Rents in Portland have fallen for consecutive months, suggesting new supply is making a dent in meeting the city’s housing needs.

In October, rents here were 0.4 percent lower than a year earlier, and 0.8 percent lower than September, according to Apartment List. The new data indicate rental housing costs have crested after strong increases in recent years.

The median rent was $1,140 for a one-bedroom apartment, and $1,350 for a two-bedroom apartment, according to the rental website. October was the second month in a row rents declined in Portland. The city’s decline was steeper than the nation’s, where rents slipped 0.1 percent.

“Demand is weak, relative to the supply,” said Sam Rodriguez, senior managing director of Mill Creek Residential Trust, a major multifamily developer in Portland. “That’s why you’re seeing this very anemic growth compared to the growth we had before.”

Other data also indicates rents are retreating. At Hassalo on Eighth, a Lloyd District development with 657 apartments, rents were $1,671 as of Sept. 30, down 4 percent from $1,735 a year earlier. (Hassalo on Eighth is owned by American Assets Trust, a publicly traded company).

Managers of some rental properties are offering concessions, particularly in the luxury market. At Yard, for example, prospective renters are being offered a month free and a free gym membership. A month free is being offered for some units at Slate. Up to six weeks free is being offered at NV in the north Pearl District.

But the decrease in rents for luxury units has not trickled down for middle-income renters, said Jamey Duhamel, policy director for city Commissioner Chloe Eudaly.

“It’s softening at the high end,” Duhamel said. “That has not in any way translated to lower rents for folks who are stretched thin, or even the average renter.

“We definitely don’t see any slowdown in the need,” she added.

Nevertheless, supply in certain markets, including the Pearl District and Central Eastside, has surged as major apartment projects have opened.

“As developers, this is what we normally do – we overbuild,” Rodriguez said. “That puts a lid on rents for a while.”

Construction has continued apace. Portland’s crane count stood at 32 in July – more than New York, which had 18, according to Rider Levett Bucknall, a firm that tracks the data. Seattle had the most cranes, with 58.

The city of Portland has responded to a tight rental market with a slew of housing regulations. Inclusionary housing rules took effect Feb. 1, requiring developers of projects with 20 units or more to provide a portion of affordable units, or pay a hefty fee. Portland also instituted relocation assistance, requiring landlords to compensate tenants when issuing no-cause evictions or raising rent by 10 percent or more.

Developers responded to inclusionary housing by rushing to apply for projects before the rules took effect. Some of those projects are now under construction, while others are stalled.

“We’ve got a very, very large pipeline,” Rodriguez said. “I’m not sure how much of that is going to get done. A lot of it is in design review.”

Rodriguez is a member of the Portland Design Commission, which performs design review. Multifamily developers are grappling with inclusionary housing, which dents their revenue, he said.

“Everybody’s trying to figure out inclusionary housing,” he said. “We’re struggling to make deals work.”

Rodriguez predicted rents will again grow in about a year as the current supply is absorbed and few additional apartments get built.

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For eight years, the Portland Development Commission patiently cobbled together four blocks at the eastern end of the Burnside Bridge.

City leaders thought the area could serve as a gateway to downtown from East Portland, and so the PDC in 1998 began acquiring properties there.

Revitalization of the area had a long way to go. The Convention Plaza building was a second-rate office property, and the surrounding area had little going on.

Yet the site offered 4 acres of close-in land fronting the Willamette River on one of Portland’s busiest streets.

Development there would be aided by maximum height allowances of 200 feet, a generous floor-to-area ratio of nine-to-one and central employment (EXd) zoning.

Today, the area is bustling with construction and activity. Guerrilla Development‘s colorful Fair-Haired Dumbbell is under construction, while Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners‘ Slate and Key Development and Guardian Real Estate Services‘ Yard are fully built. Additional projects are at various stages of development.

“It’s a really interesting site in Portland, an interesting opportunity,” said Jeff Pickhardt, a Key Development principal. “It’s basically the epicenter of Portland, and it had been a blighted site for a long time.”

Initially, the PDC inked a memorandum of understanding with Opus Northwest, a subsidiary of Minnesota-based Opus Group, for podium-and-tower construction on the entire property. But Opus was hit hard by the Great Recession in 2008 and ’09, and the deal dissolved.

The PDC – led at the time by Executive Director Bruce Warner under then-mayor Sam Adams – restarted. The agency brought in Beam Development, a local firm that had performed several well-regarded rehabilitations of historic buildings, as a strategic adviser to craft a new framework plan.

Crucially, instead of seeking one large developer to take the entire site, the PDC moved to bring in multiple developers.

“It was smart on PDC’s part to have some diversity of development groups,” said Jonathan Malsin, a Beam Development principal. “We understood that that could lead to a better result of having a mix of architectural styles and product types.”

Beam Development was invited to redevelop a parcel in the area. The firm, led by Brad Malsin and his son, Jonathan, chose the Convention Plaza building, which since opening in 1926 had served at various times as a military barracks, a soup kitchen and offices before being targeted for demolition. But instead of knocking it down, Beam renovated the property at 123 N.E. Third Avenue into the Eastside Exchange.

Cascade Energy Inc. was the first tenant to take space in the 80,000-square-foot building, and then the Technology Association of Oregon and the Oregon Film Office followed.

Beam Development opened the door for others to step into the area, Pickhardt said.

“You could credit Beam and really PDC for activating that part of town,” he said. “Beam was heavily involved in the framework plan, and they really took the first step at the bridgehead. Their work early on, and particularly Eastside Exchange, was a catalyst for others to follow suit.”

In the wake of the Great Recession, most developers were not in a position to redevelop 4 acres of urban property. Parceling out the four-plus blocks over time enabled the PDC to spread the financial risk among several developers.

Key Development had investigated developing a large project in the Burnside bridgehead area in 2010. The Hood River company was interested in making its mark in Portland. After Beam developed Eastside Exchange, Key jumped in with bids for Block 67 and a portion of Block 76. Block 67 became Yard, a 21-story tower with 284 residential units and ground-floor retail space.

Yard attracted criticism for its dark appearance and unbroken mass, but Key Development and Guardian Real Estate Services sold the building in December to a Thailand-based company for $126.68 million after an unsolicited offer.

After completion of the Eastside Exchange, Beam and UD+P followed with Slate, a 10-story mixed-use project on Block 75. The Works Progress Architecture-designed building has 75 market-rate apartments and 45,000 square feet of commercial space. The building opened in November.

Guerrilla Development’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell – two six-story buildings totaling 56,000 square feet – is rising on Block 76. A June completion date is targeted for the office and retail project, developer Kevin Cavenaugh has said.

Cavenaugh used a unique crowdfunding mechanism to raise $1.5 million for the $18 million project. The façade will have a colorful design by Los Angeles artist James Jean, setting the project apart from Slate’s light-colored boxes and Yard’s dark appearance.

Meanwhile, Key Development is preparing to break ground on the western portion of Block 76 for a six-story, 22,000-square-foot commercial building, Pickhardt said. That project has received design approval from the city of Portland.

Development continues to radiate outward from the 4 acres comprising the Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan formed in 2010. To the east, Dallas-based Trinsic Residential Group is building Aura Burnside. The six-story multifamily building at 55 N.E. Grand Ave. will include 167 residential units; it’s scheduled to open in late summer.

To the south, Gerding Edlen plans to build a 17-story mixed-use building at 5 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. 5 MLK, as the project is known, is set to include approximately 220 apartments, 10,000 square feet of commercial space and 170 underground parking spaces. 5 MLK is being designed by GREC Architects of Chicago.

At 17 S.E. Third Ave., Sentinel Development and Westport Capital are rehabilitating the 108,600-square-foot Towne Storage building into creative office space. LRS Architects is designing the project, and Bremik Construction is serving as general contractor.

At 230 E. Burnside St., Arthur Mutal and NFN Investments completed adaptive reuse of the 16,400-square-foot R.J. Templeton Building into creative office and retail space in 2014.

ESI Group designed and constructed a 28,720-square-foot warehouse rehabilitation for New Seasons Market’s central kitchen at Southeast Second Avenue and Ash Street.

More properties could be developed in coming years. Cairn Pacific owns property at 811 E. Burnside St. that hosts an eclectic collection of local shops. There are no current plans to develop the property, located across Burnside Street from the Doug Fir Lounge and the Jupiter Hotel, but that could change as the neighborhood develops, Cairn Pacific founding principal Tom DiChiara said.

“It was sleepy down there for a long time,” he said.

Not so now. Looking back, backers of Burnside bridgehead redevelopment are proud of their work.

“It’s amazing that it’s all come together like it has in a relatively short period of time,” Pickhardt said. “To get that scale of development done collaboratively with the neighbors and PDC is remarkable.”

Geraldene Moyle, now a senior project manager at the PDC, said the city was able to be nimble in acquiring the parcels and selling them for fair market value. Developers had to work around a Portland Bureau of Transportation couplet project, elevation changes and other issues.

“I think it’s been successful,” she said. “Based on what we owned, based on the constraints of the site, the couplet, the height, we were able to deliver a site that fulfilled the goals of the framework plan.”

The post Burnside bridgehead grows up appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A new ten-story mixed-use project has opened at the bustling Burnside bridgehead. Co-developers Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners last week held a grand opening celebration for Slate, which combines residential, office, and retail space in an distinctively-designed building at the corner of Northeast Couch Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

General contractor Yorke & Curtis began work on the building in late 2014, and completed the project last month. Works Progress Architecture designed the building, which features framed apertures on the eastern and western facades and a floor-to-ceiling curtainwall on the north and south.

Ground-floor retail tenants include Cosube, a lifestyle store combining surfboards, coffee and beer service. A Japanese restaurant is close to leasing commercial space on the building’s northeast ground-floor corner, and the developers are in talks with other operators for leases on the two retail spaces on the building’s west side.Co-working space CENTRL Office has lease the second and third-floor office space, as well as a 700 square-foot lobby space.

The building’s upper six floors are comprised of apartment units ranging in size from studios to two-bedrooms. The units feature floor-to-ceiling windows, concrete floors, and flow-through floorplans.  Natural light comes into the building’s hallways via amenity spaces placed at the end of hallways, where studio apartments were removed from the floorplan and replaced with weight, yoga, media and game rooms.

According to Beam Development principal Brad Malsin, who will be moving into an apartment in the building, “This building represents a forward look at what this district can look like.”

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The partnership between Portland developers Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners started with Slate, a mixed-use project in the Central Eastside Industrial District with 75 luxury apartments and 45,000 square feet of commercial space.

Beam had been a player in the Central Eastside for years – mostly retrofitting large, historic buildings such as the Eastside Exchange and Water Avenue Commerce Center into creative office space. But Beam, led by Brad Malsin and his son, Jonathan, had less familiarity with other kinds of projects.

“We didn’t have experience building ground-up multifamily, so we set out to partner up with a team that had experience with that product type,” Jonathan Malsin said.

Meanwhile, Urban Development + Partners was looking to get more involved in the Central Eastside. It was a match made in heaven, or at least the Burnside bridgehead.

“We found that our firms have similar goals or values; we’re in alignment,” said Joren Bass, project manager for UDP. “Beam has a deep history of creative office space. UDP, we have pretty broad experience on the residential component. That was beneficial at Slate.”

Slate is opening to tenants this month. Yet that’s only the beginning of the Beam-UDP partnership. The companies are in the thick of developing three other projects together in the Central Eastside along Stark Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Hotel

First comes the renovation of Hotel Chamberlain, at 509 S.E. Grand Ave., which for decades housed a Shleifer Furniture store. The upper floors of the four-story building contain hotel rooms that have sat empty since the 1970s, when Shleifer Furniture ownership decided the trouble of running a hotel wasn’t worthwhile in the once-rough neighborhood.

Beam and UDP plan to transform the 36,000-square-foot property into a modern boutique hotel with about 60 guest rooms. The ground floor will become a hotel reception area, a lobby and a restaurant or coffee shop.

Features added by Shleifer Furniture over the years, such as a mezzanine and sidewalk-facing display windows, will be removed.

“Taking it back to the original storefront will bring in an amazing amount of natural light and really engage the street,” Bass said.

The developers are working closely with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office to retain the 110-year-old building’s historic characteristics. The renovation will require a full seismic upgrade.

“We’re going to preserve this as a gem,” Bass said.

It’s the first hotel development project for both firms, although UDP owns a hotel in another market. Emerick Architects is designing the hotel.

Hotel and apartments

Beam and UDP plan to build a 13-story mixed-use development with hotel space, multifamily units and ground-floor retail space at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., a half-block slightly west of Hotel Chamberlain where a parking lot sits currently. Two floors of underground parking are planned, along with a rooftop deck.

The mix of uses has not been finalized, Jonathan Malsin said.

“We’re still determining that,” he said. “We anticipate having a hospitality component and multifamily.”

Works Partnership Architecture is designing the project.

Creative offices

At 531 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., the developers plan a mid-rise creative office building of approximately six stories on a parking lot now used by Portland Music Co. Retail space will occupy the ground floor. The developers are working within the restriction of an 80-foot height limit.

Beam and UDP are pursuing the creative office market that has proved lucrative for other Central Eastside projects such as Eastside Exchange.

“We will be targeting the same type of tenant, but every project is so different, especially if it’s adaptive reuse versus new construction,” Malsin said. “We try to deliver a similarly high quality, unique product.”

Portland architecture firm Hacker is designing the office project.

Beam and UDP hope to break ground on all three projects next year, Malsin said. He declined to reveal a total project cost for all three developments, but it will be substantial.

“It’s going to be quite the node of activity here with the three sites,” he said.

Hotel construction has boomed in Portland, but Malsin said Hotel Chamberlain and the hospitality project next door will differentiate themselves in the market.

“There’s definitely a lot of supply coming online,” he said. “It’s definitely something we’re cognizant of. But I don’t lump together the (Central Business District) and the Pearl (District) and the Central Eastside. A cool boutique hotel on the Central Eastside? Yeah, there’s a market for that.”

A potential expansion of the Jupiter Hotel is the only competing project in view, Malsin said.

For Beam, it makes sense to continue investing in the Central Eastside on the heels of the firm’s earlier projects in the area, Malsin said.

“We’ve had a lot of holdings down here for years, so all of our projects are bolstered, and it’s a phenomenal neighborhood,” he said. “We love the grittiness. We love the character.”

The developments by Beam and UDP fit the city’s long-term plans for the Central Eastside, said Debbie Kitchin, who served as co-chairwoman of the stakeholder advisory committee for Southeast Portland.

The neighborhood’s future is guided by the city’s Southeast Quadrant plan, part of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The plan calls for activating the area’s major corridors, while preserving the rest for industrial uses.

“We focused on keeping mixed-use development in the corridor and on the bridgehead streets,” said Kitchin, who is also past president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council and principal of general contractor InterWorks LLC. “That’s been allowed for 30 years, and it’s just now coming to fruition. I think activating those corridors is great.”

These projects started with a relationship that Beam founder Brad Malsin developed with Shleifer Furniture owner Stuart Shleifer. Malsin told Shleifer that if he were ever interested in selling, Beam would be interested in buying.

“This is where we have our network,” Jonathan Malsin said of the Central Eastside. “We’re able to identify properties off-market.”
For a clue as to what Beam and UDP will do together, look at what they’ve done. Slate has a distinctive 10-story design. There are 1.5 floors of retail space and 2.5 floors of office space topped by six floors of apartments. In addition, there is one level of underground parking.

Tenants include surfboard and coffee shop Cosube as well as a restaurant that has inked a letter of intent. CENTRL Office, a co-working company, has taken a space. Two more retail spaces along Third Avenue have not yet been leased.

Slate’s apartment units primarily have two bedrooms, “mostly as a way of differentiating our product,” Malsin said.

The interior has concrete floors, an approach favored by UDP. Bass said the polished concrete blends beauty and durability, is friendly to pets and allergy sufferers, and is resistant to flooding.

“We really won’t build anything that doesn’t have a concrete floor in a residential building like this,” Bass said.

Slate is a linchpin for a fast-developing area; it’s neighbored by Yard and the under-construction Fair-Haired Dumbbell from Kevin Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development. Gerding Edlen is developing a 17-story mixed-use building at the Burnside bridgehead.

Slate’s distinctive design by Works Partnership Architecture (now Works Progress Architecture) and built by Yorke & Curtis is reminiscent of stacked boxes, with apertures protruding from the building.

“It was an aesthetic decision,” Malsin said. “We first started looking at this building as an expression of an industrial neighborhood. We were enamored of the idea. It’s not the easiest detail to construct, but we’re really pleased. I think the design has been really well received.”

The post Developers team up in Central Eastside appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Another high-rise planned at the Burnside bridgehead may be headed for approval, but it won’t feature cross-laminated timber (CLT) as proposed originally.

The Portland Design Commission on Thursday heard a staff report and discussed details of the proposed 19-story, mixed-use building at 111 N.W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The building is being designed by Works Partnership Architecture for Beam Development and will complete development of Block 75 near the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. Urban Development Partners is co-developer of the project.

Use of wood in construction was barely mentioned during the meeting to provide design advice. A post-tensioned concrete frame is now planned, with steel and glass cladding.

In October 2015, Beam Development principal Brad Malsin said he would like to use CLT for the building, but would have to evaluate costs first. Also, Portland city building codes would have to be changed. An 18-story building in the works in Vancouver, British Columbia, would become the tallest constructed with CLT.

This new project near the intersection of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Couch Street represents the second and final phase of development at Lot 75, where a 10-story concrete-and-steel building, also designed by Works Partnership, is under construction. Discussion at Thursday’s meeting centered on the state-of-the-art mechanical parking garage and more mundane issues like quantities of curb cuts, loading stalls and sidewalk canopies.

Plans call for a basement service level, street-level retail space, a second-floor commercial area, four levels of mechanized parking and 13 levels of residential units. The mechanized parking will allow two layers of cars per level, city planner Tim Heron said.

“Cars are not 10 feet tall; they’re five feet tall, so you can do two layers of cars on one level,” he said. “You would drive into the elevator, get out of the car and take your keys with you and robots take it up and park it.”

Carrie Strickland, a principal at Works Partnership, said plans call for 80 to 100 mechanized parking stalls.

“We are striving to get at least a one-to-one parking count in the building,” she said.

Strickland said that only a mechanized parking structure being built in Philadelphia will be similar to the one planned at Block 75.

Works Partnership principal William Neburka added that views from outside of the parking garage can be an asset.

“With glazing and simple graphic scheme we can see how that parking can call attention to itself as an active element,” he said.

Neburka went on to tell commissioners that the clear glass curtain will actually be a window wall and be used with metal panels.

“We probably should have a conversation on how we begin to integrate some more opaque or textured materials (and) allow some parking glass and glass as transparent as possible at the base of the building,” he said.

Strickland then asked if glass in the auto lobby could count toward the required glazing percentage, but Commissioner Tad Savinar said no. Later in the meeting he said that a different glass treatment might have more appeal.

“If you have a light frost on the windows you could see moving forms instead of moving cars,” he said. “And that could be a lot more interesting from across the river, from a distance, to actually have the building breathing and moving instead of focusing on the mechanical action of moving a car.”

Although Strickland and Neburka pointed to planned overhangs as protection for pedestrians, Commissioner Julie Livingston said that canopies would be needed.

“You do need to address canopies because the overhangs aren’t close enough to the street to provide good protection,” she said.

Commissioners late in the meeting focused on including sidewalk canopies in the design and deciding the number of curb cuts that will be needed for loading and vehicle access. The current proposal includes two curb cuts on Northeast Davis Street – one for loading and one for the mechanical parking elevator.

“It’s possible they may need a third loading stall,” Heron said after the meeting. “My crystal ball is telling me they’re going to need another loading stall.”

The post Wood cut out of plans at Block 75 appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Block 75 mixed-use project at the Burnside Bridgehead, a joint development between Urban Development + Partners and Beam Development, continues to take shape. The ten-story mixed-use building  will feature ground-floor retail, creative office space on floors 2-4, and six stories of apartments on the upper floors.

General contractor Yorke & Curtis Residential began work on the Works Partnership Architecture-designed building late last year. The concrete and steel-frame building was topped out last month, and crews are busy installing the curtainwall on the building’s north and south facades, framed exteriors with metal paneling on the east and west sides, and framing and roughing in MEP work.

The project is slated for completion in mid-2016.

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More than a year has passed since Kevin Cavenaugh of Guerrilla Development first proposed his “Fair-Haired Dumbbell” building for a site at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. On Thursday he finally got the Portland Design Commission‘s approval.

Cavenaugh’s design, which won a city competition, features two six-story, cantilevered buildings slightly angled away from each other and joined at every floor level by eight-foot-wide, 30-feet-long open walkways. Both buildings will be completely covered with an original design by an artist yet to be selected.

Design Commission Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser voted against approval, but commissioners Julie Livingston, Tad Savinar and Jeff Simpson all gave approval for the art-inspired project after about an hour of discussion. Commission Chairman David Wark and Commissioner Don Vallaster were absent.

Kaiser was not explicit about his reasons for voting no, but he seemed to be concerned about how the building would fare in the long term.

“We have to think about 80 or 100 years from now,” he said.

At a previous design hearing for the project earlier this month, commissioners brought up concerns about perceived insufficient glazing, whether a covering should be placed over the sixth-floor walkway and how the roof would be treated.

Kaiser said then that he thought not covering the sixth-floor walkway would be a mistake. But Savinar said Thursday that after studying a rendering of the proposed building, he decided that covering the top walkway would affect the design.

“I think a canopy won’t work and it seems stupid,” he said.

Livingston said she was satisfied with plans for the building and Simpson said he was in favor of approval. And although he voted in favor the proposal, Savinar said he still had some reservations about being able to maintain the texture of the building’s skin.

Before the vote, Joe Zody of FFA Architecture & Interiors, representing Cavenaugh, defended the percentage of windows in the building by pointing to other buildings with similar percentages of glazing. Zody added that ground-floor windows accounted for 50 percent of surface area. He also pointed out that the Regional Arts & Culture Council had approved the building.

Zody also said that covering the top walkway wouldn’t work with the design.

“We look at the exterior bridges as exactly that,” he said.

Zody added that he had requested that the RACC include the building’s roof in the design that will cover the exterior walls.

After the meeting, Zody said he was pleased with the outcome.

“It’s a milestone for us, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

The next step will be to complete documents required for a building permit, which Zody said he expected to be done by Christmas. He said construction could begin by next spring and finish in about a year.

In the meantime, Zody said the RACC can now initiate the process of selecting an artist to create a design for the building’s skin.

“We can start very quickly now with approval and really begin the process,” he said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is one of three projects at the Burnside bridgehead; the other two are already under construction.

Works Partnership Architecture designed a 10-story mixed-use building for Block 75, at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., with both office and residential space in a modular format above ground-floor retail space.

A 21-story tower designed by Skylab Architecture for Block 67 will have 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading public park at the bridge level.

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The brains behind the designs of three very different developments planned at the east end of the Burnside Bridge revealed their motivations – and even exchanged a few barbs – during a panel discussion in Northwest Portland on Monday night.

Randy Gragg, executive director of the John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies at the University of Oregon, served as moderator. Panelists included Works Partnership Architecture principals Carrie Strickland and Bill Neburka, Skylab Architecture principal Jeff Kovel and Guerrilla Development principal Kevin Cavenaugh.

Each, in turn, talked about the motivations and thought processes behind their designs.

Kovel’s firm is behind the design of a $58 million, 21-story tower under construction on Block 67. The building will hold 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading park.

“The two things at the core for me are abstraction and improvisation,” Kovel said. “There is a big musical influence in my life and my work, as well as a real fondness for abstraction, to try to look for different ways, even in the same project, to express an idea.”

Kovel said that inspired the decision to put a park atop the underground parking lot.

“We had a parking lot and thought why not make it a park and lift it up to the bridge level,” he said. “It’s a conceptual link to the wild river bank that existed before the city was formed. We used that as an amphitheater for viewing the city, for stormwater treatment and put our parking below it.”

The Works Partnership project at the Burnside bridgehead, a 10-story mixed-use building on Block 75, also is under construction. Retail space is planned for the ground floor, but Strickland said the upper floors could be used for either apartments or offices.

“It’s a 10-story building with 1,500-square-foot spaces,” Strickland said. “They are cellular spaces and anything can happen at any level.”

Neburka said his team traveled to Chicago to get ideas for the project.

“At the corner of Dearborn (Street) and Jackson (Boulevard) is the city’s tallest masonry building where the bottom walls are eight feet thick, and right across the street is Federal Plaza, the essence of free space, with ephemeral buildings above,” he said. “Our building is about these ideas, and the idea of permanence and history and modernity began to take shape.”

The project talked about most during the night was Cavenaugh’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. All panelists agreed that it will be the centerpiece of the bridgehead projects because of its conspicuous location. The project is due to receive its final design review this week.

“You got stuck in the throne site, the island in the middle of a traffic pattern in the middle of a development,” Neburka said. “You’re on the main stage and I wonder how that affected your design.”

Cavenaugh’s original design for two six-story, cantilevered buildings joined by elevated walkways raised concerns because it called for an exterior resembling brightly-colored Florentine wallpaper. That plan changed, and now the Regional Arts and Culture Council is working with Cavenaugh to find an artist to create an original design.

But Cavenaugh said he wants the building, the smallest of the three developments at the bridgehead, to pop out to passersby. The exterior design will be “a crazy color,” he said.

“I don’t want people to die, but I do want people to get in little, small fender benders driving by,” he said.

Cavenaugh said his best creativity comes when his thought processes are balanced.

“I had my ass handed to me after the recession and now I want to make sure I balance between right brain work and left brain work and, ideally, the result is something quirky,” he said.

Quirkiness is what Cavenaugh hopes will help him promote the building to design firms, which he’d like to have as tenants.

“Each floor plate is only 4,000 square feet, so it’s ideal for a 10- to 15-person office,” he said. “If my client ends up being design firms, those are design firms who shouldn’t be on the 20th floor of Big Pink, eighth door to the left. They should be in a building like this.”

All of the Burnside bridgehead designs are very different, Neburka said, because there was no master planning process as there was for the South Waterfront District.

But Strickland said that not planning ahead was the point.

“The danger is in developing a multi-block at the same time and there being too much consistency,” she said. “Breaking it down with different developers and different programs – that’s how real cities develop over time.”

After about two hours of discussion, Gragg asked the panelists how they would work together moving forward and what the neighborhood will look like.

“I think you’ll see a lot of people taking pictures of these buildings for a long time to come,” Cavenaugh said.

Gragg also asked panelists to critique each other’s designs, and Strickland obliged.

“We all really do like each other, but before we even started the building we had done so much work on the east side, and I don’t think your building is authentic east side,” Strickland said of Kovel’s design.

Kovel smiled.

“I actually like the view of your building from my building,” he replied.

Strickland also criticized Cavenaugh’s design.

“Maybe you’re putting up a building that is not as important as everyone is expecting it to be,” she said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell’s standing as the centerpiece is “the elephant in the room,” Kovel said. Neburka added that the location is “a very, very loaded site.”

But Neburka said organic growth is continually occurring in the Central Eastside and that the Fair-Haired Dumbbell may become something entirely different in 50 or 75 years.

Cavenaugh said that’s OK with him.

“We tend to take ourselves too seriously,” he said. “I think amazing ideas will follow me, and I don’t think I am the pinnacle of ideas.”

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Another tower crane was added to Portland’s skyline Monday at the site of Block 75, a 10-story mixed-use project at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Crews with Ness & Campbell Crane and Northwest Tower Crane Service installed the crane, which rises about 150 feet above its foundation.

Yorke & Curtis Residential is the general contractor on the $24.5 million project, which was designed by Works Partnership Architecture for co-developers Urban Development Partners and Beam Development.

to view a time lapse video of the crane erection by Yorke & Curtis.

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A 10-story development under construction at the Burnside bridgehead will host a mix of uses ideal for financial backing from Metro‘s Transit-Oriented Development Program.

The $35 million Block 75 at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. will include a combination of residential units, commercial offices and retail space, said Jonathan Malsin, president of Beam Development, one of the developers working on the project.

“Transit-oriented development is meant to induce more ridership on public transportation to provide Metro with a return on their investment in public transit,” he said. “This project is on multiple public transit lines, and the density of the project is very much in line with what Metro wants to see happen in terms of the type of development for the area.”

Block 75 received $500,000 from Metro’s TOD Program based largely on the fact that it’s 10 stories – taller than many multifamily developments in the Portland area, Malsin said.

“They’re really looking for projects that are replicable and are more dense than normal,” he said. “And the fact that we had office, retail and residential space was an advantage.”

Metro’s TOD Program began in 1998 and currently has an annual budget of $3 million, according to program manager Megan Gibb.

“When they started plans for Block 75 a few years ago, they came to us with plans for a six- to seven-story building,” she said. “We thought, ‘we can do more’ and that it would be a waste to put just six or seven stories on that site.”

Gibb said that, when determining which projects to invest in, Metro looks for developments like Beam’s that “add vitality to the district.”

Developers struggling to get traditional funding from banks could benefit from TOD too, Gibb said.

“Banks like funding developments that are comparable to other developments in the area,” she said. “We can help because our investment can show the bank that a project has backers.”

Gibb said Clay Creative – the Killian Pacific project at the former Rexel/Taylor Electric Supply Co. site that will deliver 60,000 square feet of office space in the Central Eastside‘s first new creative office building – was a perfect example of a nontraditional project perfect for TOD money.

“They were having a hard time getting financing because there are no comparable buildings in the area,” Gibb said. “We were able to play a small role in getting that project developed.”

The TOD Program invested $300,000 in Clay Creative, said Noel Johnson, vice president at Killian Pacific.

“The project is surrounded by mass transit, (so) it is an optimal jobs-focused TOD project,” Johnson said. “The innovative building design, systems and amenities being built are appealing to the employers (and) employees that are inclined to use transit options, so the result is a synergistic, positive-feedback loop.”

More information about the TOD Program is available on Metro’s .

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