A new Jaguar Land Rover dealership is on track to open this fall in Tigard, and it will have an amenity possibly unlike any other.

General contractor Perlo Construction is building the facility for Don Rasmussen Co. on land wedged between the Washington Square shopping center and Oregon Route 217. Tigard-based Mildren Design Group designed the project, TM Rippey is the civil and structural engineer, and WHPacific is in charge of landscape architecture.

The massive facility’s first floor alone will have 65,988 square feet. That space will be dedicated to an array of amenities, including a sales floor, a large service area, an automated car wash and a covered area for potential customers to step into cars for test drives.

A slope on the site allows the service area to be virtually subterranean, and be topped by two levels of garage parking for customers.

In addition to accounting for that slope, the project team faced a number of challenges. Mildren Design Group senior architect Curt Trolan said one was the city’s requirement that 50 percent of the frontage be along the street. That led to inclusion of a 1,800-square-foot pavilion along Southwest Greenburg Road. The glass-sided pavilion will hold two vehicles on display inside, adding a much-improved pedestrian experience outside the L-shaped building.

“This is the first facility we know of in the world where we’ve got a pavilion like this,” Trolan said. “We’re going to end up with just a stunning facility that we’re going to be quite proud of.”

The rest of the frontage faces Route 217. A strategic decision was made to cloak the dealership’s service area from the highway, so only the most pristine elements are visible from all angles of passing traffic.

“We’re trying to capitalize on all these exposures from different perspectives,” dealership manager Dan Muggli said.

Aside from the massive panes of glass for transparency, the building will be adorned with metal panels of champagne silver and sunshine grey – the company’s custom paint colors.

Besides the pavilion, there will be room for two more display vehicles, plus 14 on the showroom floor. On site there will be parking for 100 additional new vehicles.

The 39,000-square-foot service area will have 31 service bays and five more dedicated to vehicle alignment and detailing services. A mezzanine will afford the foreman a full panoramic view of the facilities.

The Tigard dealership fits within Jaguar Land Rover’s global initiative. Its “Arch” concept, which began in 2016, requires that all dealerships carry both brands. Company guidelines ensure each dealership looks and operates the same.

A single welcome kiosk will direct customers to either the Jaguar space or Land Rover space, which will be separate. There will be no individual desks for salespeople, because they will be able to process all transactions on tablets.

In the service department, a large tool bay will contain a wide variety of technology to aid mechanics. There will also be a queue area where necessary tools can be set out before each day’s work begins.

The service area will feature three lanes able to accommodate vehicles either entering or exiting. Two of the three lanes will allow for either incoming or outgoing traffic, depending on time of day.

Muggli said demand for the Jaguar Land Rover brand has far outgrown the existing dealership in Northeast Portland. Besides that one, the nearest dealerships are in Seattle; Boise, Idaho; and Sacramento, California. The new facility will be the premier one in the region, he said.

Don Rasmussen Co. is looking to break the typical car dealership mold, Muggli said, and noted there would be no parking lot full of stickered cars or inflatable gorillas.

“We’re building it to serve not just the Portland/Vancouver (Washington) area, but all of Oregon for that matter,” he said.

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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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WHPacific, one of the largest Native American-owned engineering and land development firms in the U.S., is moving its headquarters to Portland.

Hal Keever, president of WHPacific, said the firm moved its headquarters from Anchorage, Alaska to Colorado Springs about four years ago to take advantage of the oil and gas market. That market has died down, Keever said.

“We decided to really focus on our core competencies where we had a long history in Portland,” he said. “Many of our employees have been there for 20 or 25 years, and the Portland market is a nice foundation to continue to grow our business.”

The company has had an office in Oregon for decades and currently employs about 75 people in its Portland and Salem offices. The firm also has offices in Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, New Mexico, North Dakota and Washington.

WHPacific has been involved in many Portland projects, including the Nike World Campus expansion, the Portland International Airport renovation and expansion, the Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center campus and the Cascade Station mixed-use development. Currently, the firm is involved in the first phase of design for the Boones Ferry Road improvement project in Lake Oswego; it’s the cornerstone project of the city’s Lake Grove Village Center Plan.

WHPacific is owned by NANA Development Corp., a private for-profit corporation that represents more than 13,400 Inupiat shareholders, descendants of the first people to populate northwest Alaska. The firm has worked on multiple tribal projects in the Pacific Northwest.

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