One of the Pearl District‘s toniest office buildings has sold to a major institutional investor.

Deutsche Asset Management has completed the purchase of the 133,000-square-foot office building at 1417 N.W. Everett St. for $64.85 million, according to Multnomah County records. The building is home to anchor tenant Vestas North America as well as Portland-based developer Gerding Edlen.

The deal was structured as a three-way transaction. Tenants sold their building purchase option to Deutsche Asset Management. The asset management firm then exercised the option and purchased the building from Gerding Edlen.

JLL represented the tenants in the sale of the purchase option. Managing Director Buzz Ellis and Executive Vice President Paige Morgan led the JLL team on the sale.

The building was constructed in 1927 and originally functioned as a Meier & Frank warehouse. Gerding Edlen purchased the building in 2007 for $15 million, and embarked on a $66 million renovation.

Portland’s office market has drawn strong attention from institutional investors this year amid rising lease rates.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the recorded transaction price.

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As architect Lauren Loosveldt welcomed guests to a forum on resiliency after an earthquake, she first reassured them.

“We will be safe,” she said. “This building has been seismically upgraded.”

That set the theme for the evening last week at Vestas‘ Pearl District office: How will Oregon endure a major Cascadia subduction zone earthquake?

“The Green Champion Summit: From Sustainability to Resilience” was sponsored by the Committee for the Environment for the American Institute of Architects’ Portland chapter.

The event’s two speakers were: local architect Jay Raskin, who was instrumental in creation of the Oregon Resiliency Plan; and Alex Wilson, founder of the in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Raskin spoke first about how a resiliency plan can help communities recover more quickly after a catastrophic event.

Resiliency is the ability of society and structures to function after a catastrophe, Raskin told about 100 guests, and that includes seismic upgrades.

“We need to make buildings strong enough so we can fix them quickly,” he said.

Raskin noted that both Chile and Japan experienced major earthquakes in 2010, but because they had high resiliency, both were able to rebuild quickly. Oregon is now working toward that goal with its new plan.

“Depending on the time of day and the time of year,” he said, casualties from a major earthquake here could be between 1,250 and 10,000.

“It was covered pretty well in the (July 20) New Yorker article,” he said. “We would have one million truckloads of debris and a 20 percent economic loss to the gross domestic product.”

To ensure resiliency, Raskin said the state plan aims to achieve four things: establish a state resiliency office, make seismic assessments of structures, create incentives for seismic retrofits and update Oregon building policies.

Progress is being made, Raskin said, with the new state resiliency office set to open in January and local loan guarantee programs to come for seismic retrofits.

Architects are “well placed” to lead the discussion about resiliency, he said.

“We want to (turn) disasters into inconveniences within 72 hours,” he said. “Architects need to be more involved in resiliency.”

Wilson, who has authored several books on green building, and worked extensively on rebuilding after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, said there are lessons learned from those catastrophes that are being applied today.

For example, those lessons influenced the design of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital slightly north of Boston.

“We saw what happened in (Hurricane) Katrina where nurses were breaking windows with furniture (because of the heat),” he said. “That informed the design of the hospital. It has windows that open and the first floor is all tile or concrete and can be flooded with almost no damage.”

Hospitals lost power in New Orleans because auxiliary generators were in flooded basements, but at the hospital near Boston, power equipment was placed on the roof or at the penthouse level, he said.

Wilson also talked about the “cascading impacts” of power system failures to Oregon’s 160,000 miles of high voltage lines, 3,400 power plants, 150 refineries and 2.5 million miles of oil and gas pipelines.

“After Sandy, gas stations couldn’t pump and even people with home generators couldn’t get the gas to run them,” he said.

Wilson said those stories led to the design of the New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro, where exterior doors were given 20-inch flood barriers. They protected the building during a recent flood.

“The water came up to within an inch and a half,” he said, but didn’t enter. The nonprofit theater spent $5,000 to add the flood barriers.

“That was a lot (of money) for a nonprofit,” he said, “but that simple measure saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in repair costs.”

But resiliency is more than just buildings, Wilson said. Resiliency is about people helping each other in times of disaster.

“Resiliency is as much about community as it is about buildings,” he said.

Land use planning can encourage creation of spaces where people get to know their neighbors, Wilson said.

“After Sandy, people took care of each other,” he said. “Resiliency is about creating ways for people to work together to survive.”

After both men spoke, Loosveldt said there are a lot of different strategies for sustainability and resiliency, and asked them what they considered some of the best ways to ensure fast recovery.

“Building codes should be the driver,” Wilson replied. “But (a seismic retrofit) doesn’t increase value. Using the codes approach will be the most successful in the shorter term.”

Raskin answered with a broader outlook.

“I think the most effective way is to try and create a culture of resilience,” he said. “Thank you, New Yorker.”

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The average wind turbine is a bit of a Catch-22. The turbines – and their individual blades — are designed to create a sustainable form of energy, but the very act of creating the blades – composed of fiberglass and filled with pvc foam or balsa wood — uses up a huge amount of resources. And once the turbines have served their useful life, they end up back in the ground in a less than sustainable form.

Considering that a single turbine blade weighs about 30 tons – and that in 2012 there were an estimated 700,000 turbine blades in use — that’s a heck of a lot of engineered composite material that’s destined to end up in landfills in about 25 years.

With an eye toward finding ways to recycle the turbine blades it produces, Vestas is asking for people to submit ideas for turning used blades into recycled products.

There are a few rules for those considering entering the competition. At least 50 percent of a design must be made from turbine blades; the material of a blade can be cut or processed, but the structure has to remain the same (the goal here is to save resources, remember); and the end product must have a marketable value.

Ideas must be submitted via a template that can be downloaded

Submit completed templates – a maximum of three per person – to sunby@sunby.dk before Oct. 20.

The top three ideas will receive 3-D prints of their designs. The overall best design will win a pretty cool scooter made from a Vestas blade.

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A former Meier & Frank warehouse at the corner of Northwest Everett Street and 14th Avenue in Portland’s Pearl District is the new home of Vestas’ North American sales and service operations, as well as Gerding Edlen, the building’s owner and developer. The five-story, 184,134-square-foot building has been updated with green features including incorporation of recycled materials, a 112kW solar array and a 160,000-gallon rainwater cistern; the building is expected to achieve a LEED platinum rating this summer.

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Two general contracting firms are currently working on a former Meier and Frank warehouse that will soon host offices for and . will wrap up work on the building’s core and shell in the next three to four months, and started work on the tenant improvement for Vestas’ offices in October.

“The project is going well, and the building is really transformed,” said Gerding Edlen development Vice President Patrick Wilde.

project manager Keith Skille said that most of the exterior of the building is done, including the replacement of the building’s windows.

Skanska is currently pouring new sidewalks and painting, said Vestas spokesman Andrew Longteig. Meanwhile, crews from and its subcontractors are framing the walls and roughing in mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

“There are two quality contractors with a lot of work going on. There are two sets of subcontractors working in the same space,” Wilde said. “It’s just a logistical challenge—not a big issue.”

Portland’s Bureau of Development Services recently approved Vestas’ application to put signs on the historic building. The signs will go at the upper-right corners of two sides of the building and have the Vestas logo.

When work is done on the project, probably at the end of April, about 400 Vestas workers and Gerding Edlen’s Portland offices will move into the building, Longeteig said. The move is expected to happen in March or April.

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, which houses its North American headquarters in Portland, won praise today for its efforts in promoting products that are made using wind energy.

The presented �Ѵǰ��ٱ����������æ��, senior vice president of group marketing and customer insight at Vestas, with the 2011 AWEA Award for Wind Energy Advocacy for this year’s introduction of the label.

Albæk devised the WindMade label, which was initially funded by Vestas. WindMade is now operating independently and will formally launch Nov. 18, when its leadership will reveal the first companies and brands to have become WindMade-certified.  In early 2012, WindMade will release the technical standards for individual consumer products that wish to earn the label, according to Vestas spokesman Andrew Longeteig.

“WindMade is probably the most unique communication innovation made in the wind business in the last 30 years,” AWEA CEO Denise Bode said at the awards ceremony in Carlsbad, Calif.” Vestas deserves to be commended for launching this new way to drive demand for wind power and then letting it grow as a separate entity on behalf of the whole industry.”

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Vestas today announced its second largest sale of 2011. The 202-megawatt order came from E.ON Climate & Renewables North America, the Chicago-based subsidiary of E.ON AG – one of the largest energy companies in the world.

The project will generate enough energy to power approximately 60,000 homes in a year.

The 112, 1.8-megawatt turbines will be delivered early in 2012 and commissioned later in the year, but the project’s name and specific location have not yet been disclosed.

Vestas announced in May its largest project of the year so far – a 219-megawatt expansion of the Alta Wind Energy Center in southern California.

“We’ve been very busy working with the installations of these projects throughout North America” said Vestas spokesman Andrew Longeteig. “We’re optimistic about the wind power industry in the U.S. and we hope to continue to drive job creation and work toward a better energy future.”

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SolarWorld and Vestas, two of the leading manufacturers of renewable energy systems in the U.S., are joining forces on the future home of Vestas’ continental headquarters, Mayor Sam Adams announced yesterday.

Vestas, a leading wind turbine manufacturer, will outfit its new headquarters with a 112-kilowatt photovoltaic system made by SolarWord that will supply about 12 percent of the building’s electricity. The system will be the largest roof-mounted solar array in Portland’s central business district.

The headquarters will be located in the 102-year-old Meier & Frank warehouse on Northwest Everett Street. SolarWorld’s high-performance solar panels, in addition to other environmental features, are expected to position the historic building to pursue Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification.

The redeveloped building will be complete in spring 2012 and will include an addition on the fifth floor featuring an eco-roof terrace and garden. The project team includes development firm Gerding Edlen, owner of the building, general contractor Skanska, and E C Company, which designed and installed the solar system.

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The $65 million project to upgrade the former Meier & Frank warehouse in the Pearl District is on track to be completed by this time next year. But the building’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places has created challenges for the team targeting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification for the 185,000-square-foot renovation and expansion project.

“The review through National Parks Service is actually what caused us to put the project on hold,” said GBD Architects‘ Keith Skille, project manager for the renovation.

Work began in 2007, but was stalled in 2009, when design approval for a penthouse addition required more time than expected. Skille called the historic design review process a “significant hindrance,” and added that conversations with historic review boards have continued throughout the project.

Windows also presented a significant challenge, said Patrick Wilde, vice president of development for project developer Gerding Edlen.

“The real problem is (that) when you change windows out altogether, it really changes the look,” said Val Ballestrem, education manager at the Architectural Heritage Center. “It changes the whole face of a building.”

“They want to see you work with existing windows or replace them with something nearly identical,” Wilde said.

The project team showed that the building’s existing windows were in such a state of disrepair that they needed to be replaced; however, the new windows had to have a “very similar profile,” Wilde said. Hard-to-duplicate, 80-year-old windows were identified for replacement by higher-performance, double-pane ones, he said.

To further insulate the building and increase energy efficiency, the team wanted to add some insulation to the walls. That design aspect ended in a compromise.

“They didn’t want to see everything ‘Sheetrocked,’ ” Wilde said, so some walls were left uninsulated.

“What’s important to (review boards), as far as what’s historic, doesn’t always align with how to make a building efficient. That’s a reality we have to deal with,” Wilde said.

The historic building was able to accommodate some efficiency features. For instance, the building will have an air delivery system under a raised floor, Wilde said. This will allow for efficient distribution of air that doesn’t require extra energy to push it down from above. The floor’s height will be better for light penetration into the office setting; this design also benefits the historic perspective.

“The air is delivered under-floor, and that takes all the clutter off the ceiling space and exposes the existing structure, to show off that history,” said Rob Schnare, project manager for Glumac, which is addressing mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering and technology needs for the project. The original exposed beams were a significant part of the design.

“It’s something you can notice from being outside the building,” Schnare said. “When you look from the street, you see the exterior walls, but you also see the ceiling of the space.”

The new penthouse atop the building will be 22,000 square feet. “How tall it was, its shape (and) how you could see it from the surrounding neighborhood, were all very important for the historic review boards to weigh in on,” Wilde said.

A new atrium will let daylight penetrate all floors of the building.

A full rainwater collection system will feature a 165,000-gallon cistern in the basement. Water will be filtered and pumped for use in flushing toilets and irrigating the building’s green roof. Wilde also expects the building to have a solar array.

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Wind power manufacturer announced Friday the launch of what it claims will be the world’s most efficient wind turbine. The offshore turbine has a seven-megawatt capacity and a rotor diameter of 164 meters.

Vestas is a Danish wind power manufacturer with its U.S. headquarters in Portland. Vestas has installed more than 43,000 wind turbines in 66 countries including more than 11,000 in the United States.

Vestas representatives made the announcement in London. Construction will start on the first new turbine next year, with production expected in 2015.

No offshore wind turbines are in the U.S., though a handful of projects on the East Coast are stalled in permitting and planning stages. In February, the Obama Administration announced a plan to spend $50 million to speed research and development for offshore wind farms.

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