Singer Properties and Jones Architecture are at work on a major renovation of Ten West, a five-story office and retail building in Portland’s West End.

The 110-year-old, 44,524-square-foot property at Southwest 10th Avenue and Washington Street was once known as the Mekka Building. Now named Ten West, it sold for $3.5 million in 2007, according to city records.

The quarter-block property, 1003-1017 S.W. Washington St., will be remodeled in accordance with its art deco motifs, said Alan Jones, principal architect at Jones Architecture.

“We’re restoring the stucco and the brick work, and putting in historically correct wood-framed windows,” he said.

Also, Portland’s Lango Hansen Landscape Architects has designed a new roof deck – an amenity desired by office tenants, Jones said.

An entrance on 10th Avenue will serve a basement space designed for use by a restaurant or a bar. A second entrance, on Washington Street, will serve office space in the upper four floors, which have long been vacant.

A seismic retrofit and upgrades to the building’s mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems are also part of the renovation.

The ground floor is home to retailers Frances May, Animal Traffic, Chrome and Backtalk. Employees of firms involved with the project said they could not comment on the retailers’ future in the building, but added that they were not aware of any plans to end the retailers’ presence. Building owners Dick and Don Singer could not be reached for comment.

The property may be ripe for redevelopment. Downtown’s West End is flourishing with trendy shops and restaurants. Across 10th Avenue from Ten West in the Pittock Block are multiple retailers, including feminist clothing shop Wildfang. Powell’s City of Books, one of Portland’s most enduring tourist draws, is only two blocks away. Tasty n Alder, Heart Coffee Roasters and SuperBite also have found a home in the West End.

More development is coming. A skyscraper is on the drawing boards for Downtown Development Group’s property at Southwest 11th Avenue and Washington Street.

Central City office space remains a sought-after commodity, said Patricia Raicht, senior vice president for research at Jones Lang LaSalle.

Almost 1.5 million square feet of office space was delivered in the Portland market in 2016, and 85 percent was pre-leased or committed by the time of delivery, she said.

“While we added quite a bit of space, the demand for that space has been pretty strong,” Raicht said.

Tech firms including Puppet Labs, Act-On Software, New Relic and Google have invested in downtown Portland offices. But tech firms aren’t the only ones seeking modern, open-plan offices, Raicht said. Increasingly, legal, marketing and other professional services companies are looking for creative spaces that rival those made for tech firms.

In a recent JLL analysis of 2016 leases, creative spaces attracted prices 15 to 20 percent higher than comparable Class A spaces.

R&H Construction will be the general contractor for the Ten West project. Peter Andrews of Melvin Mark is the leasing agent.

Ten West

Location: 1003-1017 S.W. Washington St.

Size: 44,524 square feet

Owner: Singer Properties

Architect: Jones Architecture

General contractor: R&H Construction

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In the Fisk Tire Co. Building, in the Pearl District, traces of Cargo are now barely perceptible – cartoon animals painted the plywood heavily scuffed by work boots and equipment.

Those boards will soon be ripped out to make way for a new wood floor tied in to the walls for seismic support; it’s just one aspect of the project to convert the historic brick and concrete warehouse into a modern retail space. Crews working under general contractor Joseph Hughes Construction (JHC) have been hard at it in the 92-year-old building at Northwest 13th Avenue and Glisan Street – a project involving equal parts preservation and modernization.

But getting to the construction stage wasn’t so simple, Hughes said. Acquiring permits from the city of Portland for the relatively small renovation took around 14 to 15 months, in part because all aspects – seismic upgrades, as well as exterior refurbishments, energy upgrades and other work subject to historic resource review – had to be bundled together.

“Had this thing gone through a bit more expeditiously, we’d have been done months ago and they’d have been collecting rent,” Hughes said.

A similar job at 11th Avenue and Glisan Street, four years earlier, breezed through permits in four hours, Hughes said.

“Granted, things were a bit slower then,” he added.

Built in 1924, the building originally housed an outlet of the Fisk Tire Company, a major manufacturer/retailer that rose and fell quickly in the decades straddling the roaring twenties. Its most recent retail tenant was the colorful importer Cargo, which for 15 years was a staple of the Pearl known for the knick-knackery draped around it, inside and out. That business relocated to the Central Eastside when its lease ran out two years ago, to gain space and pay less rent.

American-made furniture seller Room & Board will move in next. The Minnesota-based business signed a five-year lease plus option in September. It will be Room & Board’s 15th location, but far from its first involving historic reclamation.

Preservation is integral to the company’s image, according to Chief Financial Officer Mark Miller. A Room & Board location in Washington, D.C., is a converted Ford Motors Model T showroom.

“We’ve never built a store from new,” Miller said. “We’ve always gone in, made improvements and tried to fit in with the neighborhood and not make a big splash.”

Currently, Room & Board’s nearest location to Portland is in Seattle’s University Village. The company chose Portland for its latest store in response to customer-tracking data from its website and call center.

“We kind of follow our customers,” Miller said.

Miller said Pearl District rents don’t worry him.

“It’s not an expensive district,” he said. “I think it’s definitely a district that’s in demand. It’s a beautiful retail area and I think a lot of our customers like to shop there. I think we signed a great lease.”

The project is essentially restoring a concrete and brick building to its historic look, plus a lot of seismic work triggered by the change in occupancy from warehouse to retail.

Architect Alan Jones said he wanted to be as respectful as possible to the historic structure and district. One update involves enlarging the loading dock on Northwest 13th Avenue. Another involves a pair of sliding red wooden doors – heavily historic but impractical for modern use.

“We had an interesting conversation about those doors,” Jones said. “They asked us to keep them, but Room & Board felt they weren’t ideal for a retail situation. So we came up with an innovative solution.”

The doors will be left in place and kept pinned back and out of the way, with new doors overlaid to provide access to the building.

Several support columns in the basement have been removed, with steel I-beams added above to cover the load. The move is intended to aid drivers in the 32-space garage.

“Imagine cars weaving around all those – it’d be difficult,” JHC project manager Clark Zeller said. “So we removed some columns and added steel.”

So far, only project workers have used the basement garage.

“It’s been pretty nice,” Zeller said.

380 Building/Fisk Tire Co. Building

Address: 1236 N.W. Flanders St.

Contractor: Joe Hughes Construction

Architect: Jones Architecture

Size: 20,000 square feet

Anticipated completion: winter 2017 (anchor tenant Room & Board hopes to open by spring 2017)

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