, Andersen employees struggled to focus, Puccinelli said.

“The more you thought about it, the more you were shocked,” he said. “I mean, this is one of the more serene college campuses you’re ever likely to be on.”

The timber industry in Douglas County started drying up in the early 1990s and unemployment rose. A vision emerged of an allied medical-dental career training facility at UCC to serve the growing health care sector. Planning for a $57 million campus expansion was several years along when a needed $40 million public bond measure failed “dramatically,” according to Lee Paterson, a retired superintendent who has acted as owner’s representative for the project.

The school has since pursued the expansion piece by piece. The $6.5 million Danny Lang Teaching, Learning and Event Center – including an active vineyard and winery – was added to a hillside just off campus. And officials are still kicking around the idea of an industrial technology building.

For the medical-dental center, private donors were able to supply $8.5 million to accompany a grant, though the project had to be scaled down considerably from the initial vision. Price escalation took its toll, and square footage was cut by a third and the number of floors, from three to two.

“We’ve had to cut some corners,” Paterson said. “We’re doing what we can, as we can.”

But the center was always planned to be a bright spot on campus, according to Jim Kalvelage, a partner with the project’s architect, Opsis Architecture.

One of many disturbing aspects of the massacre, he said, is that it took place in such a tranquil setting. UCC is seemingly carved from greenery overlooking the wild North Umpqua River a few miles north of Roseburg’s center.

“It’s unfathomable on that campus for me.”

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Nearly half of Oregon’s approximate 1,500 homeless veterans live in the southern part of the state, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

That’s because one of the state’s largest hospitals for veterans is in Roseburg. Patients receive treatment there, but often have no lodging prospects.

However, construction is now under way on Eagle Landing Homeless Housing, a $12 million complex to serve veterans in the area.

“A lot of veterans come here for outpatient services and they hang out somewhere – under the bridges or in the forest – so they can get to their service,” said Betty Tamm, executive director of , the project’s developer. “We hope to help the good portion of homeless veterans here find stable housing and provide services to help them reintegrate into society.”

The VA, which recently established a goal of ending veteran homelessness within five years, issued a request for proposals to build housing on its underused properties. It will contribute $1 million to each project and let developers use the land tax-free for 75 years.

NeighborWorks Umpqua, an affordable housing developer based in Douglas County, submitted the winning bid to develop a facility on the same property as the VA Roseburg medical center. The result surprised Tamm.

“I sort of thought a monster developer from out of state would swoop in and develop this,” she said. “We’re very grateful to have it.”

The project is receiving financial assistance from various nonprofits and state agencies, including and the . It’s one of the first housing complexes being built under the VA’s new initiative.

To qualify for the VA program, veterans cannot make more than 50 percent of the area median income. No tenants will pay more than 30 percent of their income; a tenant with zero income will not pay rent.

The facility will hold 11 buildings, 10 with housing units. The other will hold a laundry room, a community meeting room and storage. The design calls for building 54 units, 44 with one bedroom and 10 with either two or three bedrooms to accommodate families.

Multi-bedroom apartments are uncommon in veteran housing, according to Anne DeLaney, co-founder of , which designed the project.

“We really did try to create a sense of community, but a sense of community that allowed people to have privacy as well,” she said. “It’s a nice balance of privacy in individual units, but in the courtyards and in the community space in particular there are opportunities for social interaction.”

The project will have a layout similar to other affordable housing projects designed by the firm. But it will have many more units that cater to disabled persons, DeLaney said.

“Site design is probably not that different, but the population is different,” she said. “Reintegration back into civilian life is sometimes a challenge (for veterans), so we wanted to design it to make them as comfortable as possible.”

Also, the VA requires that the building be constructed to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

But the main focus is creating a facility to help veterans from a variety of backgrounds, Tamm said.

“There has always been this image of the homeless vets being from the Vietnam era, but there’s a new wave of people struggling to find jobs and housing coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan – families, maybe even single mothers,” she said. “We’re going to see some different demographics coming along.”

Construction is expected to finish in December 2013.

The post Construction starts on $12M homeless veteran housing project in Roseburg appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

is proposing a $57 million project to renovate and expand its campus.

If a the college would be positioned financially to add two multipurpose classroom facilities to its campus in Roseburg, and build a classroom structure in south Douglas County.

School officials said the project would provide larger and more efficient facilities than existing ones that were built mostly in the late 1960s.

“We want to make sure we’re providing students with opportunities to train on the stuff they will be encountering when they have a job,” said Bentley Gilbert, marketing director for UCC. “In the current (health occupations) building, they’re shoulder to shoulder. And they’re just in classrooms – they need to have access to simulation labs and other facilities.”

Gilbert said that UCC’s nursing students presently must travel to a local hospital several miles away for part of the program. Similarly, he said dentistry students must use a local dentist’s office as a classroom and can only access it after hours. Plus, UCC’s existing facilities are crowded because enrollment is up.

One of the proposed buildings – a three-story, $21 million allied health and sciences building – would let students stay on campus and use spacious, state-of-the-art facilities.

Jim Kalvelage, principal at , which designed the two planned campus buildings, said the 57,000-square-foot allied health and sciences structure would hold labs, classrooms, computer space, a 70-person lecture hall and a health clinic, where students would work with teachers to treat public citizens.

“The courses will start in a lecture format, then break out to small groups; the building is really set up to give them a tremendous amount of flexibility to interact with each other,” Kalvelage said.

The building would face the campus’ main amphitheater, so balconies and extra seating were would line its exterior. Additionally, through a number of bridges, the building would connect to the only other relatively new building on campus, the .

“The whole area is really trying to redefine itself in the new economy – with wine, technology – and this is all a part of that,” Kalvelage said. “This very unique science and health building has a chance of becoming a destination and a social hub for the campus and community.”

The other proposed building on campus would be a two-story, $19.4 million industrial arts building for welding, automotive and construction technology students. The 69,500-square-foot structure would hold a car manufacturing and repair area with hydraulic lifts in the floor. A second-level mezzanine would let students in classrooms observe from above.

Both the industrial arts facility and the allied health and sciences building would have a number of sustainable features, including natural ventilation systems, solar water systems and green roofs. Kalvelage thinks both buildings could achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver ratings.

He said the most difficult part of the design process was making sure the buildings, which would be significantly larger than surrounding structures, would fit the campus. To do this, Opsis designed the buildings to be made out of the same materials – stone walls, concrete and wood shingles – as other campus buildings.

“You would not find this building anywhere except at Umpqua Community College. It’s fresh and innovative, but really feels like it belongs,” Kalvelage said.

Gilbert said that the design process was a collaborative effort.

“We asked the faculty members, ‘What do you need? What is the state of the profession at this time?’ ” Gilbert said. “We traveled to several campuses, including (Portland Community College) and Clackamas Community College, to look at the facilities they had for the same programs and to see what other community colleges are doing.”

If the new buildings were constructed, UCC’s older buildings – as well as its pool – would be renovated. Also, an $8 million facility, not designed by Opsis, would be built in southern Douglas County, where many UCC students live.

“We serve a district the size of Connecticut,” Gilbert said. “County people sometimes travel 40 or 50 miles a day to go to the campus, so we’re trying to reach out to them.”

UCC already received $8.5 million from the Oregon Legislature; the college hopes to gain $8.5 million more from the Legislature next year. However, the project would primarily rely on a 25-year, $40 million bond before county voters that would increase property taxes 29 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.

Although no one has staged a formal attempt to block the bond, Douglas County Commission members have publicly questioned timing of the project.

“A few of my fellow commission members, Doug Robertson and Susan Morgan, are running for re-election, and during one of their debates, they went on record suggesting this is perhaps an inappropriate time to request such a heavy bond,” said Joseph Laurance, the commission’s chairman. “I have echoed those concerns.”

If the bond were to pass, UCC officials said project construction would take place over the next three to five years, beginning with the allied health and sciences building, the pool and the south county facility.

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Portland-based design-build company is leading a $250,000 project to renovate and weatherize the in Roseburg. But the team is taking care to maintain the historic integrity of the building, which was constructed in 1917 as a home for veterans.

The city of Roseburg owns the building, and staffers initially wanted to switch out drafty windows for double-pane replacements when they applied for a state grant in early 2010, according to Jeff Nelson, project manager for the city.

But the State Historic Preservation Office intervened, leading the city to opt for a plan to refurbish all 62 of the original, arched windows.

“They didn’t fit very well, but they will be put back in almost like new and in the period of the original windows,” Nelson said.

Arciform workers are testing each window for asbestos in the glazing and mitigating the toxin when it’s present. Then glass is removed, old wood is repaired and weather stripping is added to increase energy efficiency. The team expects to reinstall the windows by April.

“We have all of the windows in our shop right now, so (the center) looks like a condemned building because every window is boarded up,” said Richard De Wolf, Arciform’s president. “But (the repaired windows) will integrate well, without being visibly noticeable to the common person.”

Arciform also is adding insulation and working on doors throughout the building. Exterior holes and cracks will be patched and paint will be applied. The project is scheduled to wrap up in July.

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Editor’s note: The Daily Journal of Commerce receives a portion of its revenue from fees it collects from public notices such as those described in the following story. In addition, representatives of the 91��Ƶ have submitted testimony at both the city and state levels related to the publication of public notices in newspapers of record.

For as long as city recorder Sheila Cox can remember, the city of Roseburg has published its project-related public notices in Douglas County’s general circulation newspaper, the .

But Roseburg, which is eager to find solutions for a budget shortfall, now wants to end that tradition by changing its city code to allow online postings of public notices.

Cities around the state are starting to post project-related public notices – like bid invitations and requests for proposals – on their official websites and a state-run procurement site instead of publishing them in a qualifying newspaper. Cities save money, and contractors gain convenient access to project details.

“We looked at it as a cost savings technique, but we wanted the opinion of our contractors,” said Cox, who conducted an informal survey of contractors before pitching the change. “What we found was that they overwhelmingly support looking for work online opposed to in the paper.”

The cities of Hillsboro, Gresham and Eugene already are making changes. Instead of publishing these notices in a general newspaper, or an industry-specific publication like the Daily Journal of Commerce, they are posting project information on their official websites, as well as the state’s Oregon Procurement Information Network website, known as ORPIN. These cities still post small notices in publications, but they direct contractors toward a different website for more details.

“We needed to find cost-cutting opportunities, and this seemed to be one of the most glaring ones,” said Paul Edwards, a purchasing agent with the city of Hillsboro, which has been using ORPIN for about a year. “What we’ve learned is that there really isn’t any downside. Besides being a single source for opportunities, there are lots of contractors using the site, it’s quick and it’s pretty simple.”

Hillsboro publishes bid invitations and RFPs on ORPIN, as well as on its own website, for any project worth less than $250,000. When that threshold is broken, the city advertises the project in the 91��Ƶ. Land-use changes and other public notices are published in the , the city’s general circulation newspaper.

ORPIN allows public entities – like cities, counties and school districts – to join the site at a cost based on their budget ($50 to $5,000 annually), and post bid invitations. Contractors can then sign up for site access, review potential projects and, in most cases, submit bids electronically.

Presently, 108 of Oregon’s 245 cities are signed up for the Oregon Cooperative Procurement Program, which provides access to ORPIN. There are 46,000 suppliers signed up for the website, and 55 percent have Oregon addresses.

Debbie Rogers, marketing manager with Hennebery Eddy Architects, a Portland firm that has gained work through ORPIN, said she likes it. However, the firm searches for work in other places, she added.

“I like it because it’s a great single source for job opportunities,” she said. “But it’s only one of a whole range of options, and it’s far from the definitive solution.”

Hennebery Eddy uses a similar site to find work at the federal level, and visits websites where organizations like TriMet and the Portland Development Commission list information about their projects.

But Clark Gallagher, publisher of the Argus, believes that while posting a notice on a website is great, it doesn’t accomplish what posting it in a newspaper does.

“It’s not even about the revenue to us; it’s the public’s right to know,” Gallagher said. “It’s a gerrymandering deal where the people that use the site and know about it are being given a distinct advantage over those that don’t.

“I feel like calling the mayor and telling him to knock this off. The public servants are sidestepping the public’s right to know in order to save a few dollars. We are being treated as the low-hanging fruit.”

Most newspapers publish their public notices and job opportunities online. Also, newspapers have posted notices since the country was founded, so people know where to find them.

“If cities start publishing their projects to their websites only, we would still have to visit each one like we do with newspapers,” Rogers said. “It would be great if there was a clearinghouse that contractors could go to and find out about every project, but it’s just not feasible.”

Hillsboro would prefer to have its own site for posting projects and associated documents, Edwards said. But he pointed out that the cost of maintaining such a site would be prohibitive.

Dianne Lancaster, chief procurement officer with the Oregon Department of Administrative Services, the office that oversees ORPIN, is proud of the website’s success. She added that the intention never was to compete with newspapers or project centers.

“This all started as a cooperative buying program for public agencies, and only recently has trended towards being used to post work opportunities,” she said. “And even though things are inevitably going towards the Web, we don’t have the capacity in our database, or the funds to provide the capacity, to store all the details required to bid these projects.

“Public notices may go online, but I can’t see public notices in newspapers, or project centers like at the 91��Ƶ, going away for good.”

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Lowering system development charges, and in some cases scrapping them all together, has become a tool used by municipal governments to stimulate development and entice business to the area. This has been reported extensively in the Daily Journal of Commerce (here, here, here and here) over the past few months.

Molalla was the first town to take the drastic step by going on a development fee holiday, waiving all system development charges for 2010 until a million-dollar threshold is reached. The town was the first Oregon municipality to drop SDCs in 15 years. Out of it, the city has attracted a few major development projects. One is a 160-unit apartment complex. Under the fee holiday, the developers were only charged $400,000 instead of $1.4 million in development related fees. The savings alone made the project financially feasible.

Grants Pass took a similar approach, rolling back all SDCs to the 2006 levels. The fee savings will run through August 2011.

Roseburg decided to decrease transportation related development charges by 75 percent. Transportation development charges are often the most disputed because the methodology for creating the fee is less concrete than SDCs for water, sewer and parks.

Portland has taken some advice from the smaller towns in Oregon. City staff announced earlier this month that they are dropping all development fees for homeowners who build or convert space on their land into a second living unit. The fee waiver will last three years and will save homeowners $7,000 to $15,000 on these projects.

While Portland focused its fee waiver around homeowners looking to expand, the City of Gresham is focusing on helping businesses expand. Under the new Vibrant Storefront Incentive, Gresham is waiving business license fees, development-related fees and SDCs for anyone looking to start a business or expand into a downtown storefront.

In The Dalles, the city council has created a task force to restructure the transportation SDC in order to make it more development friendly. Seaside, Tigard and Wilsonville are looking into similar approaches.

While fee holidays sound great for developers and economic vitality, they put a hindrance on tax payers. SDCs go toward expansion of infrastructure associated with development. Now, the tax payers have to cover those fees. It could be said that increases property taxes because of new developments, but there is no guarantee that money will actually go to infrastructure improvements.

Only time will answer these questions.

The post Oregon cities waive system development fees appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Lowering system development charges, and in some cases scrapping them all together, has become a tool used by municipal governments to stimulate development and entice business to the area. This has been reported extensively in the Daily Journal of Commerce (here, here, here and here) over the past few months.

Molalla was the first town to take the drastic step by going on a development fee holiday, waiving all system development charges for 2010 until a million-dollar threshold is reached. The town was the first Oregon municipality to drop SDCs in 15 years. Out of it, the city has attracted a few major development projects. One is a 160-unit apartment complex. Under the fee holiday, the developers were only charged $400,000 instead of $1.4 million in development related fees. The savings alone made the project financially feasible.

Grants Pass took a similar approach, rolling back all SDCs to the 2006 levels. The fee savings will run through August 2011.

Roseburg decided to decrease transportation related development charges by 75 percent. Transportation development charges are often the most disputed because the methodology for creating the fee is less concrete than SDCs for water, sewer and parks.

Portland has taken some advice from the smaller towns in Oregon. City staff announced earlier this month that they are dropping all development fees for homeowners who build or convert space on their land into a second living unit. The fee waiver will last three years and will save homeowners $7,000 to $15,000 on these projects.

While Portland focused its fee waiver around homeowners looking to expand, the City of Gresham is focusing on helping businesses expand. Under the new Vibrant Storefront Incentive, Gresham is waiving business license fees, development-related fees and SDCs for anyone looking to start a business or expand into a downtown storefront.

In The Dalles, the city council has created a task force to restructure the transportation SDC in order to make it more development friendly. Seaside, Tigard and Wilsonville are looking into similar approaches.

While fee holidays sound great for developers and economic vitality, they put a hindrance on tax payers. SDCs go toward expansion of infrastructure associated with development. Now, the tax payers have to cover those fees. It could be said that increases property taxes because of new developments, but there is no guarantee that money will actually go to infrastructure improvements.

Only time will answer these questions.

The post Oregon cities waive system development fees appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.