A new development in is bringing a mix of retail, office, and residential space to a former brownfield site in St. Johns. Guerrilla Development‘s Two-Thirds project features three separate buildings, all situated to create a series of corridors and courtyards through the 15,000-square-foot site.

A main commercial building facing North Lombard Street has four ground-floor commercial spaces, including a restaurant, a brewpub, an optometrist, a wellness center, and a co-working office space. Across a seating area from the main building is a separate single-tenant building housing another restaurant, and at the rear of the lot is a building containing six residential lofts, four of which have private courtyards.

Brett Schulz, architect served as the architect of record, and Skyward Construction was the general contractor on the approximately $3 million project.

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Portland Parks and Recreation last week unveiled four new indoor tennis courts at the Portland Tennis Center on Northeast 12th Avenue, and they’re all encased in a bubble.

The 25,000-square-foot inflatable structure is 40 feet high and was designed by Richard Brown Architect. The bubble was provided by Yeadon Fabric Structures of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Brown said that use of a bubble structure was a first for his firm and for Portland Parks and Recreation, but proved to be most cost-effective.

“Parks did an analysis on which would be most cost-effective, a steel building or an inflatable structure,” he said.

But getting necessary permits was a bit of a challenge, Brown added.

“We had some land use issues we had to resolve because it’s a fairly tall building, and had to make our case for why we could put such a large building close to the street,” he said.

Those issues were resolved, Brown said, and he made the case that the building is somewhat camouflaged because it is “the color of the Oregon gray sky” and that it curves away from the sidewalk.

The four indoor courts in the bubble are taking the place of eight of the 12 outdoor courts next to the original tennis center building, which was constructed in 1973, Brown said. That building also holds four indoor courts, so the site now has eight indoor courts and four outdoor courts.

The new courts, with bleacher seating, will be available for year-round use, Brown said, and be accessible by ramp for people with mobility issues.

“It also has backup power and generators in the event of a power outage, and there’s a skylight in the middle that brings in natural light,” he said.

Skyward Construction served as the general contractor for the bubble courts, Brown said, and completed the work in about five months.

More than 100 outdoor tennis courts are in city parks, said Andre Ashley, sports manager for Portland Parks and Recreation, and the Portland Tennis Center’s bubble brings the total of indoor courts to 12. The other four are at the St. Johns Racquet Center on North Burlington Avenue, he said, but they are available to the public only part-time.

“We lease those out (to Portland Public Schools) for after-school tennis and education, but they’re still available in the morning,” Ashley said.

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Portland Fire & Rescue employees like the new windows in the remodeled Station 1 building for the light they let in. Kent Yu, who led the project’s engineering team, likes them because they prevent damage in case of an earthquake.

The front of the building, on Southwest Naito Parkway, already had huge overhead doors for fire engines. With openings in the front and few in the back, the building would twist in an earthquake.

Yu, an associate principal at Degenkolb Engineers, and the project team worked to stiffen the front and weaken the back of the building. Now, the building will move, but not twist.

“You get better seismic performance, and folks in the building get more lighting,” Yu said.

General contractor Skyward Construction is finishing work on the project, which cost $15.3 million, including $10.7 million for construction. Administrative and investigative personnel have already moved in; firefighters will join them in a few weeks.

Station 1, built in the late 1940s, clearly needed extensive seismic work, said Connie Johnson, facilities construction manager with the city’s Office of Management and Finance. When the city commissioned a geotechnical review of its fire stations, Station 1 failed.

“We were told the current site was so seismically unstable that we’d never be able to have a fire station there,” Johnson said. “They said, ‘We don’t recommend you try it.’ ”

Another review, more in-depth, was more positive, Johnson said: It can be done, but it won’t be easy.

The process the project team arrived at wasn’t easy, said Jason Miles, project superintendent with Skyward. Workers bored more than 200 holes through the basement slab. The holes ranged in depth from 11 to 29 feet, depending on the depth of the gravel layer and bedrock.

Using a process called jet grouting, workers mixed soil with high-pressure streams of grout to form columns that stabilize the building.

“Anytime you’re doing something like that to an existing building, there’s a concern that you move the existing structure,” Miles said.

The structure didn’t shift, but the process did break a concrete slab. “The grout is going into the ground at 6,000 psi,” he said. “One little plug and the pressure has to go somewhere.”

It took more than jet grouting to make Station 1 resistant to earthquakes. Workers built new shear walls and eight collector beams so the building won’t twist or shift. “We put (in) the collector beams to keep it from doing that seesaw movement,” Miles said.

No one knew how deep the bedrock under the station was, or how smoothly the jet grouting would go. If the process required more resources than expected, other parts of the project would have been eliminated.

Because it went well, $283,000 was left for new windows. Station 1 now has low-e, high-efficiency Mercer windows.

The windows and other energy-saving touches help the building perform 30 percent better than code, Johnson said. Also, 93 percent of the project’s construction waste was recycled.

Old wood floors found new life in the basement workout room. Tables in the new, expansive kitchen are made of wood from a handball court. And all five old, brass fire poles remain, though three had to be relocated.

While keeping the building’s historic look, the remodel reflects a changing fire bureau. Male firefighters now have sleeping quarters and bathrooms separate from women firefighters’ facilities.

The third-floor administrative offices have more natural light, thanks to six new skylights and fewer partition walls blocking window views.

“The layout is far superior,” said Brian Alcid, senior facilities maintenance supervisor with Portland Fire & Rescue. “It’s more open, lighter and brighter.”

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