SolTerra‘s CEO wants Portland to know he’s still in business.

Brian Heather, founder and CEO of the design-build firm, said he plans to move forward with a far smaller staff and a much narrower focus than before. SolTerra will employ about 40 people in Portland, and focus on sustainable building products.

Heather will oversee the continued development of SolTerra’s 35,000-square-foot Portland headquarters, he said.

A group of SolTerra designers left to form their own business, though they will continue working with Heather and SolTerra, he said. Former senior associate Nate Ember left to start Ink:Built, a “design collective.”

“It’s less overhead for us, but then we can get the same talent and everything,” Heather said. “We’re still relying on a lot of the same relationships we’ve been in the past.”

Heather’s former business partner, James Wong, co-founder of SolTerra, did not return multiple phone messages.

The 91��Ƶ reported in February that SolTerra had split and laid off much of its design staff. The company had at one point employed more than 150 people.

SolTerra was founded at a difficult economic time – 2008 – and with an ambitious mission: to control all project aspects, from design to construction to operation, and build only Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum-rated buildings.

But some SolTerra projects languished, often for years. The Brooklyn Yard mid-rise building was under construction for two full years before being completed in late 2016.

Other projects’ scopes changed drastically from one permit application to another. Two Portland multifamily projects – the Antelope and the Strata – jumped greatly in density between permit applications. Those projects will move forward under Wong as “group living facilities,” Heather said earlier this month. Wong also will develop three current Seattle-area projects.

“We just have different skills and different things that we’d like to accomplish, and for me, I really want to stay focused on sustainability,” said Heather, who was named a 91��Ƶ Newsmaker in 2016. “My ex-partner is really good on the finance side, and I think he wanted to focus on his skills around that. We just weren’t in full alignment with everything. We’re both still getting along. The relationship is very amicable, but it’s just that there are different things that we want to accomplish in the next couple of years.”

Despite the hard lessons, Heather said he believes the one-stop-shop approach is feasible. SolTerra previously fell victim to a number of forces outside its control, he added. Integrating “certain things” into the business model didn’t make sense, he said.

“I think that there are some challenges, just particularly with market conditions, and there’s a lack of skilled labor force and then the cost of land and the cost of construction and those things definitely became challenging, and as well as getting through the city taking a lot longer – so there’s some things that make it challenging, but I think it can work,” he said.

He thinks the current corporate setup will prove effective.

“I feel good about it,” he said.

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Sustainability-focused Portland design-build firm SolTerra has split into two businesses and laid off design professionals.

Co-founders James Wong and Brian Heather will run separate firms, the company confirmed Friday.

SolTerra’s designated spokeswoman declined to answer questions, but issued a 150-word statement.

“SolTerra’s owners have decided to divide the company into two operating entities to bring greater focus to the core strengths of each,” the statement reads. “These entities are cooperating with each other but have different business models.”

Heather will run a company focused on solar energy and living walls, as well as the development of several in-progress real estate projects, according to the statement.

“Brian Heather has decided to continue to carry out his mission to connect people to nature, create stronger communities, and make a positive impact on the earth,” it reads.

The entity headed by Wong will focus on development of multifamily projects in the Seattle and Portland areas. It will “create beautiful, vibrant communities that residents can be proud to call home.”

SolTerra was founded in 2008, just as a nationwide recession began to paralyze the construction industry. Heather told the 91��Ƶ last year the timing allowed him to hire a number of talented out-of-work design professionals.

The company started out designing and installing green roofs and living walls, before adopting a business model of controlling the entire development process for sustainable building projects. It would build only LEED platinum-rated buildings.

It recorded $30.5 million in revenue in 2015, and last year, the Portland Business Journal listed it as one of the seven fastest growing companies in Oregon. The company purchased a quarter-block lot in the Pearl District in March, with plans for a tower called “Parq.”

The company is also in the process of building an ambitious 35,000-square-foot headquarters.

“We’re going all out,” Heather said of the project to the 91��Ƶ last year. “We’re really pushing the envelope.”

SolTerra has completed several mixed-use Portland mid-rises – notably the Woodlawn in Northeast (its first) and Brooklyn Yard in the Brooklyn neighborhood. They’re marketed as meeting the highest standards for energy-efficiency and environmental impact.

But SolTerra projects are also notable for how long they take to build. The earliest permit activity for Brooklyn Yard registered with Portland’s Bureau of Development Services is a demolition permit issued in February 2014. Construction lasted nearly two years, with temporary occupancy granted by the city in October 2016. A grand opening is planned for February.

The scope of other projects changed drastically from one permit request to another.

The Strata at 3185 N. Vancouver Ave. was submitted in August for Type II design review as a 110-unit building. This week, it reappeared as a “group living facility” with 240 units.

The Antelope at 177 N. Failing St. was submitted as a five-story building with 50 apartments, but was resubmitted as a group living facility with 84 units.

The application lists Jackson Main Architecture as the designer, yet the company touts designing all its products in-house.

Reviews from the job-satisfaction website Glassdoor paint a largely positive picture of life at the company until about summer 2016. Accounts by commenters purporting to be former SolTerra employees describe inexperienced management and disarray.

The company’s website still states that it employs 150 people, hires “weekly” and is in a “high-growth phase.”

SolTerra has three projects in development in the Seattle area, including a plan to build a seven-story apartment building on a parcel purchased in August, according to a Seattle Business Magazine profile of the company from this month.

The article doesn’t mention turmoil at the company. Rather, Heather describes ambitious plans, including developing projects abroad and aiding lawmakers crafting policy.

“When you have a vision, you really have to have a group of people that are all totally aligned,” Heather is quoted as saying. “That’s hard to do with too many companies involved.”

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Green developer Ryan Olsen has two projects now mired in city permitting. Both are what the president of Elemental Urban Living calls “micro villages” – mixed-use communities oriented around central courtyards that utilize rooftop space for trees and community gardens.

By taking a birds-eye view, Olsen had hoped to satisfy landscaping requirements and earn stormwater credits. But the city doesn’t offer such incentives in low-density residential neighborhoods, he learned; only in the high-density Central City.

“Why does this have to be a fight?” he said. “I mean, we’re pretty excited about this. It’s good for people. It’s good for the city. Why do we have to fight the city to do it?”

Olsen isn’t alone in his frustration. Business owners and building professionals say that thanks to red tape and disappearing incentives, other cities have caught up to Portland in terms of green building, a concept that it helped pioneer and still is a major part of its brand. Perhaps more incriminating is that they say now the city’s most sustainable projects are affordable only to its wealthiest residents.

“For a long time I think we’ve all benefited from each other’s great work in this area,” said Bob Packard, partner at ZGF Architects. “But what many of us who’ve been engaged in this practice are beginning to see and to talk about is, you can’t brag about something, you can’t point to something, that isn’t there.”

Oregon outside U.S. top 10

Portland builders have been on board to combat climate change since it was called “global warming” in the early 1990s. Green building (construction and land use practices that limit negative effects on the Earth) has informed many, if not most, prominent projects dating to that time, including Veridian Place (2000), the Mirabella condo tower (2007) in the South Waterfront District and the OHSU Center for Health & Healing (2007).

But the rest of the world has started catching up. Illinois now has the most Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design-rated buildings per capita. Oregon isn’t even in the top 10. Cities like Chicago, Washington D.C. and Salt Lake City have made significant strides in transit and planning. California’s CALGreen building code is nearly identical to the LEED code. Reno, home to Tesla and cheap housing, is said to be a particularly hot spot.

“The tech companies are swarming to that place,” said Steven Straus, president of Glumac, an MEP firm specializing in sustainable consulting.

Green building is today among America’s fastest growing industries, along with health care and legal marijuana. Glumac, with 10 offices on the West Coast, is quite busy these days, Straus said, though mostly outside the Portland area. The firm was able to establish and grow a solid reputation thanks in part to an Oregon program tying energy tax credits to the LEED rating system (the higher the LEED score, the more credits), he said. But that program has diminished, and become less effective, he added.

Glumac’s latest office is in Shanghai. China has started looking seriously at green building, due in part to the high health care costs associated with pollution. The Portland office of LEED consultant U.S. Green Building Services has been active in all kinds of projects there, including Shanghai Tower, principal Richard Manning said.

“We’ve done a 122-story building, and a bunch of KFCs,” he said.

Packard said Europe is passing Portland and the U.S. He’s currently traveling the world learning about sustainable building practices in places like London, Paris and Madrid. As an environmentalist who cares about mitigating climate change, he said what he’s seen is heartening. But as a Portlander, it has him worried about the health of the local market.

The problem is that sustainability is still central to Portland’s brand, Packard said.

“Can we really say we’re leaders on this?” he said. “If we want to lead on this kind of thing, we can’t just do it once in the past 10, 20 years. We have to continually apply forward-thinking.”

Barriers to innovative projects

Also, a list recently passed around the Internet, of the country’s hottest green cities, omitted Portland. Mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler called this “embarrassing” in a debate.

But, Vanessa Keitges points out, Portland did make a recent USA Today list of cities with the worst heat islands.

Keitges, co-founder of Columbia Green Technologies, is also frustrated these days. Its status as a Portland green building firm carries a cachet outside the area, she said, like being a tequila maker from Mexico. Her company’s green roof tray systems provide a simpler, cheaper alternative to waterproof membranes, but can run afoul of building codes, stalling projects and making it harder to find clients.

“Innovation is happening so fast across the country and the world that the building codes have to try to keep up. And in Portland, they haven’t,” she said.

There were as many green roofs installed in Portland last year as there were in 2000, she said.

One issue with green products like roof trays is that they must be specified through an architect.

Melissa Milburn, spokeswoman for SolTerra, said her firm has been successful in part because it’s “vertically integrated.” SolTerra, with offices in Seattle and Portland, owns, designs, builds and leases all its projects, all of which are heavily green. This helps accelerate the permitting process, she said.

“We have everybody in one room,” Milburn said. “We have the architect sitting right next the construction leads. They’re a part of the same team, at the same company, with the same mission.”

SolTerra’s Woodlawn project, they say, features the largest “living wall” on the West Coast. The 8-year old company owns 13 properties it plans to develop near its two offices.

Establishing eco-districts, like Lloyd or one including Portland State University, is one proposed way to reduce costs by pooling resources. Architect and affordable housing advocate Stuart Emmons says another is altering RFPs for public projects, which he says are so dense and complicated that they can be an early barrier for forward-thinking developers, as well as for minority- and women-owned businesses.

“RFPs are the gateways to projects; they’re a really big deal,” he said. “In general, I feel like innovation is not supported in these RFPs. It’s always, ‘How many things have you done?’ ”

As projects are downscaled, the green attributes end up being affordable for spaces with the highest rents. That has led to a feeling that green features are perks of being rich, Ryan Olsen said.

“We shouldn’t treat them like amenities – this is healthy living. It’s good for all people,” he said.

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founder Brian Heather describes his Portland-based business as a design-build firm, but that’s just scratching the surface of what the company does.

Heather started the firm in October 2008 just as the recession hit, a situation that SolTerra was able to leverage to its advantage.

“We were able to get some good people,” Heather said.

SolTerra quickly earned a foothold in the local building industry by designing and installing green roofs and living walls. Eventually, with an eye toward being able to control the entire process of the projects SolTerra worked on, Heather decided to shift the firm’s focus, moving to an all in-house approach – starting with development and design and carrying through construction to ownership – that now allows SolTerra to maintain control of the end product in a way that fulfills the firm’s mission and Heather’s vision.

“I realized we could better achieve our goals by taking over the process,” he said. “We became a design-build firm.”

The move has paid off. While the firm still works on a handful of green roof and living wall projects each year for outside clients, it mainly focuses on its own projects. SolTerra’s platinum-rated LEED project,, has been open for a year. Another project called will be done in a couple of months.

The firm also is keeping busy constructing a new net-zero headquarters building that Heather says is being built to meet to the AIA’s 2030 challenge. In order to meet that goal, the approximately 35,000-square-foot building will feature insulated concrete forms, which Heather describes as “like giant Legos of Styrofoam filled with concrete.”

“We’re going all out,” Heather said. “We’re really pushing the envelope.”

The building also likely will stand out in Portland for other design aspects as well: from a park on the roof to a rooted tree that will grow from the fifth floor out of the top of the structure to the outside.

Once completed, the new headquarters building will provide plenty of space for SolTerra to expand its research and development efforts, allowing staff to test and fine-tune a range of proprietary systems that will likely one day end up in future projects.

“We want to educate and create transparency,” Heather said, “and raise the bar for what’s out there.”

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SolTerra, in keeping with its tradition of building the most energy-efficient buildings possible, has begun construction of its new headquarters in Portland, at Southeast Ninth Avenue and Division Street.

SolTerra co-founder Brian Heather said he believes the new five-story building, scheduled for completion next spring, will be the tallest on the West Coast constructed with insulated concrete forms.

“It’s sort of like large Styrofoam Legos filled with concrete,” he said.

One of the building’s distinctive features will be in its center: a 6,000-square-foot green roof with a large tree surrounded by glass. The eco-roof will be planted with soil five feet deep and feature drought-tolerant plants and a high-efficiency drip irrigation system that will reduce outdoor water demand by 77 percent, according to a SolTerra fact sheet. Also, low-flow plumbing fixtures will save water.

Heather said he believes the building is among the first, if not the first, to take part in Energy Trust of Oregon‘s “Path to Net Zero” program. He expects the building to attain a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design platinum rating.

The building will be used solely by SolTerra employees and have retail space and parking on the first floor, Heather said.

“We have about 110 employees between Seattle and Portland, and about 60 will be in Portland,” he said. “We will use the entire building for different pieces of our business.”

SolTerra has many “pieces,” and all of its work is done in-house. That includes architectural design, general contracting, electrical, plumbing, mechanical and concrete.

“We have a really amazing team and there’s a really good culture and talent in Portland,” Heather said. “That really allowed us to take on such a big project, and we want to be part of Portland for many, many years to come.”

This will be the first time the company will own its headquarters and not have to rent space, Heather said. That’s important because the company is expanding rapidly, he said.

“We’re growing very fast and have hired at least 20 people in the last two months,” he said.

SolTerra recently completed construction of The Woodlawn, a 19-unit mixed-use building in Northeast Portland. Another project, the 46-unit Brooklyn Yard in Southeast Portland, is under construction.

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Light rail trains in a 7.3-mile-long corridor being developed through Southeast Portland and into Milwaukie are projected to carry up to 25,500 weekday riders to nearly 100,000 new jobs by 2030, according to TriMet data released in August 2012. The MAX orange line will have 10 stations, 675 motor vehicle park-and-ride spaces and 400 bicycle parking spaces.

Within two months after TriMet issued those projections, Joseph Bradford, owner of local development company Urban Evolution Inc., announced his plans to build a 68-unit multifamily complex – Moreland Crossing – in Sellwood, just 800 feet from the Southeast Tacoma Street/Johnson Creek station.

The timing and location weren’t coincidental, Bradford said. He chose the location at 8118 S.E. 23rd Ave. because he believes that the orange line will revitalize the neighborhood.

“I studied Sellwood in college through the (University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts‘ urban design program) and found the trolley lines in the early 1900s were spot-on in how neighborhoods should function close to the downtown,” he said. “We lost a lot of urban planning ideas through the onset of the automobile (from the 1950s through the 1980s), and now people are re-embracing urban amenities and ‘main street’ living close to transit.”

Bradford’s development isn’t the only one planned or already under construction near the new light rail corridor. Portland-based SolTerra is developing a 46-unit apartment building in the Brooklyn neighborhood, at the corner of Southeast Schiller Street and Milwaukie Avenue. SolTerra began as an electrical, roofing and landscaping company specializing in creating environmentally conscious systems – eco-roofs, solar systems and living walls. Earlier this year it started acquiring land for ground-up development.

Director Andrea Wallace said SolTerra chose the property because it’s in a great neighborhood, but added that the proximity to the orange line is a bonus.

“We focus primarily on, and are passionate about, urban properties,” she said. “Having it near the MAX line is a happy coincidence, because we believe it’s important that people have access to public transportation.”

SolTerra considers the proximity a happy coincidence, but the owner of a property at 4215 S.E. 17th Ave., slightly north of the future orange line station at Southeast 17th Avenue and Holgate Boulevard, is well aware that the property is adjacent to the future MAX station, according to paperwork from the Bureau of Development Services.

Works Partnership Architecture on Oct. 28 submitted an application for a land use review of the vacant lot. The developers are seeing permission to build a mixed-use project that would feature between 30 and 36 residential units and up to 3,000 square feet of commercial space.

Not every developer following the Southeast Portland area is ready to commit to construction based on orange line ridership projections. Josh Schlesinger, vice president and asset manager of Portland-based Schlesinger Cos., said his company is eyeing a surface parking lot, but isn’t ready to bite just yet.

“We’re excited to see the orange line fully operational and are waiting until (it opens in) September 2015 to see if it has the ridership and the economics to support development,” he said. “We’re interested in reviving sites that are close-in in proximity, and what’s attractive from a developer’s perspective is what’s going on in Southwest Portland.”

TriMet officials predict that much of the job growth along the orange line corridor will be driven by Oregon Health and Science University and Portland State University. Their projections indicate that more than 9,900 residents and 13,600 jobs will come to the South Waterfront District by 2030.

That predicted density also piqued Bradford’s interest in developing housing along the transit corridor.

“In our studies of these areas in urban design, we found that there is only one thing that stops an area from being vital … it is people,” he said. “Density along main streets and on the edges of neighborhoods that are walkable and close to transit are key.”

Bradford believes the addition of the orange line, along with the existing Springwater Trail to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians, will vitalize Southeast Portland and Milwaukie.

“I believe that our project at Moreland Crossing will contribute to the neighborhood vitality by supporting the retail, the environment, and (offering options) for transportation,” he said. “We think this is ideal and more affordable than the other new apartments further north.”

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Oneonta Gorge, in the Columbia River Gorge, is an unlikely muse for an apartment project.

The half-mile stretch of canyon is framed by steep, mossy walls where water trickles into a stream below a pounding waterfall. The area is wet and exposed. But it led Portland design-build firm SolTerra Systems to plan The Woods – a sustainable, six-story mixed-use development in the Eliot neighborhood.

“That was the inspiration for this whole thing,” said Andrea Wallace, SolTerra’s design director. “That these would be living walls, and it would create this ravine waterfall effect.”

SolTerra is finalizing drawings for The Woods at the northwest corner of North Williams Avenue and Fargo Street. Like Oneonta, the 50-unit development will be split down the middle so rainwater can cascade into a central garden; the facade will evoke undulating trees.

SolTerra is set to break ground late this year on the $6 million project – the third in Portland to employ the company’s approach of design with a sustainability baseline. Also, a sister company, SolTerra Cities, is cultivating a group of investors to support new projects.

“In the next three years we’re going to build over $100 million in value in buildings in the Seattle and Portland markets,” said James Wong, co-founder and managing partner of SolTerra Cities. “Right now the majority of our buildings are in the Portland market.”

In addition to The Woods, SolTerra is planning a 96-unit building across the street called The Strata (floors resemble a stack of slate slightly askew); a 46-unit building called the Brooklyn Yards in the Brooklyn neighborhood (with vine-wrapped trellises and a central planter for growing food); and a four-story headquarters building near Southeast Division and Ninth Avenue (prominently displaying the company’s proprietary living wall system).

Meanwhile, work is wrapping up on the Woodlawn – a 19-unit mixed-use building in Northeast Portland. It will serve as a demonstration site for SolTerra’s living wall system, and include numerous other innovative features.

“We’re really working on a brand in the sense that we really want to provide those elements of nature in every single building we do,” said Brian Heather, president and founder of SolTerra Systems, and co-founder and managing partner of SolTerra Cities. “Not just in the (material) elements, but in the visual appearance.”

That is appealing to investors – especially in China, where Wong is leveraging ties to his native country. He said many wealthy people there are checking out foreign real estate markets because China’s is starting to inflate – property values in some areas have been climbing 10 to 20 percent annually.

The price of entry in Portland is much more palatable, Wong said, especially with cost-control measures inherent in SolTerra’s design-build process. The company’s goal is to provide high-level service at a low cost, which will be increasingly important as competition increases.

“Right now we just feel that at a 2.4 percent vacancy rate in Portland, and a sub-5 percent vacancy rate in Seattle, even with what’s in the pipeline, with our population growth in both cities there’s plenty of room for apartments,” Wong said. “And we’re confident that with the product that we’re building, these (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum, beautiful buildings, that we should get them rented – no problem.”

SolTerra anticipates that The Woods will exceed requirements for a LEED platinum rating. Set among living walls, its gorge-like courtyard will feature five platforms that step progressively back into the building. In addition to serving as a channel for rainwater to cascade from the green roof to a large rainwater cistern, each platform will house a communal amenity like storage space, a shared kitchen, a fitness room and a theater.

SolTerra wants the building’s sustainability to be somewhat existential as well so that passersby get a sense of “looking at dappled light through a grove of trees,” according to its submission for design advice. At night, backlit windows are meant to evoke tree bark.

“Our vision for the brand is that when people see a building, they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a SolTerra,’ ” Wong said, “like a Frank Lloyd Wright building.”

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A new Portland developer with a highly sustainable apartment project under construction in the Woodlawn neighborhood is preparing to start another in the Eliot neighborhood.

SolTerra Systems – a design-build firm that specializes in green roofs and solar panel installations – has acquired the quarter-block site on the southeast corner of North Williams Avenue and Fargo Street, where it plans to build a six-story building with 50 residential units, according to plans it recently filed with the city. The project will have 4,440 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, approximately 12 interior vehicle parking stalls and storage space for 64 bicycles.

SolTerra aims to build high-quality projects at low costs by cutting out superfluous elements. Presently, it’s constructing an 18-unit, mixed-use development at the corner of Northeast Durham Avenue and Oneonta Street. The $2.5 million apartment building will feature living walls, solar panels and a rainwater cistern – among other things.

The company’s North Williams Avenue property previously was owned by Bill Reed and his wife, Lydia Lundberg. SolTerra paid $775,000 for it, according to public records.

Like the Woodlawn project, the North Williams development will have a creative flair. Early drawings show the facade along North Fargo Street broken into vertical masses that tilt in opposing directions – a design similar to a strategy employed at the Cyan/PDX in downtown, though on a much smaller scale.

Joe Nydahl of Hendricks-Berkadia brokered the deal for SolTerra. In an email, Nydahl said SolTerra’s founder and president, Brian Heather, has a keen interest in the micro communities in which he builds, and is operating on the cutting edge of sustainable building practices.

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