In the future, perhaps the 2020s will be remembered as the decade Portland’s urban buildings increasingly went green.

Not just green as in low carbon, high performance and high efficiency. Green as in leaves, vines and branches.

Tree Farm is the unmissable example. The six-story office and retail building at the Morrison Bridge‘s east landing has dozens of strawberry trees in massive planters attached to the exterior on all four sides.

“From a traditional real estate pro-forma sense, it doesn’t make sense to put trees on the outside of the building,” said David Davies, who leads Alta Urban Projects and served as Tree Farm’s co-developer alongside Kevin Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development. “But we knew we wanted to do something unique to bring beauty to the Central Eastside, where it’s a built environment with warehouses.”

By bringing nature to the urban fabric, Davies said, the greenery sets the building apart.

“It stands out,” he said.

Final touches are being added to Tree Farm, with tenants expected to move in within days, Davies said.

Following in the development pipeline is the leafy proposed design for the Westwind Apartments, a publicly subsidized affordable housing project in Old Town Chinatown. The design, currently being evaluated by the Portland Design Commission and Bureau of Development Services, calls for plantings at each floor climbing the building’s corner.

The greenery is designed to integrate into each level, providing residents a view with an organic element.

“No matter what level they’re on, as they look out, in the foreground of their view of the context there’s a little garden space,” said Brian Cavanaugh, principal and co-founder of Architecture Building Culture, which is designing the project for Central City Concern in collaboration with Works Progress Architecture.

“It’s sort of an exploration of biophilia and trying to bring greenery into the experience of the residents,” he said.

It’s not an entirely novel idea to put trees and other plants on building exteriors. Downtown Portland’s PacWest Center, a 1980s concrete-and-steel tower, has sported an evergreen tree on its mid-building terrace for decades. More recently, Mirabella, a South Waterfront residential tower, arrived with extensive landscaping stepping up the building.

In Seattle, The Spheres, occupied by Amazon, delivered a prime example of a sort of office greenhouse. Internationally, newer buildings in major cities have gone vegetal, like Milan’s Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), a two-tower residential development built in 2014 with hundreds of trees and other plants. A regional government in China is constructing an entire Forest City of buildings that incorporate trees.

Locally, the greening of urban buildings has been spurred by environmental consciousness, advances in landscape architecture and the city of Portland’s eco-roofs requirement. Since summer 2018, new buildings of 20,000 net square feet or larger within certain Central City zones are required to have eco-roofs.

The roofs are meant to process carbon and alleviate the urban heat island effect. The accumulation of new eco-roofs may significantly change the look and feel of downtown Portland in time. Whereas aerial shots of downtown Portland from the mid-20th century show vast expanses of surface parking lots, by the middle of the 21st century, the same views could look much greener.

“Green roofs are definitely here to stay,” said Carol Mayer-Reed, principal at landscape architect Mayer/Reed Inc.

Reed distinguished between green roofs, which are intensively planted and have deep soil depths, from eco-roofs, which can be small, shallow sections atop a building. Green roofs have come a long way from years ago, when it was difficult to find an insurance carrier to cover landscape architects working on them, Mayer-Reed said.

Mayer/Reed Inc. designed landscaped planters incorporated into the face of the parking garage at Portland International Airport. The greenery arose from conversations with the Port of Portland board, which wanted a natural look after obscuring a view of Mount Hood, Mayer-Reed said.

Port officials and landscape architects settled on a design for extensively landscaped planters. “The Port board were willing to look at a landscaped statement that expressed how lush and beautiful our Pacific Northwest is,” Mayer-Reed said. “That’s been in for years and it’s maintained really well.”

Natural elements, done well, can enhance a built design.

“It can be quite effective and it can be beautiful and it can express seasonality,” Mayer-Reed said.

Maintenance is the looming question for extensively landscaped projects, as some members of the Portland Design Commission have pointed out in recent hearings.

“It’s an attempt to distinguish architecture and gain attention, and I do think the maintenance that’s given to those will define how long they last,” Mayer-Reed said.

In the case of Tree Farm, the project team brought in strawberry trees – Arbutus unedo, a hardy evergreen – from Cistus Nursery on Sauvie Island.

“We needed something that would work on all four faces with different solar exposure,” said Westin Glass, development manager at Guerrilla Development.

The strawberry trees are not expected to grow much larger, keeping maintenance needs to a minimum.

“One thing we focused on was durability and low maintenance,” Davies said. “They’re not going to be enormous trees.”

Each planter has its own individually controlled irrigation as well as a fire sprinkler – something city officials requested when the project was evaluated while the Eagle Creek Fire raged.

The trees will likely be maintained by a winched cart system similar to those used by window washers, Glass said. It remains to be seen if Guerrilla Development’s in-house maintenance team will maintain the plants, or whether the ownership will hire an outside contractor.

The initial reception to the project has been strong, the developers said. Prospective office tenants have expressed interest, and the ground floor is filling up. Nicholas Restaurant will soon open a location in the building, and the building owners are in discussions with coffee-shop operators. A speakeasy-style bar is a possibility for another ground-floor space.

The trees and related systems added a “few hundred thousand dollars” to the approximately $10 million construction cost of Tree Farm, Davies said. The building is otherwise simple – an intentional strategy to keep costs down and allow for competitive lease rates. Yet the trees add interest to an otherwise typical commercial building.

“It tends to soften buildings and brings interest and nature into the landscape where, at Tree Farm, tenants will be able to look out and see nice, beautiful trees,” Davies said. “And they’ll have nice views of downtown and the river.”

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The Portland Design Commission on Thursday got its first look at plans for the new Westwind Apartments: a seven-story, 100-unit affordable housing structure in Old Town Chinatown.

The project, backed by the Portland Housing Bureau and housing operator Central City Concern, would replace a decrepit, single room occupancy (SRO) building completed in 1903 with a modern one designed by Works Progress Architecture. The existing building at 333 N.W. Sixth Ave. would be demolished.

Works Progress Architecture brought a sleek, contemporary design to Thursday’s hearing. The L-shaped building would fit tightly on the quarter-block lot. The project team faces a number of site challenges, including an ongoing issue with the Portland Bureau of Transportation regarding the public right-of-way and whether an easement or a major encroachment would be required.

The building would have 70 short-term SRO units and 30 studio apartments. There would also be offices for Central City Concern and community spaces.

The exterior would have dark metal panels. The design features a prominent corner at Northwest Sixth Avenue and Flanders Street anchored by trees growing from box-shaped projections. Two loading areas would be located off of Flanders Street.

Design commissioners said the building should respond to its context: Old Town Chinatown is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Oregon, with a unique collection of low-slung brick masonry buildings that date back more than a century. That presents a different challenge for Works Progress Architecture – a firm known for cutting-edge contemporary architecture in Portland’s commercial corridors.

“The thing about the buildings Works brings in – they are a meta-context,” Design Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “There is a body of work that you own around the city that is part of that. I would like to see – I will see – how you ultimately land one of your buildings in such a strong context.”

Design commissioners focused on the proposed materials, including exterior metal paneling.

“The metal panel for me is a tough sell because there is masonry on pretty much every building in the neighborhood,” Commissioner Jessica Molinar said.

While the project team must account for neighborhood context, it also is working with a strict budget.

“Obviously there is a cost consideration when it comes to masonry, and we don’t talk about money in the hearing room, but there are more affordable solutions besides brick,” Livingston said.

The proposal doesn’t need to mimic its historic neighbors, Commissioner Sam Rodriguez said.

“Contextually, it’s a very interesting problem, because this is a very old neighborhood,” he said. “I don’t think we need to do Disneyland, Mickey Mouse copies of what’s there.”

Commissioners also probed the design team on the tree-sprouting projections.

“We have a hard time keeping landscaping alive under overhangs,” Brian McCarter said.

The projections should work as architectural elements with or without trees, commissioners said.

The Westwind is a key affordable housing project for the city. The Housing Bureau in November 2018 used tax-increment financing to purchase the property from a Newberg couple for $3 million. The new building would be constructed using money from the city’s $258.4 million housing bond that was approved by voters in November 2016. Multnomah County has pledged to contribute $4 million to the project.

The project team is expected to return before the Design Commission later this month.

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Portland and Multnomah County officials announced Tuesday they will build or rehabilitate nine affordable housing developments that will provide approximately 930 subsidized apartments across the city.

The cohort of housing projects represents the dividend from the $258.4 million housing bond approved by voters in November 2016. A year later, a statewide measure added flexibility, allowing public housing authorities to use taxpayer dollars in concert with private dollars.

The infusion of funding will be a boon to nonprofit developers and contractors. Total spending on the projects is expected to exceed $300 million.

“Everybody deserves a decent, safe and affordable place to call home,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said at City Hall on Tuesday while announcing the housing projects.

Plans came in response to a Housing Bureau solicitation in April. Proposals were due in June. Among the criteria, all proposed subsidized units had to be priced at 60 percent of area median income or less. In addition, one-third of the total units had to be deeply affordable – priced at 30 percent of area median income or less.

The Housing Bureau set maximum available subsidies at $150,000 per unit for new construction or $100,000 per unit for acquisition and rehab. Proposals had to provide a minimum of 50 units.

Wheeler said the new projects, combined with others that were already in motion, will fulfill the goals set out by the housing bond framework plan.

“We now have all of the units to hit our bond goals or surpass them,” he said.

Multnomah County will contribute $4 million to provide permanently supportive housing services meant to keep formerly homeless individuals off of the streets.

County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury said the surge of affordable housing projects confirms that homelessness is the top public policy priority.

“Homelessness is now at the forefront of our moral compass, and it should be,” she said.

The $5 million reaped from the county’s sale of the Wapato Jail property was plowed into The Westwind – one of the new projects, Kafoury said.

The link between affordable housing and homelessness is clear, Kafoury said.

“You can’t solve homelessness without housing,” she said.

The projects announced Tuesday are a mix of rehabilitation and ground-up construction. The projects using existing buildings are:

• Alta at 18th, a 144-unit rehabilitation project from NW Housing Alternatives with NW Pilot Project and NAYA
• The Anna Mann House, which will convert an existing Laurelhurst building into 88 units of affordable housing, by Innovative Housing Inc. with IRCO and Luke-Dorf Inc.
• The Joyce Hotel, 66 units, by Community Partners for Affordable Housing with Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare and the Native American Rehabilitation Association (NARA) of the Northwest Inc.

The ground-up construction projects planned are:

• 115th at Division Street, 138 units, from Related NW and Central City Concern
• Cathedral Village, a project in St. Johns with 110 units, from Related NW with Catholic Charities
• Las Adelitas, 141 units from Hacienda Community Development Corp., with services by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare
• Northeast Prescott, 50 units from Community Development Partners and the Native American Youth and Family Center with NARA
• Stark Street Project, 93 units from Human Solutions with LifeWorks NW and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization
• The Westwind, 100 units in Old Town Chinatown, from Central City Concern with NARA

The Housing Bureau anticipates it will have $45 million remaining from the housing bond.

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