For Ben Kaiser’s latest project in North Portland, the developer and architect drew upon influences as far away as Japan and as close to home as family.

The Canyons will open later this month at 3450 N. Williams Ave., near the intersection with Northeast Fremont Street. The 70-unit apartment building is intended to serve seniors seeking independent living units with convenient services.

Behind the six-story, 65-foot-tall building is a long, low-slung retail structure that creates an alleyway with the taller residential building. Kaiser expects a sushi restaurant, hair salon and salt retailer to open there after completion.

The project was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but landed on a series of fortuitous choices with the help of partner Emily Dawson. For example, each unit has its own heating and cooling system, and does not share air with other spaces. Also, the corridors are open to outdoor air, and units are staggered in a sawtooth pattern so doors do not face each other.

“We weren’t planning on COVID, but we’re very happy with the outcome,” Kaiser said during a recent tour of the property. “It’ll be a post-COVID environment that’s safe.”

The property will also have 24-hour concierge and occasional visits from Metro West Ambulance medics for residents who want blood pressure checks or other minor medical screenings.

In a brief video on The Canyons website, Kaiser talks about the past search for ideal housing for his aging father. That influenced development of the building.

“The products here in the United States need a lot of work,” Kaiser said. “It’s either super expensive or practically uninhabitable. We’re trying to find the middle ground.”

The units do not have bathtubs, but do have unique features such as countertops that can be raised and lowered.

also has cross-laminated timber – a material heralded by Kaiser Group and Path Architecture. The Canyons shares a parcel with the team’s Carbon 12, which opened in 2018 and remains, for now, the tallest CLT building in the United States. For The Canyons, the team brought on R&H Construction, a local firm that had not previously built a CLT structure.

The innovative method of joining the CLT drew some initial skepticism from inspectors, said Iain Macdonald, executive director of the Tallwood Design Institute – a collaborative effort of Oregon State University, the University of Oregon and industry partners based in Corvallis. The CLT panels are connected to each other instead of to a beam or a wall.

“We did actually some testing for them because the building code guys had never seen CLT connected in that way before,” Macdonald said.

CLT panels were loaded up with concrete barriers to test the material’s hardiness. The wood panels passed with ease, Macdonald said.

“We used every piece of concrete we had in the lab,” he said. “It was a really pretty dramatic illustration of the strength of it.”

CLT for The Canyons came from Structurlam, a major manufacturer based in British Columbia.

Portland has been a leading U.S. market for CLT, with Kaiser among its earliest adopters. Developers and architects who have used CLT praise its warm aesthetics, lower carbon footprint compared to concrete, ability to meet fire and seismic codes, and connection to rural Oregon’s timber economy.

The Canyons is on track to hit its $36 million budget, Kaiser said. The project team was forced to pause twice during the pandemic because of COVID-19 cases, he noted.

As a development proposition, The Canyons – a rental product aimed at the middle of the market – complements Carbon 12, which has for-sale luxury condos. The retail buildings create a narrow alleyway with both The Canyons and Carbon 12, something Kaiser said was inspired by Japan’s dense, lively alleyways.

“Our hope is people fill in all through here,” he said.

Hoosiers, a Japanese company, is a partner in the project.

The building has substantial bike parking, but approximately 30 parking spaces are tucked underneath. Seniors still want motor vehicle parking, Kaiser said.

“It’s still definitely a market that requires parking citywide,” he said.

Interest from potential commercial tenants has picked up as Oregon gets a better grasp on the coronavirus pandemic, Kaiser said.

“We’re all learning how to live with this problem, and business is slowly coming out of its shell,” he said.

Any new development in the Eliot neighborhood – historically one of Portland’s Black community centers – brings uncomfortable questions of gentrification and displacement. Kaiser has been having those conversations with residents and business owners for many years. Some still don’t like him or his developments, he admitted, but it’s a conversation he knows is necessary.

“Our country is going through a long-overdue awakening to the injustices of Black families in this country,” he said. “The diversity of this quadrant is what I love the most.”

Kaiser first purchased the property and began developing ideas for it before the Great Recession. The economic collapse halted those plans. The recovery led to Carbon 12. The property was vacant at the time of purchase.

“We haven’t displaced anything,” he said. “We haven’t torn down homes; we haven’t torn down businesses. That’s not to say Williams (Avenue)-Vancouver (Avenue) doesn’t have a horrible history of gentrification.”

Kaiser said he supports debt forgiveness for Black Americans.

“What our country needs now more than ever is open discourse to alleviate this massive disparity,” he said.

Kaiser Group is not done with the area, either. The developer owns an adjacent parcel east of The Canyons. The property is approximately 6,000 square feet and zoned for residential use.

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Cross-laminated timber is continuing to gain popularity in Portland, and one of the most visible hot spots is the intersection of North Williams Avenue and Fremont Street.

There, the eight-story Carbon 12 was completed in 2017. A stone’s throw away, the five-story Radiator building was finished in 2014. Now, work is under way on The Canyons – a six-story mixed-use building – next to Carbon 12. All three mass-timber projects were developed by Kaiser Group and designed by Path Architecture.

For The Canyons, R&H Construction is serving as the general contractor.

“Everybody’s excited about this project and what we’re doing,” R&H Construction Senior Project Manager Adam Petersen said.

Crews broke ground on The Canyons in February 2019 and expect to finish sometime this summer. The 65-foot-tall, 110,000-square-foot building will hold 70 residential units. Crafted with seniors in mind, the building will offer physically accessible amenities and light-filled apartments with open floor plans. As a bonus, a resident paramedic will be available 24 hours a day.

At present, teams of craft workers representing a host of trades are spread out across the site. All of them are working underneath a temporary weather barrier covering the entire building. The structure was topped out several months ago, when the final 5-ply and 7-ply CLT panels were flown in for installation.

“Right now the roof is going on as weather allows, the weather barrier is being applied and the first windows are on site and are starting to be installed,” Petersen said. “MEP teams are also roughing in units as fast as we can go, and we are a couple of weeks away from starting (insulation and drywall installation).”

As senior project manager, Petersen fields many of the inquiries about the use of CLT for The Canyons. The project will be featured at the 2020 International Mass Timber Conference in Portland in March.

“People are excited about it and we get asked about it, it seems like on every project,” Petersen said. “Everyone wants to know: ‘Is my project a good candidate for CLT?’ It can be tough trying to tell people that while it is a solution, and in some cases it is the best solution, it may not be the best solution for every project. It’s about trying to figure out the appropriate times and places to use it.”

For The Canyons, crews are building two post-tensioned concrete decks and four stories of stick-framed walls. But instead of common Trus Joist I Joists (TJIs) fabricated by Weyerhaeuser, the team is using CLT panels for floors and ceilings. Much of the wood and many of the mechanical systems are being left exposed.

“This is sort of a hybrid that not a lot of people have thought of,” Petersen said. “With steel and concrete buildings, everybody’s done it. But with CLT buildings, people are still being really creative about ‘Can we do it this way?’ and ‘What ways can we use to support this really great assembly?’”

The evolution of CLT in the building industry is ongoing, and the many variables involved are still being examined by project teams.

“You have to look at the whole development cost, I think,” Petersen said. “Breaking down materials, TJIs are less expensive than CLT. But when you start to factor in the (drywall) ceilings and some of the other things you’re putting in, the equation changes.”

Acoustics continue to be an issue, especially in multifamily projects, he added. The harder surface requires thicker acoustic matting and gypsum concrete assemblies, increasing the cost slightly.

“The science of it isn’t impossible to figure out,” he said. “Depending on the layout and configuration, it’s maybe cost neutral. Maybe it’s a value saver, but maybe it makes sense to do it in some other way.”

Then project teams must consider the fact that the few manufacturers of CLT panels all make products of different sizes. Clearly, there are still kinks to work out.

“It’s not simple,” Petersen said.

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Next to Carbon 12, an eight-story mass-timber mixed-use building in North Portland, the Kaiser Group and PATH Architecture are sticking with wood.

The Canyons, at the corner of North Williams Avenue and Ivy Street, will also feature cross-laminated timber (CLT). It will be six stories and offer market-rate apartments as well as substantial commercial space. But The Canyons won’t be a carbon copy.

“It’s a different type of structure,” said project architect Emily Dawson of PATH Architecture. “This is much more like a conventional multifamily project where we don’t have a post-and-beam structure like a lot of the CLT projects going on right now.”

R&H Construction is the general contractor for The Canyons. Crews broke ground in February on what will eventually be a 65-foot-tall building with 70 residential units. In total, there will be 110,000 square feet of floor space. It is designed for seniors, but there won’t be an age restriction. The team sought to offer physically accessible accommodations within a vibrant urban environment. Light-filled apartments will have open floor plans and modern designs. Plus, a resident paramedic will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Then there’s the unique open-air Alleywalk marketplace that will feature two separate buildings with several small businesses. These micro-retail spaces will range from 250 to 420 square feet.

Also, officials are working to establish partnerships with Legacy Health, New Seasons Market and others to help residents save on dining and health care costs.

The project is designed in part around the concept of intergenerational living. To that end, the team hopes to attract a Montessori school or a similar tenant.

On the design and engineering front, Dawson noted, there have been plenty of lessons learned from PATH Architecture’s experience with Carbon 12 to apply to The Canyons. While both buildings use CLT floor panels (fabricated by British Columbia-based Structurlam), there are more differences than similarities between them. Carbon 12, for instance, features a structural steel core, while The Canyons is being built more or less as a conventional building with a post-tensioned concrete podium.

One unique use of CLT panels in The Canyons will be in an interior atrium structure that links all five stories of apartments through the building’s open-air center. Zigzagging walkways on each floor will bounce from entryway to entryway along the length of the building. Those CLT walkways will be supported by other panels, but at skewed angles to form a never-before-seen load-bearing structure.

To obtain a final building permit, Dawson and her team had the walkway design tested by the Tallwood Design Institute at Oregon State University.

“Because they sit along each corridor wall, but sit at this kind of skewed angle, it creates what is called torsional shear through the panel,” Dawson said. “It’s shear moving through the panel in a way that we don’t have tested values that we can pull from charts.”

Under guidelines in Chapter 17 of the state building code, an exact copy of the atrium design was fabricated and sent to the Tallwood Design Institute lab for load-bearing tests. The results showed the design could bear at least three times its intended structural load – the lab ran out of weight to add after roughly 60,000 pounds.

“Our panels recovered to the level at which it passed the two-times test,” Dawson said. “Even when we took it to three times, we actually tried to break the panel but we couldn’t get it to failure.”

Crews from R2M2 Rebar & Stressing and Marion Construction are working below grade to construct the building’s underground parking structure, foundation and core.

“We are pouring structural concrete in the basement right now,” said Adam Peterson, senior project manager for R&H Construction. “Work on most of our foundations are complete. We are working on columns and walls, and right now we’re trending a little bit ahead of schedule. We will be in structural concrete through summer and starting wood framing in September and then the CLT will go up quite quickly.”

Cross-laminated timber offers multiple benefits, Dawson said.

“The first thing was the schedule advantages and ease of construction and lack of complications,” she said. “The second is the look; people just really love being in those spaces. It looks really beautiful and it feels so good to have that exposed wood. So, we see that as a differentiator on the market, and as a building owner it was really important to us.”

Completion is scheduled for fall 2020.

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PATH Architecture is expanding its use of cross-laminated timber to include a new senior living center at 3450 N. Williams Ave. When completed in 2019, The Canyons will be a 110,000-square-foot mixed-use structure next to developer’s Kaiser Group‘s Carbon 12.

“We have been working in mass-timber products for five years and we have learned a hell of a lot,” said Ben Kaiser, owner of PATH Architecture and Kaiser Group. “We keep moving the needle. We are pretty comfortable with CLT and how it works.”

One of the big advantages of using CLT in a senior living structure is that the panels help moderate moisture in the air.

In wintertime, the panels release moisture, which helps relieve dry air conditions that can hamper elderly residents’ breathing. Then in summertime, the panels absorb moisture.

The panels will include sensors able to detect exactly how much moisture they are absorbing or releasing.

“Studies have shown it’s a healthier environment,” Kaiser said. “The sensors will have a 13-year battery life. So for 13 years, we can read the moisture levels in the panels on an iPad. We will be able to see if there is a leak. That is fantastic to have in any building.”

The decision to use CLT as the primary construction material is one of the primary reasons for the $21 million price tag. Nevertheless, Kaiser sought to use an environmentally sustainable product.

“For me, at this point in my career, it’s about reversing the carbon footprint of construction,” he said. “I think the objective is to think beyond the immediate costs.”

Project developers have also added 10 units from the original plan formed two years ago.

“It has evolved,” said Jennifer Dillan, a spokeswoman with Kaiser Group. “One thing this project does is build on a series of unique partnerships.”

Those partnerships include one with New Seasons Market. Residents at The Canyons will be able to order from the market ready-made meals that can be delivered. A top goal of the project is to allow seniors to stay as independent as possible for as long as possible.

“This is not assisted-living level of care,” Kaiser said. “We designed an alley on the back of The Canyons. The elder folks will be able to go to an active retail corridor.”

This is Kaiser’s first foray into senior living structures. As such, he brought in Hoosiers Corporation as a partner. The Tokyo-based company has built numerous elder living structures in Japan. In return for sharing its expertise building elder housing, Hoosiers Corp. is getting firsthand experience using CLT, which is becoming more popular in Asia.

“They want to know about CLT and we want to learn about elder housing,” Kaiser said. “It’s a good match.”

The Canyons’ residential units will have a mid-price point, Kaiser said. A driving force in the effort to ensure costs wouldn’t be too high was the experiences he had with his own father.

“My siblings and I toured places,” Kaiser said. “The options for people who are not wealthy were not very good. They were all extremely expensive or so bad we would never put our parent there. We are trying to find a middle ground. We want to build something that is affordable but still a good place to live.”

R&H Construction has been chosen as the general contractor. Ground is expected to be broken in September and a grand opening is scheduled for December 2019.

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact 91��Ƶ architecture and engineering reporter Kent Hohlfeld at 503-802-7224 or khohlfeld@djcOregon.com.

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“You’re standing on the tallest wood building in the United States,” said Ben Kaiser on top of his Carbon12 at North Williams Avenue and Northeast Fremont Street.

For the moment, he’s right. It’s also the first residential use of timber framing at its height in the U.S.

At 95 feet and eight stories, Carbon12 is a shade taller than architect ; the Minneapolis structure held the distinction for only a few months.

T3 and Carbon12 both employ mass timber in their structural systems – T3 with nail- and glue-laminated timber and Carbon12 with a hybrid of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and a steel core. Both were asked to compete in the USDA’s , though neither won. A different Portland wood skyscraper, the Framework tower, ended up splitting the $3 million prize with a now-scrapped New York City project.

The design competition, backed by the Obama administration, evidently helped invigorate the race to erect so-called wood skyscrapers in the U.S., a contest Portland is well-positioned to dominate.

Building codes in the U.S. for more than a century have discouraged use of wood framing in structures taller than five stories because of life safety concerns. CLT, however, especially in concert with other forms of mass timber, have the potential to change this. They’ve already been in use elsewhere – notably Europe and Canada – since the 1990s.

PATH forward

Kaiser, head of development firm Kaiser Group and design-build firm PATH Architecture, to many people represents the human face of gentrification in rapidly changing Northeast Portland. Heavy on sustainable features, PATH projects are described as the epitome of green building methods, sleek design and low environmental impact.

Kaiser wants Carbon12 to be a continuation – visually and thematically – of his One North mixed-use office project kitty-corner across the street. (The other half of the Carbon12 lot is planned to contain a 65-unit aging-in-place concept called The Canyons.)

The CLT panels were delivered to the site in 22 flatbed trucks with brackets and other attachments already installed, meaning the panels only had to be fitted into place with the tower crane. The crane itself was only on-site for two and a half months.

Carbon12 will have two units per floor. Recesses in the east and west sides of the building will have ivy running up them, as high as it will grow. Kaiser, a registered architect, was inspired by the concept of a “nurse log” – a fallen tree that then nurtures other life.

“Once a tree falls, it’s only lived about half its life,” he said. “It gives those nutrients to the next generations. It’s a fantastic way to think about architecture, especially at this moment with the advent of CLT.”

Though the building flaunts its wood, it actually employs all of the big three building materials. Steel is used in the core and braces that connect floor plates to the vertical columns. And concrete is used on the basement, ground floor and garage. (The automated garage represents another first for the U.S. The German-designed underground system will deliver drivers their vehicles without them ever needing to venture below-ground.)

Kaiser said it’s wrong to think of building materials in competitive terms, as some unions and industry groups have done.

“I really think everyone should just relax and let the products perform where they perform best,” he said. “There’s plenty of market for everybody, and I think that we all need to work together to make each other better, rather than trying to out-prove one another,” he said.

Kaiser received an undisclosed amount from the Softwood Lumber Board to help test aspects of his project. He said he and his firm will only build with mass timber from now on. He thinks one day the skyline of Portland will be dominated by wood.

“This is our way forward, and we’ll keep applying what we’ve learned,” he said.

Knocks on wood

The Framework team plans to celebrate the award of building permits from the state and the city later this month. But it has already notched many milestones. The project has won design review approval, and concept testing – fire, acoustic, seismic – has been carried out at laboratories around the country.

The team now is looking ahead to a 14-month construction schedule, starting in late summer.

“The piece we’re looking at now is the financing,” said Anyeley Hallova, a principal with project^. “It’s a complex project of affordable housing in it, market-rate office. It will take a little while now to put that all together.”

But Framework’s East Coast counterpart hasn’t had the same good fortune.

The ownership group split several months ago when it became clear the New York Fire Department remains reluctant to adopt mass-timber performance, according to sources close to the project. And the New York Building Department is still following the 2012 International Building Code, not the 2015 one, which is said to be more favorable to CLT.

“They’ve been reluctant to engage with developers who are willing to do performance-based approval,” said Jeff Spiritos, principal of Spiritos Properties. He said his business has moved on to working on other timber-based projects in cities more inclined to support them.

The Northeast is historically fire-conservative. It’s also the cradle of the U.S. steel industry, which, along with concrete, masonry and union concerns are hitting back against CLT proponents angling for market share. The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association last year started the “Build with Strength” public relations campaign to promote steel and concrete and warn against wider use of mass timber products.

One recent email blast about a failed attempt to allow some wood-framing in Florida school construction was headed, “Florida Building Commission Stands Strong for Students.”

Ethan Martin is an engineer serving as technical director of WoodWorks, a campaign of the Wood Products Council to promote mass-timber products. He said the steel and concrete industries lobbied in the 1950s and 1960s to get those products more widely used.

“At this point, they literally have 100-percent market share of anything over five stories. So even if there are only 10 buildings a year built using CLT, that’s going to cut into their market share,” Martin said.

Andrew Waugh, a prominent British CLT proponent, estimates that in Europe, where CLT has been in use since the 1990s, the product represents about 0.5 percent of building materials used in buildings taller than five stories.

Getting the code changed to allow CLT is important, but Greg Kingsley, head of KL&A Structural Engineers and Builders in Denver says that more critical to CLT’s success right now are the local building officials.

Portland officials have made allowances for the use of alternative materials in high-rises. KL&A’s Platte 15 CLT concept was originally planned to be 15 stories, but Kingsley said it was bumped down to five to satisfy the Denver Building Department, which wasn’t willing to make an exception.

“Maybe in the Pacific Northwest, the forest industry is closer to your hearts; in Denver – maybe not so much,” he said. “Look, don’t blame the building officials. They’re just doing their job. They’re waiting for the proof … You should be proud your local building officials in Portland are innovative enough to want to be on the bleeding edge of this.”

CLT isn’t cheap, but can be made due to the speed of construction. Developer Farid Bolouri is hoping to achieve feasibility this way in St. Johns, where residents often are hostile toward intrusive developments. Alan Jones is designing a dense four-story apartment building on a small, centrally located lot. Cutting down on construction impacts is key to project success, Jones said.

“I’ve been watching (Carbon12) go up. I said, I think we can go faster,” he said.

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