Woody Guthrie, an Oklahoma native known for writing the song “This Land Is Your Land,” spent time in many parts of the U.S. In 1941, he arrived in Portland and was hired to write songs for the Bonneville Power Administration. Now the folk music icon’s name is on a new affordable housing complex in Lents, where he once lived.

Designed by Carleton Hart Architecture to resemble – in shape and color – a line of traditional wood-sided boxcars, Woody Guthrie Place was built by Walsh Construction at 5800 S.E. 91st Ave., near Southeast Foster Road. On the exterior, masonry and metal-panel cladding were chosen to suggest natural wood. The building features wood framing atop a slab-on-grade foundation.

ROSE Community Development‘s new building has 64 apartments – 16 for families with incomes not exceeding 30 percent of the area median income; 21 for those not exceeding 80 percent AMI; 26 for those not exceeding 100 percent AMI; and one for a manager. Each unit – ranging from 570 to 1,410 square feet – has either one, two or three bedrooms.

“It’s completely residential with various income restrictions,” said Erik Pattison, a real estate developer for ROSE Community Development. “The whole ground floor on the west side is three-bedroom townhomes. The entrances are facing the street.”

After the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued permission for occupancy on July 1, tenants were able to start moving in. Apartments are being leased quickly, Pattison said.

Some of the units are coupled with project vouchers funded by Home Forward. Others were funded by Prosper Portland.

“The voucher units obviously go quickly,” Pattison said. “They’re taken immediately, and then the 80 percent units are mostly leased along with a couple of the 100s.”

Amenities include a rooftop terrace, bike parking, a large community room on the ground floor, along with smaller communal spaces and outdoor patios near the elevator lobbies on each floor. An outdoor playground for children sits at the building’s south end, next to the community room.

A Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold rating is officially being sought for Woody Guthrie Place. A large photovoltaic solar array sits on the south-facing roof, and is expected during times of peak output to offset as much as 70 percent of residents’ power usage.

Also, a central HVAC system provides pretreated air to residences.

“All the units are on that one system, which is a little unique but very efficient,” Pattison said.

While the project is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification , the energy use index and other performance measures thus far have led the project team to become confident the building actually could tally enough points to earn LEED Platinum certification.

The building is the last of four projects in the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area to be completed as part of the Lents Five-Year Action Plan approved by the city in 2014. Prosper Portland oversaw development of the $109 million in projects; others are the Lents Commons and Oliver Station mixed-use projects and the Asian Health & Service Center. The urban renewal agency is planning a second round of development in the neighborhood.

The post A new building in honor of a folk hero appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The fabric of the Lents neighborhood, in Southeast Portland, is changing as quickly as the rest of the city, as new residents pour in and trendy businesses open up shop.

This is especially evident at a key crossroads – Southeast Foster Road and 92nd Avenue, near Interstate 205. There, a host of new mixed-use projects have sprung up over the past three years, replacing past fixtures such as the New Copper Penny nightclub with hundreds of units of affordable housing and even a new brewery.

Instead of shiny new glass and metal, however, the newest addition to the neighborhood recalls the Roosevelt-era Public Works Administration and legendary singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, who lived in Lents briefly while writing songs about the Bonneville Dam and other public works projects.

Walsh Construction is building Woody Guthrie Place, a four-story, 64-unit affordable housing project designed by Carleton Hart Architecture, at 5800 S.E. 91st Ave. Its natural wood exterior will set it apart from neighboring properties, while also recalling the rustic character of the places Guthrie once wrote about.

“He lived probably two blocks from here during the time that they were building the dams,” said Earl Carson, Carleton Hart Architecture’s lead designer for the project. “The design came from that era of mobility and trains, so if you look at the detailing of the building it looks like a boxcar set off the ground and held off from each other at connecting points.”

The development team is a consortium of nonprofits and public agencies led by Rose Community Development, Home Forward, Prosper Portland and the Portland Housing Bureau.

Woody Guthrie Place is intended to provide Lents-area families affordable workforce housing. It adds to the adjacent neighborhood of single- and multifamily housing with a blend of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, a community room, an outdoor plaza, a play area and a rooftop deck.

Plans call for 15 units to be made eligible for Section 8 vouchers, as well as four one-bedroom, seven two-bedroom and five three-bedroom units reserved for households with incomes at or below 30 percent of area median income. Also, 48 of the units funded by Prosper Portland will be held for tenants with incomes up to 80 percent and 100 percent of area median income.

The project is part of a massive wave of development taking place in Lents, spurred in part by Portland urban renewal dollars.

“There were a lot of interesting discussions happening early on in this project about this massive rush of redevelopment where it’s just an instant neighborhood,” Carleton Hart Architecture principal Brian Carleton said. “And in some ways that’s a good thing. It’s been very sudden in a place that desperately needed redevelopment.”

Rose Community Development is dedicated to revitalizing outer Southeast Portland. Woody Guthrie Place is one project that stands out, according to the group’s housing developer, Erik Pattison.

“I think this is a little more unique, because it’s the first mixed-income project that Rose has done,” he said. “I think the focus here is for transit and creating a new community node in the neighborhood.”

The project was designed both with a sense of history in mind and awareness of the need to serve working-class families, Carleton said.

“There is a neighborhood there, there is a culture there, and I really feel the Woody Guthrie project started with an understanding of that culture,” he said. “So, the way this development is programmed is with the idea that it’s here to serve families in the neighborhood.”

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