Portland developer Kevin Cavenaugh has a knack for capturing attention with eye-catching projects. His firm’s latest is certainly no exception.

With 54 steel tree planters embedded in the sides of a six-story, 41,000-square-foot building, Guerrilla Development‘s Tree Farm, at Southeast Third Avenue and Morrison Street in Portland, is aptly named. It follows the firm’s colorful Fair-Haired Dumbbell near the east end of the Burnside Bridge.

“Kevin literally did a napkin sketch of this idea, which was a six-story building with essentially a cube in massing,” said Ben Carr, project architect for Brett Schulz Architect PC. “And he handed it to me and said, ‘Let’s figure this out and get it done.’”

From that initial drawing, the concept of a building adorned with living trees quickly came to life. Now general contractor Pro Teck Construction is building Tree Farm on a quarter-block parcel. It’s a constricted site, with only a few feet separating the new building from adjacent structures and the Morrison Bridge. This ruled out use of a tower crane, Pro Teck superintendent Michael Griffy said.

“It’s a great design, but it’s been a challenge, and it’s a unique challenge,” he said. “I would really like to be able to put a crane on the Morrison Bridge and stock the sixth floor from there.”

The project is noteworthy in a number of ways, beginning with the work done below grade. There, deep soil mixing was employed to compensate for the soft fill soil found near the banks of the Willamette River. Columns 45 feet deep were placed in a grid pattern underneath the foundation. These are separate from bearing piles and are intended to stabilize the soil rather than the building itself.

“It’s basically a concrete slurry to stabilize the soil to prevent liquefaction in case of an earthquake,” Carr said.

However, the biggest challenge was creating a design for load-bearing exterior walls. Architects worked with WDY Structural & Civil Engineers to devise a solution involving what Carr describes as a “sort of exoskeleton of tube steel.”

“The first thing they told me is you’re taking all of this weight, and each of those tree planters is going to weigh between (2,000 and) 3,000 pounds,” Carr said. “And you’re putting all that weight on the outside of the building, which is a terrible seismic idea.”

This exoskeleton, however, is designed so that it does not bear the weight of the surrounding wood-framed building itself. Instead, it will only support a series of steel knife plates welded into the columns. Those plates will then be the mounts upon which the steel planters will be placed.

“It’s essentially a separate column,” Carr said. “The tube steel carries the weight of the trees back into the building.”

And because structural steel is already in place for the exterior walls, it was no stretch to include steel load-bearing columns on the first four stories. Exposed wood columns are featured on the top two floors, and glu-lam beams throughout so that a woodsy aesthetic is evident inside and out.

Cross-laminated timber panels were considered, Carr added, but rejected on cost and logistical grounds.

The building itself has a slab-on-grade foundation and five stories of wood framing. It will hold office space above ground-floor retail space.

One more challenge was ensuring the strawberry trees destined for the planters will receive enough water. Rainfall alone is not enough to support the small, evergreen trees, which are native to Western Europe and the Mediterranean region. So, designers worked with Cistus Nursery to devise a network of irrigation piping to be built into the wood-framed walls and plumbed to provide water to each individual planter.

Each of the building’s four exposures is controlled by separate valves. Each story is similarly controlled, all the way down to individual planters, which will have separate irrigation lines attached to a moisture sensor to measure the amount of water received from all sources.

“We even have the ability to fertilize and water each tree remotely without actually getting up on the building,” Carr said.

Crews have nearly roughed in the building. Drywall is being installed drywall throughout. MEP contractors, meanwhile, are busy building mechanical systems. Project delivery is scheduled for this fall.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect both the correct number of tree planters on the building and the anticipated time of project delivery.

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Aquatic center projects are rare these days, according to Triplett Wellman project manager Steve Duch, so a new one for Chehalem Park & Recreation District is a bit of a big deal. The 40,000-square-foot facility in Newberg features two pools – a 25-yard-long one for competition and a smaller, shallower one for leisure and play. A grand opening for the Chehalem Aquatic and Fitness Center took place June 7.

“There are not a lot done,” Duch said. “There are only a handful in the state that have been completed in the last 10 or 15 years.”

The new facility is replacing Newberg’s existing L-shaped pool, which was built in 1970. That building is now connected to the new one, and its pool will be filled in with gravel so that it can be topped by a gymnasium. The entire $18 million project is being paid for with money from a $19.9 million bond measure approved by voters in 2014.

Construction of the new aquatic center was the first phase. Rehabilitation of the old building is the second phase. Work on that portion is under way, with completion expected around Thanksgiving, Duch said.

Public demand for aquatic services and physical deterioration of the old facility drove the project forward, said Jim McMaster, parks and facilities supervisor for the Chehalem Park & Recreation District and its project manager for the aquatic center project. He likened the condition of the old pool’s miles of corroded piping to sclerotic arteries.

“Your arteries get older and they get smaller and smaller,” he said. “And the pipes in the pool are like those arteries.”

The old pool was beloved, but long in the tooth, according to Scott | Edwards Architecture senior associate Jennifer Marsicek.

“I constantly run into people that grew up with that pool,” she said. “There’s some nostalgia for the old building, but people are excited for the new pool. Competitive swimming is a big part of that community, so they needed the two pools and the locker room areas to support it. It gets pretty crazy in the existing pool when they’re all trying to have a swim.”

Marsicek led a design team that crafted an open, well-lit pool space able to capitalize on natural light much more than its predecessor. Also, coated windows reduce the amount of UV light entering the building. Finally, a rooftop photovoltaic array allows the project to receive an Energy Trust of Oregon tax rebate.

“We really tried to drill down on the energy side,” she said. “And a lot of that came from the mechanical system and the boiler system.”

The new aquatic center and its two pools also lack the distinct chemical odor of chlorine and other volatile substances used in pool filtration and cleaning. The air filtration system blows a constant stream of air across the water’s surface. Then, that air, which contains chloramines, or substances that are formed when chlorine binds with sweat and other body wastes, is expelled outside on the opposite end.

“You don’t even appreciate it until you walk through the space,” Duch said. “It’s the mechanical system that’s designed to recirculate air off the pool and bring it back into the mechanical system and exhaust the majority outside. The design team very purposely designed the project to minimize the pool smell, and so far it’s been successful.”

Pool water is heated by hydronic, air-to-water heat pumps. And a next-generation regenerative media filter is used. This tool can be programmed to regenerate the layer of media – in this case, perlite – used to filter the pool water. It can be done daily or in longer intervals. But by ensuring use of fresh perlite each day, the system can work at top efficiency.

“It’s constantly reconfiguring how the water is filtered,” McMaster said. “It’s probably the most efficient system on the market right now.”

Now, demolition of the old pool interior is under way.

“They will … probably start draining the old pool within a couple of weeks,” Marsicek said. “That will take a number of days, and then they’ll punch holes in the concrete shell and fill it in with gravel.”

The refurbished building will have a track that also serves as a raised balcony around the main gymnasium. These are amenities the park district heretofore has been unable to offer.

In short, the design was all about creating more space.

“From the infant-toddler age all the way to seniors and how it works for all those people – that was really important,” Marsicek said. “Everyone had their thing, but creating a facility and space that works for everyone … was one of the biggest challenges.”

Woodburn-based Triplett Wellman is one of the few Oregon contractors with recent experience building a swimming pool, having completed the Northern Wasco County Aquatic Center in 2015. The first phase of the Chehalem project went well, Duch said.

“It was a good project,” he said. “Obviously it’s a very complicated facility, but overall, I think it went as well as could have been expected based on the inherent challenges of a pool structure.”

Along with Woodburn-based Triplett Wellman and Scott | Edwards Architecture, the project team includes Interface Engineering, WDY Structural + Civil Engineers and WHPacific (landscape architecture).

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