The opening last year of the long-awaited Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People, followed four years of careful design, planning, tight deadlines and close cooperation with several state and local agencies. Kiewit Infrastructure West, a division of Omaha, Neb.-based Kiewit Infrastructure, one of the nation’s oldest construction companies, handled the construction of an elegant structure in an environmentally sensitive area to produce what is now a Portland landmark.

“We had six months from the notice of award of the contract to install the foundations for the two support towers,” Kiewit project manager Ralph Salamie said. “We had four months to complete that within the ‘fish window’ to allow for the annual salmon migration. We finished it, including the coffer dams, right on schedule. I think that was really the most difficult part of the project.”

Spanning the Willamette River from the South Waterfront District to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the 1,720-foot-long cable-stayed bridge accommodates light rail trains, buses, pedestrians and bicyclists with no provision for automobiles or trucks. The design created a strong but very flexible structure with excellent seismic integrity.

“We met or exceeded all the seismic criteria for the project,” Salamie said. “If a big quake hits and you’re on a bridge, you’ll want to be on ours.”

T.Y. Lin International served as the designer of record for the bridge. The construction process required casting 78 sections with each finished section subjected to close scrutiny. Casting on-site allowed for greater precision in constructing each segment and made the process more efficient.

In addition to T.Y. Lin setting high standards to ensure project excellence, Kiewit also contributes the success of Tilikum Crossing to TriMet‘s approach to the project, according to Salamie.

“They got the public involved,” he said. “By using a ‘project first’ approach, we were able to focus on prioritizing ways to keep the project moving forward. We worked hard to find innovations – post-tensioning, piers, foundations – and in the end TriMet got exactly what they wanted. It’s a really beautiful bridge.”

Salamie said Kiewit sees the Tilikum Crossing’s dedication to serving alternative modes of transportation as offering a model that other cities can emulate.

“We see light rail as a growing market,” he said. “As mass transit grows, you’ll see us there. We’ll go where the work is.”

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Tilikum Crossing, since opening Sept. 12, is approaching the 2 million mark for passenger traffic.

Users have crossed the car-free bridge an estimated 1,765,790 times (about 11,400 times per day), according to data gathered from various transportation agencies. The figure includes bus and MAX light-rail trips, Portland Streetcar trips and crossings by bicyclists. It does not count Tilikum Crossing trips by pedestrians; those aren’t tracked by any agency.

The Burnside Bridge, by comparison, hosts about 40,000 vehicle trips a day.

More than five months after opening, the futuristic multimodal Tilikum Crossing south of downtown is attracting daily use by Portlanders.

The MAX orange line carries the most people over Tilikum Crossing, with approximately 866,000 user trips since September. TriMet‘s buses have carried 629,000 users over the bridge.

Portland Streetcar does not count ridership over the bridge, but it does count passengers boarding and disembarking at stops near the bridge. On weekdays, about 90 passengers board near the bridge, and 100 disembark, said Julie Gustafson, spokeswoman for Portland Streetcar.

Before Tilikum Crossing was open, many passengers would disembark before the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Gustafson said. Now, that area is becoming a popular place to board the streetcar for trips downtown.

System-wide, Portland Streetcar is gaining riders as transportation options increase.

“We’re definitely growing,” Gustafson said. “It’s exciting.”

Bicyclists have been using the bridge too, although not as much as some other Rose City spans. Tilikum Crossing has clocked 259,000 bike trips since September. On an average weekday, 1,691 bicyclists cross the bridge – far fewer than the 5,397 who cross the Hawthorne Bridge.

Holger Link, a pediatrician at Oregon Health & Science University, rides his bike over Tilikum Crossing each weekday. He said the new bridge saves him only about 3 minutes each way, but it provides a much better experience.

“I love it,” he said. “I think it’s a beautiful bridge, and I enjoy not having to go across Hawthorne Bridge with the buses and cars.”

Link may not be the only bicyclist forsaking Hawthorne for Tilikum: the Hawthorne Bridge saw a 39 percent drop in January bicycle traffic compared to a year earlier.

Link said his only complaint about Tilikum Crossing is the bicycle stoplight could be better timed when the light is triggered by buses.

“Sometimes you have to wait a long time,” he said.

All users are getting used to the flow of the car-free bridge, said Rob Sadowsky, executive director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance.

“How we handle that interaction between streetcar, bus, bike – people are starting to figure that out,” he said.

The commute-time crush can be tough at the bridge’s west end, Sadowsky said.

“At times of day, the number of pedestrians coming out of the Collaborative Life Sciences Building can be daunting to navigate,” he said.

It remains to be seen how new South Waterfront development, including Zidell Yards, will affect traffic. And the Sellwood Bridge will reopen March 1, giving commuters another option to traverse the Willamette River.

Perhaps most importantly, Tilikum Crossing has encouraged some residents who previously avoided public transportation to try it.

Sadowsky pointed to his own in-laws as an example. They didn’t feel comfortable taking the bus from Sellwood to downtown.

Now, he said, “they take the orange line all the time to get downtown. They saw it as a doable and enjoyable experience.”

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Tilikum Crossing, the car-free span over the Willamette River built only for light rail trains, streetcar trains, buses, cyclists and pedestrians, truly deserves its moniker as the people’s bridge, said David Goodyear, chief bridge engineer for T.Y. Lin International Group, the project’s engineer of record.

Hundreds of hours of public input influenced the bridge’s design and engineering, Goodyear said. He also had high praise for TriMet‘s contribution.

“TriMet deserves a lot of credit for taking the initiative on this,” he said. “We’re quite proud of it and the whole system is a beautiful system. I wish we had something like this in Washington.”

The bridge, submitted by T.Y. Lin, on Wednesday night was named Project of the Year at the Engineering Excellence Awards, an annual competition sponsored by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Oregon. The project also received the People’s Choice Award. Sixteen other projects also were honored during the event.

Goodyear said that TriMet’s David Tertadian, recently promoted to director of civil construction, did “a masterful job” of making a difficult project look simple.

But Tertadian said credit belonged to the people of Portland for making significant contributions and influencing the design even to the point of limiting the bridge’s height so it would complement but not dominate the city’s other spans.

In addition to the many public meetings, the project benefited from the efforts of an advisory committee, Tertadian said. It was headed up by former Portland mayor Vera Katz and included building professionals, business owners, property owners, bicyclist and pedestrian coalitions and neighborhood groups.

As a result, pedestrian pathways were widened from 12 feet to 14, viewing areas were included and a computerized art lighting system was installed so that the bridge changes colors at night depending on the river’s “mood.”

“It was not only the committee, but the community considering what kind of bridge we want to sit in the middle of downtown,” Tertadian said, “and they wanted a bridge that wasn’t overbearing.”

But the biggest challenge, he said, was devising a design that could be engineered with shorter towers for the city’s first cable-stayed bridge. Such a bridge would normally have towers around 270 or 280 feet, he explained, but the Tilikum Crossing’s towers are only 180 feet.

“The only way to do that was using saddles, but the angle of the cables is not so steep, which makes engineering more difficult,” he said. “We were able to deliver a bridge that looked the way they wanted by using some fancy engineering, and we had the engineering know-how to do that.”

That engineering know-how was a collaborative effort, Goodyear said, and T.Y. Lin worked with design-build contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West on the bridge design.

According to the T.Y. Lin’s application, Tilikum Crossing is the first bridge in the country to use the Freyssinet multi-tube saddle design, wherein each cable runs continuously from the deck, through the top of the tower and down the other side, with each strand in its own conduit.

Freyssinet, a French firm, developed the multi-tube system about 10 years ago; however, worldwide standards were developed only a few years ago, Goodyear said. But the method is an improvement over older types of cable-stayed bridges.

“This saddle is much improved in that each strand has its own conduit, so we don’t have an issue with earlier (designs) where the strands bundled together around the radius and are pushed and squeezed in,” he said. “So we solved that by putting each strand in an isolated conduit. (It’s) one of the earliest applications for Freyssinet in this country.”

Donald MacDonald of Donald MacDonald Architects, the architect of record for the project, said that for most cable-stayed bridges, cables are tied off at the towers. Running the cables through the towers is “what’s unique about this cable-stayed bridge.”

He also said the bridge is designed to accommodate for high winds. They are deflected by a three-foot fin attached along the edge of the deck.

“We weren’t sure it would work, but it tested to 150 miles per hour,” he said.

MacDonald, whose firm has a long history of bridge work, including extensive work on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, also praised the project’s public process. He said the Portland community was “incredible” to work with.

“Portland has a way of working with itself, and the people in it compromise,” he said. “They really listen to each other and work it out.”

The bridge, part of the $1.49 billion Portland-Milwaukie orange line route, was “probably the best (experience) of my career in terms of the process and the people,” Tertadian said. He began working on it in 2009. The project was completed on time and under budget because of the high caliber of professionals involved in its design and construction, he said.

“We really were in a great position to not miss things technically, and they didn’t,” he said.

Tertadian also praised the community and the advisory committee for their contributions.

“We gave them every bridge type on Earth to consider, and they narrowed down their choices looking at cost (and) feasibility, and were able to do that without taking too much time to get a consensus on the bridge type and look,” he said.

Tilikum Crossing

Location: across the Willamette River

Cost: $135 million

Owner/developer: TriMet

General contractor: Kiewit Infrastructure West Co.

Engineer of record: T.Y. Lin International Group

Architect of record: Donald MacDonald Architects

Consultants: HNTB Corp., Rebar International Inc., Cooper Zietz Engineers Inc., Liberty Steel Erectors, O’Neill Electric Inc., R&R General Contractors, Ross Island Sand & Gravel, Atlantic Track, Malcolm Drilling Co., Stacy and Witbeck Inc., STV Group Inc.

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Many factors influence design, but a new exhibit at the Center for Architecture is focused on the one considering health and fitness.

The exhibit, Building Fit 2015, uses photographs and text in large standing displays showcasing designs that encourage healthy activities like walking and bicycling. Health considerations can include whether a building is close to parks and healthy food sources, how it encourages exercise and how close it is to public transportation.

Brian Cavanaugh, president-elect of the Center for Architecture, said it’s now focusing on fewer exhibits, but more significant ones around specific themes.

Building Fit 2015 is the first in a series over the next two years that will focus on the effect of design on communities. Its purpose is to show designers, planners and architects how they can encourage physical activity and give greater attention to health through thoughtful design.

The exhibit, which opened Oct. 1 and will continue through December, mostly features works by New York designers; however, several local projects are included.

“We expanded upon (an AIA New York exhibit) to include local projects,” Cavanaugh said. “It gets at how design and health are related, and how the design of the built environment actually affects people’s health in a lot of different ways.”

Local projects featured in the exhibit include the Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro, the Tilikum Crossing, the Academic and Student Recreation Center at Portland State University, Harper’s Playground in North Portland, Legacy Emanuel Medical Center Healing Gardens and Oregon Health & Science University‘s Collaborative Life Sciences Building.

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The new Tilikum Crossing over the Willamette River is a dramatic visual addition to Portland, but it’s the work of landscape architects that will dominate the sights along the new light-rail Orange Line when it opens in the fall.

Landscape architects took the lead in the design along the line, said Bob Hastings, agency architect for TriMet, and provided vital direction for the massive undertaking.

The landscape architects got a chance to see their finished work last week when Hastings and about 40 others, including landscape architects who had contributed to the massive project and members of the American Society of Landscape Architects, took a private tour of the Orange Line. The group started on the west side of Tilikum Crossing near Oregon Health and Science University’s Collaborative Life Sciences Building, crossed the new bridge and traveled all the way to the Southeast Park Avenue light-rail station in the Oak Grove neighborhood in Clackamas County.

Hastings said it was the first time the landscape architects had seen the entirety of their work.

“It’s like a kid with a new bike, like a fifth-grade field trip,” he said. “When we pulled into the station, everyone applauded.”

ZGF Architects LLP was urban designer for the west segment of the Orange Line from Tilikum Crossing to Portland State University, but landscape architect Carol Mayer-Reed of Mayer/Reed Landscape Architecture was urban designer for the longer east segment, said TriMet landscape architect Sean Batty.

“It’s an integral piece of the fabric of the city. A city is not static but is creative and evolves over time, and landscape architects account for that mindset.” said Batty, who was one of the first landscape architects hired by TriMet to work on the Orange Line back in 2000.

Batty said the field of landscape architecture has become increasingly appreciated in recent years thanks to professionals like Mayer-Reed and projects like the Orange Line.

“There’s a sense in the public that landscape architecture is about planting,” Batty said. “But when you think about the profession historically, really a more accurate representation of what the profession does typically, it’s really creating a form for the city.”

James McGrath, a landscape architect with CH2M, has been working on the Orange Line for more than five years. He said landscape architects are beginning to get recognition for their contributions to other disciplines.

“The profession is coming into its own in this decade,” he said. “We are the only profession uniquely positioned to lead all of these disciplines, the one place where people are trained to understand all of it, not just tracks and elevations. How it all comes together for people is indicative of having landscape architects in leading positions.”

Landscape architects were truly in a leadership position for the entire Orange Line project, Hastings said, because the 7.3-mile route and the 10 stations along it were about more than just the construction.

“We felt that so much of the landscaping wasn’t just about plants and shrubs, but about how design happens in a street environment,” Hastings said. “How do we stitch all the component parts and pieces into a unified whole, and how do we celebrate the distinctive character of each station and neighborhood?”

To accomplish the latter, more than a dozen public meetings were held in the different neighborhoods, according to Hastings.

“We did wonderful things because neighborhood communities and activists created a vision and held our feet to the fire,” he said.

He also gives a lot of credit to Mayer-Reed, who headed up many meetings in many different neighborhoods to find out what people wanted for their particular stations.

“She is a very accomplished landscape architect and people are very comfortable with her,” Hastings said. “It was a whole wall of listening and paying attention and presenting ideas that would not be patronizing, but instead elevating.”

For example, Hastings said, residents of Milwaukie were hesitant at first about light rail coming to their town, which has the nickname “Dogwood City of the West.” However, Mayer-Reed drew them in and eventually came up with a way to add dogwood symbols to custom railings at the station in the neighborhood.

Mayer-Reed felt that level of attention to detail was necessary for the light rail station in Milwaukie, the next to the last on the line, because people there care about the integrity of their city.

“Milwaukie has a wonderful small town feel with a great business district and a main street that is active and interesting,” she said. “So when you’re working on something as new and muscular as a light-rail station, it’s a delicate operation.”

At the Southeast Park Avenue stop in Clackamas, the last stop on the line, the opposite was true.

“Park Avenue (transit station) is in an unincorporated part of the county and there wasn’t something to match to,” Mayer-Reed said. As a result, a strong emphasis was placed on art to make the station more appealing.

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Bob Naito is preparing to bring a completely new look to the Grove Hotel at the corner of Northwest Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street – and the neighborhood itself – in a couple of years.

At present, the former hotel, built in 1907, is derelict. Homeless people sleep in the doorways – overflow from the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp across the street.

Naito said he is hopeful the city will find a new location for R2DToo in time for his company, Naito Development, to start construction around October on the property at 401-499 W. Burnside Street.

The city last year pledged money to help the homeless camp relocate. In April, City Commissioner Amanda Fritz announced that the city is working on a plan to buy from the Oregon Department of Transportation a half-acre plot to house the homeless camp. The land, about 9,000 square feet, is in the Central Eastside Industrial District near the new Tilikum Crossing.

Naito said he hasn’t closely followed developments between the city and R2DToo, but he’s keeping a positive attitude.

“We’re not going to open for 18 months, so I have to assume that relocation will be completed by then,” he said.

If the camp moves, the lot could be used as a staging area for construction, Naito said. He said his company asked the city for the right of first refusal for future purchase of the privately-owned R2DToo lot, but was refused by the Portland Development Commission. But Naito said he’ll be first in line if and when bidding on the lot begins.

“I would love to be able to stage there,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s closing both sidewalks and on-street parking (during construction), which is kind of a challenge.”

Negotiations to secure the land for the homeless camp are continuing, said Josh Alpert, Mayor Charlie Hales‘ director of strategic initiatives. He said a few more weeks of work remain on the second phase of an environmental review of the proposed site. In the meantime, the city is talking with potential neighbors of the site as well as meeting with R2DToo representatives. If all goes well, he said, a purchase agreement for the property could come before the City Council in about a month.

Alpert said he couldn’t speak for R2DToo, but noted that its representatives have been in constant communication with the city.

“They’ve seen the site many times, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll be agreeable,” he said.

Shawn Uhlman, spokesman for the PDC, which is headquartered in Old Town Chinatown, said the rejuvenated hotel will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood that is experiencing a revival.

“That location, by old Chinatown gate, is truly the gateway to our neighborhood,” he said. “Everything this project represents and how they’ve gone about it is really exciting.”

The Grove Hotel has languished since the PDC bought it in 2010 for $3.7 million. Previously, developers backed out of a bid to revitalize the building because they lost financing and failed to lure commercial tenants to the gritty neighborhood.

Following a competition held by the PDC in May 2014, Naito Development and two project partners – New York-based Eagle Point Hotel Partners and San Francisco-based Filament Hospitality – were chosen to redevelop the property. The group agreed to purchase the building for $630,000.

Naito and his company are planning to invest about $30 million in the project, which calls for refurbishing the existing building and adding a nine-story boutique hotel. No public money will be used to revitalize the property, he noted.

Plans now call for the new hotel being incorporated with the existing building. Retail shops, restaurants and bars will occupy the ground floor.

Naito said the Grove will be competitive with other high-end boutique hotels in the city.

“It will be pretty sophisticated for Portland,” he said. “It will feel like an international hotel, and we’re shooting for a 3.5-star rating.”

Staying at the Grove won’t be like staying at big-box hotels, he said.

“We’re geared toward people who prefer not to stay in those hotels but want a Portland experience,” he said. “The big chains are cranking out their own versions of boutique hotels, but I don’t know how authentic they can make them.”

Preserving authenticity is very important to Naito, and he’s currently waiting for final design approval from the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission.

“We got our design advice request and are now working on the application based on the landmarks commission comments,” he said. “There’s a myriad of details we need to get into the actual application, and we’re trying to get it in at the end of July or August.”

Naito said he’s not worried about attracting retail to the location and said Ingrid Summerfield of Filament Hospitality has years of experience in boutique hotels. She has opened other refurbished hotels that have turned neighborhoods around, and Naito believes the Grove will transform the entrance to Chinatown – the neighborhood where he grew up.

“The hotel will have a 24-hour café on the corner of Fourth and Burnside, with a specialty restaurant open in the evening adjacent to the café, all on the first floor,” he said. “On the ninth level, we’ll have an outdoor deck and bar and I hope in the summertime we can open up the doors and have spectacular views.”

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TriMet held the first ride on the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project between downtown Portland and northern Clackamas County Friday. Approximately 500 people rode two of the agency’s new Type 5 light rail vehicles on the 7.3-mile future MAX Orange Line from the Lincoln St/SW 3^rd Avenue Station near Portland State University to the SE Park Avenue Station in Oak Grove. After a short ceremony and remarks by public officials, the trains returned to downtown Portland.

Work on the approximately $1.49 billion project is nearing completion and is millions of dollars under budget. Systems testing is slated for completion this month, with operations training and simulated service to take from June through September before service begins Sept. 12.

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The University of Oregon‘s John Yeon Center this spring will host a lecture series on landscape architecture and urban design.

The four lectures in the series, “A New City Beautiful: Landscape + Infrastructure = Public Space,” will take place in April and May at different sites in Portland.

Randy Gragg, Yeon Center executive director, will help lead the conversations with prominent designers. Speakers include Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets; David Rubin, principal of Philadelphia-based landscape architecture firm LAND COLLECTIVE; Tilikum Crossing architect Donald MacDonald; and Michael Singer, a landscape architect and artist.

Smets will give a free lecture, “Landscape is Fiction,” on April 16 starting at 6 p.m. at Jimmy Mak’s, 221 N.W. 10th Ave. The leader of Brussels-based firm Bureau Bas Smets will discuss his design philosophy and inspirations.

Rubin’s lecture, “The City is a Landscape,” is set for April 18 at 3 p.m. at Portland State University’s Shattuck Hall. His talk will be the first Douglas Macy Lecture on Landscape Architecture, presented together with the Yeon Center by the American Society of Landscape Architects‘ Oregon chapter. The admission cost is $10 or $5 for students at the door.

The third lecture, “The Spirit of Details,” will take place May 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, 2730 S.W. Moody Ave. The free talk will feature three members of the team that designed the Tilikum Crossing. MacDonald will be joined by engineers Semyon Treyger and David Goodyear to discuss the bridge’s cable-stayed design.

The series will conclude on May 18 with Singer’s free lecture, “Reimagining Beauty: Creating Living Public Space,” at 6:30 p.m. in the Miller Ballroom at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

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TriMet’s new MAX orange line is nearing completion millions of dollars under budget — and a portion of those savings will be used to enhance the project.

The federally funded Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project was originally estimated to cost $1.49 billion. However, TriMet officials now anticipate the project will be between $10 million and $40 million under budget when completed in September.

Technically, any money saved on the project goes back to agencies that stepped forward with money for the project.

The Federal Transit Administration was in line to receive 50 percent – or between $5 million and $20 million – of the money not used. However, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., pushed to the feds to allow TriMet to keep $3.6 million of that amount.

TriMet plans to use the excess federal money it gets to keep to restore several elements of the project that had been cut out of the final plans. This includes additional heated rail switches and an ice cap on the overhead power wires to help the MAX trains run more smoothly during winter weather, and constructing three shelters at new orange line stops.

Merkley praised the project on Monday after walking across the nearly complete Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People with TriMet leaders and representatives of labor unions whose members contributed to building the transit bridge and 7.3-mile light-rail line. When it officially opens on Sept. 12, the bridge will carry the orange line, the Portland Streetcar, buses, pedestrians and bicyclists across the Willamette River between Portland’s South Waterfront and Central Eastside.

“It’s just a beautiful project,” Merkley said. “A project like this adds a tremendous amount to the livability of the area.”

He said he pushed for TriMet to keep a portion of the federal funds the transit agency would otherwise have to return as a reward for delivering the project significantly under budget.

“It’s a good policy in a number of ways,” Merkley said. “It starts as an incentive for folks to come in under budget. It made sense both as an incentive and making the system work better when it’s in operation.”

The federal government joins other project funders that will benefit from the project coming in under budget. The state of Oregon, Oregon Department of Transportation, Metro, Portland Development Commission, Multnomah and Clackamas counties and the cities of Portland, Milwaukie and Oregon City are anticipated to save between $5 and $20 million on the project, according to TriMet.

The exact savings won’t be determined until the federal appropriations process is complete in 2019, said Dan Blocher, TriMet executive director of capital projects. Until then, the project will continue to incur costs and receive federal grant payments. This is why TriMet officials have estimated the savings in a range.

“We feel pretty sure it’s going to come in under budget,” Blocher said. “Until we get all of our money from the federal government, we don’t know what the financial impact will be.”

He and TriMet’s general manager, Neil McFarlane, attributed the savings to a dedicated and organized project team. Historically low interest rates have also helped.

“We have terrific designers and contractors and it’s a very experienced team, and that manifests in well-run projects,” Blocher said.

Merkley said the project helps emphasize the importance of infrastructure investments. As a car-free bridge, Tilikum Crossing could also be a trendsetter, he said.

“It’s really a statement to alternative forms of transportation,” Merkley said. “It’s going to get a whole lot of people out of their cars.”

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A MAX train crossed the TriMet‘s new Tilikum Crossing bridge using its own power for the first time Wednesday.  The train began at the new Southwest 4^th Avenue/ Lincoln Street station and progressed at a walking speed through downtown and the South Waterfront before crossing the bridge and stopping at the future OMSI/Southeast Water Avenue station.

The train was run to test the overhead catenary electrical systems, as well as signaling and the train’s interface with the track. Tests were conducted on both sets of tracks spanning the bridge, and officials expected that a Portland Streetcar train would be tested today, as well.

The $134 million Tilikum Crossing is part of the $1.49 billion Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project, which spans 7.3 miles from Oak Grove to downtown Portland. The line is scheduled to open September 12.

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