The Central Eastside Industrial Council has commissioned a parking study as an increase of jobs in the urban district has not come with additions of spaces for motor vehicles.

The study is “to determine exactly how much parking we have and how much parking we need, and whether we’re using the parking that we have efficiently,” said Brad Malsin, the council’s president and a Beam Development principal.

Portland’s zoning, in particular the Central City 2035 plan, limits residential and office uses in the Central Eastside in an attempt to protect the district as an industrial sanctuary. As multifamily and office development creates pressure on industrial space across the city, the Central Eastside is meant to remain a place where industrial businesses can continue to flourish.

That has become a challenge.

“I think it needs to be done,” Jim Kennison, director of bakery operations at Franz Bakery, said of the parking study. “It is the industrial district, and the industry is getting kind of crowded and pushed out.”

Pressures have grown. In June 2018, Autodesk moved from Lake Oswego to the Towne Storage building, a renovated 100,000-square-foot warehouse south of the Burnside Bridge that was originally built in 1916 and has no parking. Media reports at the time said Autodesk had 200 employees at the location, with room to scale up to 500.

The construction software firm declined a recent interview request, and did not respond to an email asking how many employees work at the Towne Storage building.

Whereas the parking situation is a problem for many employers, it’s an opportunity for some developers. Harsch Investment Properties‘ 7 SE Stark building, nearly completed, has six floors of parking with 265 stalls.

“It’s a critical need,” said Jordan Schnitzer, president of Harsch Investment Properties. “Many tenants realize that while lots of people walk and bike and use Uber, there’s a lot of people that still drive their cars and a lot of people that want to visit businesses.”

Some of 7 SE Stark’s parking will be available to other users, Schnitzer said.

“We’re first going to take care of our tenants, and then any excess parking, we’ll take care of Olympic Mills and the public,” he said.

The Olympic Mills Commerce Center, a commercial building near 7 SE Stark, has tenants including Olympia Provisions and Fish Marketing.

Gerding Edlen’s 5 MLK, another building under construction in the area and expected to be delivered early next year, has three floors of underground parking. A spokesperson for the developer did not respond to a message seeking comment. An executive with Apex Real Estate Partners, the leasing agent for the project, also did not respond to requests for comment.

District Office, a six-story building from Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners at 525 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., will have one floor of underground parking.

The growth affects many longtime industrial businesses, which rely on parking and easy access for trucks to transport their products. Franz Bakery has operated in the neighborhood since 1906, and is in a relatively good position with three parking lots for its approximately 500 employees in the district. Few employees use public transit, Kennison said, because of schedule challenges.

“Our problem here is we work pretty much 24/7,” he said. “Bus service and light rail is not great on holidays or weekends.”

TriMet spokeswoman Tia York stated via email that the Central Eastside “enjoys some of the best supply of transit in the region.” Next spring, bus line 20 will be upgraded to frequent service – every 15 minutes – joining six frequent service lines currently operating in the area. TriMet is also working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation to accelerate bus service to make riding transit more attractive, York stated.

The Central Eastside Industrial Council also operates the Water Avenue Shuttle, which runs two shuttle buses during peak commuting hours from the Dairy Building on Southeast Eighth Avenue to the Oregon Convention Center.

Kennison said some small businesses have moved out of the district. That’s hardly an option for a company the size of Franz, he said.

“We’re a big company,” he said. “It’s going to be really hard for someone like us to move – I’m not saying that’s happening.

“Smaller businesses that can be more mobile, they don’t want to hassle with the parking,” he added.

The Lloyd area, just north of the Central Eastside, has its own parking challenges. Go Lloyd, a business group, conducts an annual parking survey of more than 13,000 on-street and off-street parking spaces. In 2018, the survey found usage rates were 10 percent higher than during the previous year.

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Portland’s Towne Storage building has earned a record price on a per-square-foot basis.

The building traded for $62.75 million, according to Multnomah County records. The sale was recorded April 23.

The sale equated to $630 per square foot for the approximately 100,000-square-foot building, beating the previous record for Portland office space of $565 per square foot for Pearl West, according to Jones Lang LaSalle research.

CBRE Global Investors purchased the building from an entity of Westport Capital Partners. NKF Capital Markets represented Westport, while CBRE represented itself.

The high price reflects the strength of the tenant, said Patricia Raicht, senior vice president for research at JLL. The building is fully leased by Autodesk, a software maker for architecture and engineering, construction and entertainment applications. The company moved into the building, near the Burnside Bridge’s east end, from Lake Oswego.

“They have a credit tenant with an 11-year lease in there,” Raicht said.

Investors have been willing to pay a premium for buildings with long-term tenants. The Wieden + Kennedy building sold for $103.25 million, or $556 per square foot, last year to an institutional buyer.

The sale also shows bustling office demand in the Central Eastside industrial District. Developers are rushing in with projects such as Platform by Project^. That proposal calls for new construction of 140,000 square feet of office space.

The Towne Storage building originally opened in 1916 and was once home to a wholesale paper distributor. LRS Architects designed an adaptive reuse project to update the unreinforced masonry building, and Bremik Construction served as the general contractor. Sentinel Development was the developer.

Fortis Construction performed the tenant improvements for Autodesk, with design by Mackenzie.

Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected from an earlier version that misstated the price per square foot.

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A celebration was held Aug. 24 to mark the completion of core and shell renovations to the Towne Storage building in the Central Eastside. Bremik Construction served as the general contractor on the project, which was designed by LRS Architects for developer Sentinel Development and owner Westport Capital Partners.

The 16-month project was built in phases. The first phase included interior demolition of the building, a 102-year-old warehouse that had been divided into multiple art studio spaces, and seismic upgrades, which included installation of concrete shear walls, two new steel brace frames, and supporting the building on a series of new micropiles reaching as far as 130 feet deep.

The second phase of construction saw envelope improvements, including window rehabilitation and replacements, a new roof, masonry and concrete restoration, and new entries. It also included the addition of the building’s sixth floor and a 4,000-square-foot roof deck, restoration of a the building’s water tower, new MEP/fire safety systems, and a new elevator core.

The entire building has been leased by software maker Autodesk, which will relocate from Lake Oswego. Fortis Construction will be the contractor on the tenant improvement, which was designed by Mackenzie.

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