Transition Projects doesn’t develop a lot of buildings, so it like to make them count. That’s why the Portland nonprofit sought the most cost-effective and fastest construction method for its unique Low-Income Single Adult Housing (LISAH) project, in the Kenton neighborhood.

“When you look at the cost of projects you look at levers you can’t affect, like the price of land,” said Tony Bernal, Transition Projects’ senior director of public policy and funding. “There’s a lot that’s outside of your control, so it’s about those things that are in your control and how you can gain cost efficiencies there.”

A preconstruction grant from Meyer Memorial Trust, Bernal said, led Transition Projects to choose modular construction for the project at 8550 N. Argyle Way. Thus far, Bernal said, the project’s cost has been competitive with stick framing.

“It’s fairly amazing as far as the process goes,” he said. “The speed of construction is certainly one of the benefits that you see from modular.”

LISAH will be four separate structures with a total of 72 units for individuals transitioning out of homelessness. All of the units will be available to people with incomes no greater than 60 percent of the median family income; at least 18 units have Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers for veterans with as little as no income and as much as 30 percent of MFI.

Holst Architecture designed the project, while Walsh Construction is serving as general contractor. The modular units were manufactured in North Portland by Mods PDX.

Three of the four buildings will be two stories, with shared rooms. Each of these buildings will have four separate modular units. Sleeping areas and bathrooms will be communal.

The fourth building will be three stories and have 35 studio apartments – 220 square feet each – and a manager’s unit.

Also, all four buildings will have dedicated community space.

On the construction side, the compressed schedule of modular building changes project management significantly.

“A lot of it was early coordination between us and (Mods PDX CEO Nathan Young) on how we were going to get a lot of our mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire sprinkler routing taken care of in his shop,” Walsh Construction assistant superintendent Nick Cardoza said. “Typically you’re able to figure out some of those routing questions out as it’s being built, but this all had to be figured out a lot earlier.”

Communication is essential, Young said.

“It’s much more of a team-driven experience,” he said. “You really want to bring everybody together in the very beginning to talk about what we call ship loose, or items that are left to be done on the site; so we’re working very closely with Walsh to make sure there is good continuity from both subcontracting and material bases.”

The payoff is evident in the timeline. Ground was broken on LISAH in July, and completion is expected by early March 2020.

“I think for us, trying to lop a month or two off the schedule means that we can house people much faster,” said Jenn Sharp, senior project manager for development consultant Housing Development Center.

During initial site work, including installation of a huge dry well, the modular units were being constructed at the Mods PDX factory. Foundations for the four structures were poured just days before the first modular boxes were set. The three single-room occupancy buildings are now set, while the larger studio apartment building will be complete in October.

The modular units are fairly simple, with wood-framed construction and standard MEP configurations. They are over-engineered, Young said, to withstand transport by truck and then being rigged and set with a crane.

“You’ve got site-specific constraints that determine the modular,” he said. “So it’s about where the crane can go, size of the boxes, transportation issues.”

On-site, carpenters from Walsh Construction subsidiary RDF Builders and Local 1503 constructed the foundation formwork. Meanwhile, a team of riggers from Bent Level Construction as well as Young himself and Mods PDX Director of Operations Pete Victoor set the first three modular units on Aug. 26 and 27.

“Bent Level is taking approximately one hour per box, maybe moving a little faster,” Cardoza said. “This allows the building to be built as we’re doing all the site work; there’s a ton of underground piping in this project, so just the site graded out and getting this (retaining) wall in, all the infrastructure had to go in, and Nathan was able to build these buildings as we were doing that.”

Yet Young thinks there is a lot of room for improvement.

“There is a need to figure out how to standardize the building process a lot more,” he said. “Eighty percent of every building can be the same every single time instead of these uniquely designed buildings, which would allow us to standardize our process and increase our production flow and spit these out a lot faster so we can start to affect some of the housing crisis.”

Modular construction on the scale of a modest project like LISAH isn’t necessarily cheaper than traditional stick framing, Bernal said, but it’s not more expensive either. And when the time savings is considered, it can be a sound choice.

“We knew what we were getting into and that we were going to explore modular,” Bernal said. “I think it was worth it, but it took a while.”

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The Portland Design Commission delayed making a decision Thursday on an appeal of a controversial homeless shelter proposed for the Pearl District.

The commission will reconvene on June 27 after considering recent testimony and evidence, commissioners said. The record will remain closed until then, meaning no additional new evidence will be accepted.

The proposal comes from Oregon Harbor of Hope, a nonprofit founded by developer Homer Williams and others to provide homeless services in Portland. The group has already erected a tent on a vacant lot just north of the Broadway Bridge on Northwest Naito Parkway. The structure would host a shelter and services for homeless individuals who would stay for three to four months. Transition Projects would manage the shelter.

Commissioners struggled with the temporary nature of Oregon Harbor of Hope’s Navigation Center, and whether to apply design standards meant for permanent buildings.

Pearl District resident Kurt Sorensen filed an appeal objecting to city staff approval of the structure. He wrote in the appeal that the shelter did not qualify as a “mass shelter” under Portland code and didn’t satisfy other design guidelines such as unifying design elements, and reinforcing the identity of the Pearl District neighborhood and the waterfront area.

“It isn’t the use; it’s the building,” Sorensen said. “If somebody wanted to put a restaurant in that structure, you wouldn’t approve it. You should apply the same ���ٲ��Ի岹����.”

The Design Commission’s decision could ultimately come down to whether commissioners apply design guidelines to the tent, or make an exception because of its temporary nature.

Harbor of Hope’s lease with Prosper Portland, the public agency which owns the property, is scheduled to terminate Dec. 31, 2023, and the shelter is not expected to be in use past that date, said Tom Kemper, a real estate professional who is acting as project manager and developer’s representative.

That poses a quandary for design guidelines requiring “quality and permanence” that borders on the metaphysical: What does it mean to be permanent?

Chairwoman Julie Livingston tried a novel approach, suggesting the tent could meet quality and permanence standards if the materials are intended to last until the 2023 termination of the deal.

“For a five-year structure, this is a relatively well-designed structure,” she said.

Livingston added that the guidelines do not state what permanence means.

“There is nothing in the guidelines that places a timeline on permanence,” she said.

Commissioner Andrew Clarke pushed back at that line of reasoning, saying he was unwilling to bend guidelines to “fit a narrative.”

“Permanence to me is permanent,” Clarke said. “It’s there for a long time.”

The Design Commission may be the wrong group to decide the Navigation Center’s future, Commissioner Sam Rodriguez said.

“Frankly, I think it should be before City Council,” he said.

The tent did not meet design guidelines and would not be approved without a condition of approval mandating it be temporary, Rodriguez said.

An appeal of the Design Commission’s eventual decision would go to the state Land Use Board of Appeals, meaning the question could be settled in Salem.

Tiffany Sweitzer of Hoyt Street Properties testified against the tent, saying the proposal should be held to the same standards as other developments. Developer Jim Winkler also testified, saying the proposed tent is “simply not good enough.”

Iain MacKenzie, an architect and blogger, was among the supporters to testify. He pointed to precedents for temporary structures in Portland, including at Portland State University and The International School.

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It’s simple enough for a contractor to complete a project, turn the keys over to the owner and move on. But Portland-based Walsh Construction takes pride not just in its professional work, but also how it impacts the community.

For instance, Walsh Construction in 2011 finished building the seven-story Bud Clark Commons transitional housing facility in Old Town. Company employees have since spent substantial time serving numerous people who have stayed at the facility operated by Transition Projects.

“It’s a mentality that you either live by or you don’t,” said Martin Houston, Walsh’s quality director. “Supporting our clients is a lifestyle as well, and you look for the opportunities to contribute to the mission because that’s ultimately what it’s all about.”

Walsh employees just served their 42nd dinner to people staying at Doreen’s Place – a short-term 90-bed emergency shelter for men at Bud Clark Commons.

The dinners started shortly after the building opened and now take place on the first Wednesday of every other month.

“It started with our partnership with Home Forward,” said Walsh Project Administrator Linda Woolery, who runs the company’s volunteer efforts at Doreen’s Place. “When we were under construction, Julie Livingston with Home Forward had been doing shelter dinners at the old shelter on Hoyt Street, so we got involved as a team. We started to pick up some of the costs of the meals and it started there. After we turned over the keys, I went to (Walsh Construction President) Matt Leeding and said, ‘We need to continue this; it’s a good cause.’”

Woolery receives from Walsh Construction a budgeted amount, which she uses to purchase food for the meals. The focus is on providing as much fresh and seasonal produce as possible. She also coordinates a team of company volunteers – typically six to seven cooks and seven to nine servers for each meal. Spots are often filled within minutes of Woolery’s email being sent out, she said, and any money left over is donated to Transition Projects.

“Usually by 10 that morning it’s full, if it hasn’t already been full,” Woolery said.

The latest dinner served by Walsh volunteers took place Dec. 5. And, as is the norm, once dinner was served, volunteers fanned out in the surrounding neighborhood to seek out people needing shelter but unable to secure it. And when volunteers offer these individuals boxed meals, they are often gone within minutes.

“We try to feed 30 to 50 people on the street who are not in the shelter,” Woolery said. “And they are in the immediate vicinity; you don’t have to go find them.”

These efforts have left a lasting impression on both the people receiving the aid and those providing it.

“The first one I did two years ago, at the end of it I was doing a debrief and all I could do was walk over to Linda and give her a great big hug for including the opportunity to be included and to give back to the community we’re making a living in,” said Mike Sloop, Walsh Construction’s director of health care and a senior project manager. “That night was cold and windy, a November or December, so we brought some food to not just the people inside the shelter – we went around the block and the most vivid image in my mind was coming to a tent and saying, ‘Would you like a meal?’ And they wouldn’t respond until someone next door said, ‘It’s OK. They’re bringing you food.’”

The conditions outside were “palpable,” Sloop said.

“I’ve done it twice since,” he said. “And when Linda sends out the email you better be on your toes because it fills up.”

Roma Peyser, director of development for Transition Projects, said her organization could not serve as many people as it does without the help of the hundreds of volunteers who spend time at Bud Clark Commons and other facilities.

“It’s been over eight years that they’ve been doing this, and it is incredibly thoughtful and generous on the part of the company,” she said. “They also have my angel, Linda Woolery. She’s the one that heads up the meals and she’s just built it into this wonderful opportunity for her colleagues to come and participate, and I’m just blown away by all she does to make it happen. We are just so thankful to Walsh, but also really to Linda and her leadership around meal-providing and rallying her colleagues to do the same.”

Woolery most appreciates the chance to simply talk to the people she’s serving.

“I think the thing that gets me the most is the people in the shelter don’t get the one-on-one as much; they’re out on the streets and people don’t talk to them,” she said. “But there they want to talk. And they’ll come and ask, ‘What are you fixing? Can I help?’ You just start a conversation with them and that’s the most meaningful part of this whole thing. That’s why you’re there, is to help.”

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A relatively small residential project in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood could provide a glimpse at the future of wood-framed construction.

In addition, the project aims to revive a long-disregarded housing type – single-room occupancy – now found only in a few aging hotel buildings scattered around Portland.

The first phase of the proposed would provide 35 studio apartments, a one-bedroom manager’s apartment and six additional single-room dwellings. They would fill four buildings on property at 2310 N. Hunt St. According to a request for design review filed with the Bureau of Development Services on Oct. 15, three of those buildings would each hold two single-room units. The apartment building would also have a community room.

The project, developed by Portland nonprofit Transition Projects, is part of the same initiative that produced the Kenton Women’s Village and is aimed at much the same demographic. All units are intended for persons earning no more than 60 percent of the median family income for the metro region.

Holst Architecture has designed the project; a voluntary design advice hearing before the Portland Design Commission took place in July. In total, LISAH will provide 72 residential units, it was split into two phases because of funding concerns centered on low-income housing tax credits. The first phase is now before BDS staff and calls for 42 total units.

“The project finally got its approval for the competitive tax credits from the state,” Holst Architecture marketing director Abigail Carlen said. “That will fund the whole thing eventually, but right now they’re going forward with the first phase. They’ve been working on it for quite some time. It’s been three years now, so it’s good that they got those credits secured.”

Modular components will be used to piece the four structures together.

“We were brainstorming with Transition Projects on how to bring the cost of housing down and what we could do differently,” Holst Architecture principal Dave Otte said. “They were interested in tiny houses, and we quickly came to the realization that with any kind of scale or adaptability to different parts of the city, doing something bigger made more sense. So, the way these duplexes came about was we thought, ‘What if we took tiny houses and stuck them together?’”

To accomplish this, Holst Architecture turned to Mods PDX, which manufactures prefabricated wood-framed walls and other residential construction components.

“We’re still working on details on how they’ll be divided up and go together,” Otte said. “But basically the idea is to make the boxes in the shop to ensure quality control and bring them out to the site and save a lot of time. You can be doing your site work while you’re building the boxes in the shop. While you’re grading, you’re building at the same time.”

Otte said he hopes modular construction will reduce the construction time frame by several months.

“The question is: How do we get housing on to the market to folks who need it the most as soon as possible?” he said. “So that’s why as soon as we got the funding we were all systems go.”

The property, near Kenton Park, currently hosts the 14 tiny houses of Kenton Women’s Village with its 14 tiny houses. The village opened last summer as a temporary housing solution that eventually would be replaced by permanent affordable housing.

The 9 percent federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit allows Transition Projects to complete the purchase of the site from Prosper Portland and move ahead with construction, which will cost an estimated $11.2 million, according to a city report. A $500,000 grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust also was a key piece of funding.

“We are now finally moving full steam ahead,” Otte said. “It has been a difficult process getting people to buy in to the model.”

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Every night in the U.S., nearly 40,000 veterans face the prospect of sleeping in a shelter or on the streets, according to national statistics. But the Society of American Military Engineers’ Portland Post is now looking to help reduce that number in the metro area.

The Portland Post plans to this year host a concert to raise money to assist homeless vets and hopes to support groups like Transition Projects, which helps homeless residents. A representative of the group last month addressed approximately 50 SAME members during a luncheon.

“Today was our first introduction into ways we might be able to help,” Tony Roos, president of SAME’s Portland Post, said during the luncheon. “(Transition Projects’) mission really matches our own.”

Amethyst Hoos, Transition Projects’ supportive service coordinator for veterans, told SAME members that a military discharge other than honorable can be one of the biggest challenges for homeless veterans. As long as a veteran has at least one day of active duty, he or she is eligible to receive services from groups like Transition Projects. Outreach efforts to those veterans go a long way toward reducing the overall homeless population, according to Hoos.

“A lot of our programs are for folks that maybe don’t have an honorable discharge,” she said. “It really opens it up to maybe serve some of our folks that maybe aren’t receiving benefits.”

Both state and federal programs have made a considerable dent in the area’s population of homeless veterans. Multnomah County‘s number of homeless veterans dropped from more than 1,000 in 2014 to fewer than 100 in 2016, largely due to efforts by groups like Transition Projects.

“This program has been in Portland for about six years,” Hoos said. “Now we are seeing the people who are chronically homeless who have been on the street three years or more.”

Homeless veterans often are dealing with difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and readjustment to civilian life. Supportive Services for Veteran Families is a nationwide outreach program that provides services with as few hurdles as possible.

“Our philosophy is housing first,” Hoos said. “We don’t require you to have a job first or be clean and sober before we help. We don’t have a lot of hoops for people to jump through.”

There are challenges to the progress that has been made reducing the number of homeless veterans. Funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development‘s VASH program, which provides housing vouchers for veterans, has been cut.

“This year, we were pretty dismayed to find out they wouldn’t be issuing new vouchers; they would only be sustaining current vouchers,” Hoos said.

Architecture, engineering and construction companies can help counteract some of those cuts by hiring more veterans, Hoos said.

“That veteran employment piece is not as defined as we would like it to be,” she said. “That is a piece that our veterans really need.”

Many veterans learn skills in the military that are directly applicable to positions within architecture, engineering and construction companies.

“We as an industry can’t fix that problem, but we can be part of the solution,” said Sal Nodjomian, SAME’s national president. “We have a dearth of skilled people in the industry.”

Nodjomian encouraged SAME members to reach out to veterans and try to lower barriers to life improvement.

“I get it,” he said. “We are all busy. If you only have 30 minutes to give, use it to help knock that last barrier down.”

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Multnomah County and city of Portland officials are eyeing a long-vacant warehouse near the Steel Bridge as a potential site for a 200-bed permanent homeless shelter.

Converting the warehouse, at 320 N.W. Hoyt St., into a shelter could exacerbate tensions with property owners and business operators in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood, but it also would offer public officials a long-term alternative to the temporary-shelter hopscotch they’ve engaged in recently.

“We haven’t had a big permanent shelter in the downtown core, and we still see that need,” said Denis Theriault, spokesman for Multnomah County and the Joint Office of Homeless Services.

Negotiations with the property owner, Alco Investment Co. of Seattle, are under way, Theriault said. The Joint Office is seeking a long-term lease for the shelter.

“There isn’t a lease yet,” he said.

The Joint Office has applied for an early assistance meeting with the Bureau of Development Services to determine whether the property could host a shelter.

The warehouse, built in 1925, needs significant renovations before it can function as a shelter, Theriault said. Carleton Hart Architecture and project management consultant Shiels Obletz Johnsen are at work on the project. Transition Projects, a Portland nonprofit, would operate the shelter.

Some neighbors are fighting the drive to establish another center for homeless service in Old Town Chinatown. The Old Town Chinatown Community Association has held public forums on the topic, and met with Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury.

“It’s just not the right time to add any additional social services to the neighborhood,” said Helen Ying, chairwoman of the neighborhood association.

The group has sent a letter to Wheeler and Kafoury protesting the proposal.

Guardian Real Estate Services President Tom Brenneke said adding a shelter would not conform to a years-old agreement with the neighborhood that there would be no net gain in shelter beds. Guardian owns two properties nearby – Block 33 and the Tuck Lung property.

“I am opposed to it,” Brenneke said. “The area’s overburdened with that type of social service. We already have a significant facility in Bud Clark Commons, and adding 200 more beds doesn’t seem to be in keeping with the agreement.”

Theriault said the shelter could make a positive contribution to the neighborhood.

“We understand there are livability concerns in Old Town Chinatown,” he said. “This shelter is a way to help.”

Public officials continue to receive complaints of homeless individuals lining up to wait for a bed in Portland’s few available shelters. Part of the strategy to address those complaints is to offer a 24-hour, low-barrier shelter with in-house services, Theriault said.

The Joint Office is evaluating the possibility of closing other facilities in Old Town Chinatown if and when the Hoyt Street shelter opens to lessen the burden on the neighborhood.

Wheeler supports the Joint Office’s strategy, spokesman Michael Cox said.

A large shelter would also lessen the city’s and county’s reliance on short-term, temporary shelters hosted by developers. In recent winters, the Menashes, Malsins and others have agreed to host short-term shelters.

The Portland Business Alliance supports using the Hoyt Street site, president and CEO Sandra McDonough said.

Neighbors have legitimate livability concerns, she said, but those are being addressed by measures such as increased police patrols on foot.

“There’s not a lot of sites,” McDonough said. “So this represents a good, long-term site that will work.”

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The Portland Development Commission is partnering with Transition Projects Inc. on a 72-unit apartment development, along with 14 tiny houses – all for formerly homeless individuals.

The proposed project is planned for 2221 N. Argyle Street in an industrial corner of the Kenton neighborhood.

The PDC and the developer want to build 36 studio apartments and 36 single-room occupancy units. The single-room units would be clustered in groups of six; each pod would share a common kitchen and two bathrooms.

Three small buildings would have two pods each, for 36 single-room units. The studio apartments, the manager’s unit and a large community room would be part of a separate three-story building.

Also, the tiny houses, designed by several architecture firms and Portland State University architecture students, would be deployed for a minimum of a year. Catholic Charities would manage the tiny house community on contract with the Joint Office of Homeless Services, a collaboration started in 2016 between the city of Portland and Multnomah County.

All of the units are intended to house people earning no more than 60 percent of the median family income, according to a PDC agenda.

The commission’s board voted unanimously Wednesday to authorize selling the 0.99-acre property to Transition Projects. A PDC staff report said a price has not been finalized; it will be set by an appraisal.

A February 2016 analysis estimated the property’s value at $1.33 million, according to the staff report.

A PDC spokesperson could not be reached for comment, and Transition Projects Executive Director George Devendorf was not immediately available for an interview, a spokeswoman said.

The lot is unimproved. If the purchase were to close, crews would break ground in 2018.

Meyer Memorial Trust in January awarded Transition Projects a $500,000 grant for the project. However, the nonprofit developer will need more than a year to secure approximately $11.2 million to finance the project, according to the staff report.

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