Freshly planted vegetation on the new Hayden Meadows Walmart store’s 92,000-square-foot roof is an experiment.

The 40,000-square-foot green roof, billed as the largest in Portland, is divided into three sections to compare different soil depths. The remaining 52,000-square-foot traditional white membrane roof serves as the control.

It’s a rare opportunity to back up the rainwater absorption and evaporative cooling benefits of green roofs with data from a real world application, said David Sailor, director of Portland State University’s Green Building Research Laboratory. PSU received a $133,000 grant from Walmart to spend the next two years tracking and comparing data collected by a rooftop weather station and sensors placed throughout the North Portland store’s roof.

“One of our goals is really to help provide the numbers to evaluate the actual performance,” Sailor said. “We can answer questions that haven’t been answered very well yet.”

He and PSU students will measure the roof’s soil and vegetation temperatures, among other factors, to test whether green roofs lower urban air temperatures, contribute to building efficiency and reduce stormwater runoff.

The Hayden Meadows Walmart, which opened last month, is the third in the country to feature a green roof, and PSU researchers aren’t the only ones taking advantage of the large-scale pilot project. Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services will compare the amount of stormwater runoff from the green roof’s three different sections, BES engineer Tim Kurtz said.

“One of the challenges with eco-roofs is in general each one is a bit different from another,” he said. “Something we’ve always wanted to do is a side-by-side comparison.”

Cadmus Group, an environmental consulting firm with a Portland office, will study whether the green roof’s cooling properties improve the efficiency of the building’s air conditioning units. The Audubon Society of Portland plans to count the number of birds that visit.

Walmart designed the green roof with research in mind because the big-box retailer wants to know how it can improve the efficiency of its stores and ultimately lower the cost of doing business, Walmart spokeswoman Rachel Wall said.

“There isn’t as much research available for these green roofs,” she said. “This will bring more research to the field not just for Wal-Mart, but private and public-sector projects.”

Walmart installed its first green roof in 2006 on roughly half of a Chicago store’s 133,000-square-foot roof, and it’s been carefully monitored, Wall said. The retailer installed a second green roof in the Chicago area before deciding to build one in Portland to learn how it would fare in a more moderate climate, she said.

“The company is looking at ensuring we have data from the pilots so we can see where it works best and what climates work best and will save us the most money,” Wall said.

Through data collected from the first Chicago green roof, Walmart determined that the cost to maintain the vegetated half of the roof is 45 percent less than the cost for the white membrane, she said. Most of the savings can be attributed to the way the green roof has protected the drains, preventing damage and clogging, Wall said.

One way green roofs can help Walmart become more efficient is by cooling the air that feeds into store air conditioning units, said Allen Lee, executive director of Cadmus Group’s energy services division. The firm plans to compare whether the air conditioning units on the green portion of the Portland Walmart roof consume less energy than those on the rest of the roof, he said.

“It’s an opportunity to demonstrate whether this aspect of energy savings is real,” Lee said. “The key is to verify. You can certainly create models. To get real empirical data to back up the models is really critical.”

Sailor said he’s hopeful the PSU research will not only help Walmart plan for green roofs on other stores, but also share knowledge with other companies planning similar projects.

“It’s possible that we will be able to give green roof guidance to the green roof community in Portland,” he said. “We might be able to suggest optimal growing media depths for optimal runoff.”

The varying soil depths on the Hayden Meadows Walmart green roof range from 3 to 5 inches, Sailor said.

“The ideal depth depends on the moisture-holding capacity, but also the precipitation statistics,” he said. “In different climates you will do better with different depths of soil.”

Kurtz said that by tracking runoff from the Walmart green roof the city hopes to find out if adding more soil makes a significant difference in how much rainwater is absorbed. Increasing the soil depth adds to the cost of a green roof project and is a significant consideration, especially with existing buildings, he said.

“Weight is usually a huge issue because you don’t want to put too much weight on an existing building,” Kurtz said.

Philadelphia-based firm Roofmeadow designed the green roofs for the two Walmart stores in Chicago and the one in Portland. The firm’s president, Charlie Miller, said irrigation is another factor to consider.

“Will a 3-inch unirrigated green roof provide the same energy benefit as a 5-inch irrigated green roof?” he said. “I would love to find out if there is a threshold of a minimal thickness in which you can sustain significant plant life without having to irrigate.”

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We get a lot of press releases trying to woo us to cover the “biggest/first/greenest” projects in the Portland-metro area. Most of the time, we give the releases the once-over and decline with a “congratulations, but …” response.

That was almost the fate of the release that arrived yesterday about the green roof on top of Walmart‘s Hayden Meadows store, which was promoted as the largest installation of its kind in the area. But just as we were about to hit the delete button, we received another bit of news about the green roof, a tidbit that added that little something extra that turned our “no thanks” into a “yes, please.”

The Walmart roof is big – 92,000 square feet big. A little less than half of that space – 40,000 square feet, to be exact – features green roof. The rest of the area is a bare white membrane surface. The comparison-and-contrast potential is exactly what makes the roof the perfect place for a two-year experiment that will be led by David Sailor, the director of Portland State University’s Green Building Research Lab.

We’ve written about Sailor, who also teaches mechanical engineering at PSU, in the past. He was part of a team that back in 2010 set up an experiment on top of a PSU science building to determine whether eco-roofs could help keep solar panels cool.

For the Walmart roof study, Sailor and PSU students will spend 24 months gathering data collected by a a rooftop weather station and “scores of sensors” spread across the green roof. The green roof itself is divided into three sections, each featuring different vegetation and varying soil types and depths.

Sailor and his students won’t be alone as they conduct their research. The city of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services will track stormwater runoff from the green roof. The Cadmus Group, an environmental consulting firm, will study how air conditioner units on the roof perform. The Audubon Society will even get in on the action by counting the numbers and types of birds that visit the green roof.

The research project also will extend beyond Portland to Chicago, where similar studies will be conducted on the green roof of a Walmart store in that city. The resulting data from both study areas, according to Sailor, could have a worldwide reach when it comes to developing strategies to improve how green roofs perform.

The post Walmart and the science of green roofs appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Langer family, which is partnering with Gramor Development on a $50 million retail development in Sherwood, has used the proceeds of a recent sale to Walmart to purchase a shopping center in Hillsboro.

This week, Gramor announced that a 145,000-square-foot Walmart will anchor its Sherwood Town Center planned for the former Langer Farms property off of Tualatin-Sherwood Road. Now, the Langers have purchased Tanasbourne Central, a 43,827-square-foot retail and office center, for $12.4 million.

George Diamond, the president and principal broker for Real Estate Investment Group, which represented the Langer family, said the deal was a property exchange following the sale of the Sherwood site to Walmart. Tanasbourne Central is at the intersection of Northwest Cornell Road and 188th Avenue.

“It just was a good long-term hold for their family,” Diamond said. “It’s right in the heart of Intel, where all the new development is going on – new apartments, new jobs, Intel, Salesforce, Kaiser (Permanente). And this is right within a mile of all these.”

Built in 2007, the unanchored center has three multi-tenant buildings and a two-story, mixed-use building. The property sold for $282.93 per square foot, with a capitalization rate of 7.5 percent.

Capital Pacific’s Scott Frank represented the seller, Tanasbourne Central Landlord LLC. Nicholas Diamond, a principal broker at REIG, also assisted the buyer in the transaction.

The post Hillsboro shopping center sells for $12.4 million appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A 150,000-square-foot Walmart store will anchor Gramor Development‘s Sherwood Town Center project.

The multi-phase development will feature an array of retail and restaurant businesses when it opens on 19.82 acres at the intersection of Tualatin-Sherwood Road and Southwest Langer Farms Parkway. Along with the new Walmart, which is scheduled to open in 2014, the complex will include six smaller buildings to accommodate a bank, medical service providers, restaurants and retailers.

The entire project is valued at more than $50 million. U.S. Bank is financing the effort, and Gramor and the Langer family (a partial owner in the property) are providing private equity.

The post Sherwood shopping center will include Walmart appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Wal-Mart executives want to expand their store in Hood River by 30,000 feet. Not everyone likes that idea.

That includes members of the Hood River Planning Commission. They nixed Wal-Mart’s plan last year, only to have their decision overturned by the Hood River City Council in June. Opponents of the project appealed the council’s decision to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.

LUBA kicked the decision back to the city council this month. Councilors decided this week to re-examine the Wal-Mart issue in what promises to be a raucous meeting Dec. 10.

At issue is whether the Walmart on Cascade Avenue can legally expand. LUBA ruled that city officials may not have properly considered whether Wal-Mart has the right to expand the store. Now council members face a do-over of their decision.

Councilors want to keep the December meeting as tightly focused as possible without getting into the emotions stirred by Wal-Mart and other big-box stores.

Mayor Arthur Babitz said at the Oct. 9 council meeting he wants to avoid a “circus” in December. Just resolving the legal issues is a big enough task, he said.

The post Walmart expansion faces obstacles in Hood River appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A decision by Vancouver City Council to loosen requirements on privately financed roads at a commercial parcel in Vancouver, Wash., is paving the way for development to occur at the vacant 43-acre site.

The council on Monday voted to amend a development agreement between the city and the three property owners, two private developers and Wal-Mart, the proposed first tenant. The deal allows the property owners to forgo construction of a 1.25-mile stretch of road previously required before commercial structures could be built.

City officials said the move is intended to help spur activity at the site where development has been pegged for more than a decade.

“We just didn’t want to let a great piece of developable property go to waste while we still had a stake in it,” said Thayer Rorabaugh, transportation policy director for the city of Vancouver.

The property has been primed for development since bought 250 acres in the area, and zoning for 43 of them were converted from light industrial to commercial. Birtcher sold a portion of the property to another development firm, Eastgate Plaza LLC, which in turn sold a portion to Wal-Mart.

Vancouver officials created a development agreement that required approximately $10 million of public-service site improvements – such as roads and sewer lines – before development could occur. One of the requirements was an extension of 59th Street to help offset the anticipated increase of traffic on Northeast Fourth Plain Road; it is the only improvement not completed yet.

But soon after the development agreement was in place, Eastgate and Birtcher entered a legal battle over which one had to provide the public improvements. The dispute, which ended with a ruling that Eastgate had to pay for the work, ultimately led to both developers opting to hold off on development.

“Birtcher has completed a few smaller projects on the industrially zoned land, but hasn’t seemed that interested in doing anything on the commercial land,” Rorabaugh said. “And Eastgate just isn’t in the position to build right now.”

Sitting on the sideline during the squabble was Wal-Mart, which was poised to build one of its supercenters once the improvements were finished. Now that the street expansion is no longer required, Rorabaugh expects Wal-Mart to start predevelopment soon.

“(Wal-Mart) has been ready to move on this project the whole time,” he said. “I expect that we will meet with officials from the company within the next week.”

Not all city councilors were as gung ho as Rorabaugh about accelerating the development process. Councilor Pat Campbell said that while he believed the project’s impacts would be positive, costs could be saved if the amendment were fully assessed first.

But the council voted to direct city staffers to proceed with work on the amendment, which will go before the council for a final vote sometime in April.

Once Wal-Mart begins working on its store, the city hopes other development will follow. Before the legal dispute, Eastgate had proposed $80 million worth of development that included a Home Depot store and a few fast-food restaurants.

In order to expedite this process, city staffers will work to retool the remainder of the development agreement. This could include drafting more amendments, a new development agreement or a development agreement for each property owner.

“We are keeping an open mind about changes to the development agreement,” Rorabaugh said. “As long as we stand to benefit in some way, we will look into any idea.”

The post Vancouver amends development agreement for Walmart appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Keizer City Council on Monday approved a master plan for a new 116,000-square-foot, large-format retail store and a 36,000-square-foot, mixed-use building to be built on a parcel near Interstate 5.

But the council’s approval of the master plan is another blow to a citizen-driven ballot measure being voted on today that would stop the development.

Because the development application was submitted to the city before the ballot measure went for a vote, the ballot measure, if approved, won’t apply to the development, according to city attorneys. The development application would have to be appealed successfully to the Land Use Board of Appeals or the Oregon Court of Appeals in order for the measure to apply.

At issue is the development of a 36-acre parcel known as Area C that is part of the Keizer Station development. It includes nearly 650,000 square feet of mixed-use, retail space. The parcel is vacant and sits between the commercial development and a residential neighborhood. Nearby residents formed the advocacy group Keep Keizer Livable and have been fighting the development, which they believe to be a Walmart, since it was first pitched four years ago.

After the city began the planning process for the development last year, the group gathered the 3,770 signatures needed to get a measure put on a special ballot, said Kevin Hohnbaum, one of the cofounders of the group. If approved, the measure would limit all developments outside of the already developed Area A of Keizer Station to a 65,000-square-foot maximum, which is about 10,000 square feet larger than the average Fred Meyer, he said.

Even though there has been ample and vocal disdain for the project, City Attorney Shannon Johnson said at the meeting that the council was only to judge the development based on its compliance with city codes.

The approval of the master plan sets a directive for city staff to prepare an order that would approve the development application. It will be presented to the council for formal approval sometime next month.

The post Keizer approves master plan for big-box store appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s going on with real estate and development locally and around the world.

Local:

Walmart repurposes Beaverton building into new neighborhood market

, according to The Beaverton Valley Times. Seattle-based developer PacLand will convert a vacated building that used to house Ashley Furniture into the neighborhood market, which has a much smaller footprint than a traditional Walmart.

While the most intriguing part of this development will most likely be the fight between community members and the developer, the project will also be a poignant example of the new age of sustainable development. Like John’s Incredible Pizza and Ultimate Electronics (and now Walmart), retailers are finding ways to convert buildings that were once occupied by companies lost to the recession instead of building new.

Oregon senator taking aim at MERS

As there is in about every state, one Oregon state senator – Sen. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Beaverton – is by pitching a bill that would make it hard for MERS to operate in the state

MERS is a Virginia-based company that operates an electronic registry that tracks servicing rights and ownership of home mortgages. The company has become, justifiably or not, a scapegoat for some homeowners, as they’ve sued the company for not having proper ownership rights when it forecloses on their homes.

As the Willamette Week reported, “Bonamici’s Senate Bill 484 would require original documentation and evidence of the chain of title in any foreclosure proceeding. Otherwise, the lender cannot proceed with the foreclosure.”

I don’t know if this bill has legs, but I think it’s probably a hard sell considering foreclosures in Oregon aren’t handled through the judicial system like in many other states. Stay tuned because we will be tracking this one.

National:

Signs of a budding commercial real estate industry

Bloomberg, analyzing data from the Federal Reserve, had some good news for the commercial real estate industry with its .

A combination of two measures – the U.S. industrial production index and spending on non-residential private construction in the U.S. – have both reached points that are signaling the start of a recovery for the commercial real estate industry.

First, the industrial production index – which measures the production of American factories, mines and utilities – is up 11 percent since reaching an 11-year low in June 2009.

On the other side, spending on private commercial construction hit a seven-year low in January.

Beyond that it’s simple economics. We aren’t building yet we are producing more. Once the excess supply is eaten up it will be off to the races.

Food for thought

Like in any industry that is experiencing a lull period, the commercial real estate industry could use a fresh perspective.

Back in December The New York Times wrote a great about New Mexico-based theoretical physicist Geoffrey West (it’s should be required reading for the industry). Tired and fed up with the traditional realm of physics, West has turned his attention to analyzing cities.

As he told The Times, “We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather. I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”

I won’t ruin the piece, but one example is that West can predict with good accuracy the number of violent crimes in a city by just knowing the laws and the population. Using just the population of the major metropolitan area in a given country, he can estimate, with 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system.

The post Real Estate Roundup: Walmart coming to Beaverton, Oregon senator targets MERS appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s going on with real estate and development locally and around the world.

Local:

Walmart repurposes Beaverton building into new neighborhood market

, according to The Beaverton Valley Times. Seattle-based developer PacLand will convert a vacated building that used to house Ashley Furniture into the neighborhood market, which has a much smaller footprint than a traditional Walmart.

While the most intriguing part of this development will most likely be the fight between community members and the developer, the project will also be a poignant example of the new age of sustainable development. Like John’s Incredible Pizza and Ultimate Electronics (and now Walmart), retailers are finding ways to convert buildings that were once occupied by companies lost to the recession instead of building new.

Oregon senator taking aim at MERS

As there is in about every state, one Oregon state senator – Sen. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Beaverton – is by pitching a bill that would make it hard for MERS to operate in the state

MERS is a Virginia-based company that operates an electronic registry that tracks servicing rights and ownership of home mortgages. The company has become, justifiably or not, a scapegoat for some homeowners, as they’ve sued the company for not having proper ownership rights when it forecloses on their homes.

As the Willamette Week reported, “Bonamici’s Senate Bill 484 would require original documentation and evidence of the chain of title in any foreclosure proceeding. Otherwise, the lender cannot proceed with the foreclosure.”

I don’t know if this bill has legs, but I think it’s probably a hard sell considering foreclosures in Oregon aren’t handled through the judicial system like in many other states. Stay tuned because we will be tracking this one.

National:

Signs of a budding commercial real estate industry

Bloomberg, analyzing data from the Federal Reserve, had some good news for the commercial real estate industry with its .

A combination of two measures – the U.S. industrial production index and spending on non-residential private construction in the U.S. – have both reached points that are signaling the start of a recovery for the commercial real estate industry.

First, the industrial production index – which measures the production of American factories, mines and utilities – is up 11 percent since reaching an 11-year low in June 2009.

On the other side, spending on private commercial construction hit a seven-year low in January.

Beyond that it’s simple economics. We aren’t building yet we are producing more. Once the excess supply is eaten up it will be off to the races.

Food for thought

Like in any industry that is experiencing a lull period, the commercial real estate industry could use a fresh perspective.

Back in December The New York Times wrote a great about New Mexico-based theoretical physicist Geoffrey West (it’s should be required reading for the industry). Tired and fed up with the traditional realm of physics, West has turned his attention to analyzing cities.

As he told The Times, “We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather. I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”

I won’t ruin the piece, but one example is that West can predict with good accuracy the number of violent crimes in a city by just knowing the laws and the population. Using just the population of the major metropolitan area in a given country, he can estimate, with 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system.

The post Real Estate Roundup: Walmart coming to Beaverton, Oregon senator targets MERS appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

TMT Development and the local project management firm, Pac Land, are in the early process of obtaining permits to construct a 90,000-square-foot Walmart in North Portland, according to Vanessa Sturgeon, president of TMT. The store would be located at 1107 N. Hayden Meadows Dive., which is at the southern end of Delta Park East in North Portland.

Walmarts can vary in size greatly, ranging from 40,000 to 260,000 square feet, with an average square footage of 108,000, according to the company’s website. A Walmart Super Center is usually around 186,000 square feet, while the company’s new urban layout, Neighborhood Market by Walmart, averages about 46,000 square feet.

Considering the project is in the early stages, going through the early assistance application process with the city last month, the project team is remaining relatively tightlipped. In the past, other proposed Walmarts around the metro area have been met with a wall of community criticism.

In 2005 neighbors in Gresham fought off a Walmart that was being proposed at a former QVC space at 182^nd Avenue and Powell Boulevard. The issue sparked a debate with the city government and led to recently adopted standards for big box stores locating in Gresham.

The post The odd couple: Walmart coming to North Portland? appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.