The partnership between Portland developers Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners started with Slate, a mixed-use project in the Central Eastside Industrial District with 75 luxury apartments and 45,000 square feet of commercial space.

Beam had been a player in the Central Eastside for years – mostly retrofitting large, historic buildings such as the Eastside Exchange and Water Avenue Commerce Center into creative office space. But Beam, led by Brad Malsin and his son, Jonathan, had less familiarity with other kinds of projects.

“We didn’t have experience building ground-up multifamily, so we set out to partner up with a team that had experience with that product type,” Jonathan Malsin said.

Meanwhile, Urban Development + Partners was looking to get more involved in the Central Eastside. It was a match made in heaven, or at least the Burnside bridgehead.

“We found that our firms have similar goals or values; we’re in alignment,” said Joren Bass, project manager for UDP. “Beam has a deep history of creative office space. UDP, we have pretty broad experience on the residential component. That was beneficial at Slate.”

Slate is opening to tenants this month. Yet that’s only the beginning of the Beam-UDP partnership. The companies are in the thick of developing three other projects together in the Central Eastside along Stark Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Hotel

First comes the renovation of Hotel Chamberlain, at 509 S.E. Grand Ave., which for decades housed a Shleifer Furniture store. The upper floors of the four-story building contain hotel rooms that have sat empty since the 1970s, when Shleifer Furniture ownership decided the trouble of running a hotel wasn’t worthwhile in the once-rough neighborhood.

Beam and UDP plan to transform the 36,000-square-foot property into a modern boutique hotel with about 60 guest rooms. The ground floor will become a hotel reception area, a lobby and a restaurant or coffee shop.

Features added by Shleifer Furniture over the years, such as a mezzanine and sidewalk-facing display windows, will be removed.

“Taking it back to the original storefront will bring in an amazing amount of natural light and really engage the street,” Bass said.

The developers are working closely with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office to retain the 110-year-old building’s historic characteristics. The renovation will require a full seismic upgrade.

“We’re going to preserve this as a gem,” Bass said.

It’s the first hotel development project for both firms, although UDP owns a hotel in another market. Emerick Architects is designing the hotel.

Hotel and apartments

Beam and UDP plan to build a 13-story mixed-use development with hotel space, multifamily units and ground-floor retail space at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., a half-block slightly west of Hotel Chamberlain where a parking lot sits currently. Two floors of underground parking are planned, along with a rooftop deck.

The mix of uses has not been finalized, Jonathan Malsin said.

“We’re still determining that,” he said. “We anticipate having a hospitality component and multifamily.”

Works Partnership Architecture is designing the project.

Creative offices

At 531 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., the developers plan a mid-rise creative office building of approximately six stories on a parking lot now used by Portland Music Co. Retail space will occupy the ground floor. The developers are working within the restriction of an 80-foot height limit.

Beam and UDP are pursuing the creative office market that has proved lucrative for other Central Eastside projects such as Eastside Exchange.

“We will be targeting the same type of tenant, but every project is so different, especially if it’s adaptive reuse versus new construction,” Malsin said. “We try to deliver a similarly high quality, unique product.”

Portland architecture firm Hacker is designing the office project.

Beam and UDP hope to break ground on all three projects next year, Malsin said. He declined to reveal a total project cost for all three developments, but it will be substantial.

“It’s going to be quite the node of activity here with the three sites,” he said.

Hotel construction has boomed in Portland, but Malsin said Hotel Chamberlain and the hospitality project next door will differentiate themselves in the market.

“There’s definitely a lot of supply coming online,” he said. “It’s definitely something we’re cognizant of. But I don’t lump together the (Central Business District) and the Pearl (District) and the Central Eastside. A cool boutique hotel on the Central Eastside? Yeah, there’s a market for that.”

A potential expansion of the Jupiter Hotel is the only competing project in view, Malsin said.

For Beam, it makes sense to continue investing in the Central Eastside on the heels of the firm’s earlier projects in the area, Malsin said.

“We’ve had a lot of holdings down here for years, so all of our projects are bolstered, and it’s a phenomenal neighborhood,” he said. “We love the grittiness. We love the character.”

The developments by Beam and UDP fit the city’s long-term plans for the Central Eastside, said Debbie Kitchin, who served as co-chairwoman of the stakeholder advisory committee for Southeast Portland.

The neighborhood’s future is guided by the city’s Southeast Quadrant plan, part of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The plan calls for activating the area’s major corridors, while preserving the rest for industrial uses.

“We focused on keeping mixed-use development in the corridor and on the bridgehead streets,” said Kitchin, who is also past president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council and principal of general contractor InterWorks LLC. “That’s been allowed for 30 years, and it’s just now coming to fruition. I think activating those corridors is great.”

These projects started with a relationship that Beam founder Brad Malsin developed with Shleifer Furniture owner Stuart Shleifer. Malsin told Shleifer that if he were ever interested in selling, Beam would be interested in buying.

“This is where we have our network,” Jonathan Malsin said of the Central Eastside. “We’re able to identify properties off-market.”
For a clue as to what Beam and UDP will do together, look at what they’ve done. Slate has a distinctive 10-story design. There are 1.5 floors of retail space and 2.5 floors of office space topped by six floors of apartments. In addition, there is one level of underground parking.

Tenants include surfboard and coffee shop Cosube as well as a restaurant that has inked a letter of intent. CENTRL Office, a co-working company, has taken a space. Two more retail spaces along Third Avenue have not yet been leased.

Slate’s apartment units primarily have two bedrooms, “mostly as a way of differentiating our product,” Malsin said.

The interior has concrete floors, an approach favored by UDP. Bass said the polished concrete blends beauty and durability, is friendly to pets and allergy sufferers, and is resistant to flooding.

“We really won’t build anything that doesn’t have a concrete floor in a residential building like this,” Bass said.

Slate is a linchpin for a fast-developing area; it’s neighbored by Yard and the under-construction Fair-Haired Dumbbell from Kevin Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development. Gerding Edlen is developing a 17-story mixed-use building at the Burnside bridgehead.

Slate’s distinctive design by Works Partnership Architecture (now Works Progress Architecture) and built by Yorke & Curtis is reminiscent of stacked boxes, with apertures protruding from the building.

“It was an aesthetic decision,” Malsin said. “We first started looking at this building as an expression of an industrial neighborhood. We were enamored of the idea. It’s not the easiest detail to construct, but we’re really pleased. I think the design has been really well received.”

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Yorke & Curtis is building a creative office and retail building for Beam Development in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District. 811 Stark was designed by Works Partnership Architecture and features approximately 24,000 square feet of office space over two retail spaces and ground-level parking.

The four-story building has a concrete podium and three floors of glulam post-and-beam construction with concrete slab over structural wood decking, and the building will be clad in metal and concrete, with cedar siding on the ground level.

The building will also feature a rooftop deck, 20 long-term bicycle parking spaces, a plaza along the Sandy Boulevard frontage, and a curated art display on the south façade. The project is slated for completion late this summer.

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The Portland City Council on Wednesday sided with an architecture firm in its appeal to use asphalt shingles as siding for a hotel expansion project.

The council on Wednesday voted unanimously to approve Works Partnership Architecture‘s request to use a type of asphalt shingle manufactured by Portland-based Malarkey Roofing Products on 60 percent of the sides of a planned 73-foot hotel tower in the Buckman neighborhood. The Central City Fundamental Design Guidelines forbid use of the asphalt composition shingle that the project owner, Jupiter Hotel, had hoped to use as exterior cladding.

If Malarkey’s laminated architectural shingle doesn’t work out, the council can “address the consequences,” Commissioner Nick Fish said.

“I fear that in some of these cases we’re getting too prescriptive at the administrative level, and in some instances, it feels like we’re just substituting personal preference,” he said. “I think this is an instance where we should reward innovation and creativity and give them flexibility.”

In March, the Portland Design Commission and city staff expressed concern with the project team’s plan to use the asphalt shingle, and recommended use of a metal shingle, which was said to be more permanent and of higher quality. The project team came back the next month with two options, one employing a metal shingle and one employing its preferred asphalt shingle. The commission in May approved the project with the condition that the metal shingle be used.

The rule excluding the shingle as siding is intended to promote “quality and permanence” to improve the central city’s urban atmosphere. Design commission members also expressed concern with long-term maintenance, the potential of moss and the shedding of asphalt above sidewalks.

A notable and notorious remnant of the motor inn era, the old Jupiter Hotel is an Eastside landmark. The project team is proposing construction of a six-story hotel across the street from the original hotel. It would contain 67 hotel rooms, retail space, restaurant space and event space, one large loading space and no parking.

Carrie Strickland, a Works Partnership Architecture principal, said that using the shingle is not a small matter for the owner.

“It is in fact a primary detail that will make the difference between a mediocre building and an iconic building,” she told the council. “We feel very strongly that the asphalt shingle is this detail. We are asking for your approval to create a beautiful building that we can be proud of and will help further their business.”

Malarkey consultants testified on behalf of the quality of their material and spoke in support of the asphalt shingle. The council returned this week with positive comments on the design.

“I’m worried about a different kind of precedent,” Fish said. “Where we’re telling our design community that we’re not open to innovation, and I want Portland to be known as a place of innovation across the board, including in architecture.”

Malarkey, founded in Portland in 1956, has production facilities in California and Oklahoma. There are fewer than 10 shingle manufacturers in the U.S., according to Traci Shaw, communications coordinator for Malarkey.

The company is said to be the first to use polymer-modified asphalt in shingles in the 1980s. Shaw said the company expects the product to perform well in this unique application. For one thing, it is algae resistant, she said.

“This is a little bit different, because when you’re installing on a roof, most of the weight is going to be on that roof deck, and this is going to be a vertical installation,” Shaw said. “So we’re going to be working really closely to make sure all our clients’ needs are met.”

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The Wood Products Council has named several Portland-area firms 2016 Wood Design Award winners for their “innovative use of wood both as a structural and finish material.”

The Radiator Building won for best multistory wood design. The 36,000-square-foot office building was designed by PATH Architecture with assistance from Munzing Structural Engineering. The general contractor was Kaiser Group Inc. The building is one of three going up at the One North development on North Fremont Street between Williams and Vancouver avenues. The Kartini Clinic, a medical and mental health treatment facility, has already agreed to lease 16,000 square feet in the Radiator Building.

The Framework Building at 160 N.E. Sixth Ave. won for best commercial design. The five-story Central Eastside creative office building was designed by Works Partnership Architecture, with assistance from TM Rippey Consulting Engineers. Yorke & Curtis served as the general contractor.

Hennebery Eddy Architects‘ plans for the Gresham Fire Station won for best institutional wood design. Nishkian Dean Structural Engineers and general contractor Bremik Construction also served on the project team. The 10,000-square-foot “Fire Station 76” features blackened wood paneling across two connected buildings – one a crew living space and the other a storage space for vehicles and apparatus.

Additionally, Hennebery Eddy won in the “wood in educational buildings” category for its design of the Our Lady of Montserrat Chapel in Seattle. Also recognized for that project were two Seattle firms – structural engineer Coughlin Porter Lundeen and general contractor Sellen Construction.

Portland architecture firm Hacker won in the “green building by design” category for its work on the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship building in Bend. The project’s structural engineer was Walker Structural Engineering and the general contractor was Kirby Nagelhout Construction Co.

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Another high-rise planned at the Burnside bridgehead may be headed for approval, but it won’t feature cross-laminated timber (CLT) as proposed originally.

The Portland Design Commission on Thursday heard a staff report and discussed details of the proposed 19-story, mixed-use building at 111 N.W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The building is being designed by Works Partnership Architecture for Beam Development and will complete development of Block 75 near the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. Urban Development Partners is co-developer of the project.

Use of wood in construction was barely mentioned during the meeting to provide design advice. A post-tensioned concrete frame is now planned, with steel and glass cladding.

In October 2015, Beam Development principal Brad Malsin said he would like to use CLT for the building, but would have to evaluate costs first. Also, Portland city building codes would have to be changed. An 18-story building in the works in Vancouver, British Columbia, would become the tallest constructed with CLT.

This new project near the intersection of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Couch Street represents the second and final phase of development at Lot 75, where a 10-story concrete-and-steel building, also designed by Works Partnership, is under construction. Discussion at Thursday’s meeting centered on the state-of-the-art mechanical parking garage and more mundane issues like quantities of curb cuts, loading stalls and sidewalk canopies.

Plans call for a basement service level, street-level retail space, a second-floor commercial area, four levels of mechanized parking and 13 levels of residential units. The mechanized parking will allow two layers of cars per level, city planner Tim Heron said.

“Cars are not 10 feet tall; they’re five feet tall, so you can do two layers of cars on one level,” he said. “You would drive into the elevator, get out of the car and take your keys with you and robots take it up and park it.”

Carrie Strickland, a principal at Works Partnership, said plans call for 80 to 100 mechanized parking stalls.

“We are striving to get at least a one-to-one parking count in the building,” she said.

Strickland said that only a mechanized parking structure being built in Philadelphia will be similar to the one planned at Block 75.

Works Partnership principal William Neburka added that views from outside of the parking garage can be an asset.

“With glazing and simple graphic scheme we can see how that parking can call attention to itself as an active element,” he said.

Neburka went on to tell commissioners that the clear glass curtain will actually be a window wall and be used with metal panels.

“We probably should have a conversation on how we begin to integrate some more opaque or textured materials (and) allow some parking glass and glass as transparent as possible at the base of the building,” he said.

Strickland then asked if glass in the auto lobby could count toward the required glazing percentage, but Commissioner Tad Savinar said no. Later in the meeting he said that a different glass treatment might have more appeal.

“If you have a light frost on the windows you could see moving forms instead of moving cars,” he said. “And that could be a lot more interesting from across the river, from a distance, to actually have the building breathing and moving instead of focusing on the mechanical action of moving a car.”

Although Strickland and Neburka pointed to planned overhangs as protection for pedestrians, Commissioner Julie Livingston said that canopies would be needed.

“You do need to address canopies because the overhangs aren’t close enough to the street to provide good protection,” she said.

Commissioners late in the meeting focused on including sidewalk canopies in the design and deciding the number of curb cuts that will be needed for loading and vehicle access. The current proposal includes two curb cuts on Northeast Davis Street – one for loading and one for the mechanical parking elevator.

“It’s possible they may need a third loading stall,” Heron said after the meeting. “My crystal ball is telling me they’re going to need another loading stall.”

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The Block 75 mixed-use project at the Burnside Bridgehead, a joint development between Urban Development + Partners and Beam Development, continues to take shape. The ten-story mixed-use building  will feature ground-floor retail, creative office space on floors 2-4, and six stories of apartments on the upper floors.

General contractor Yorke & Curtis Residential began work on the Works Partnership Architecture-designed building late last year. The concrete and steel-frame building was topped out last month, and crews are busy installing the curtainwall on the building’s north and south facades, framed exteriors with metal paneling on the east and west sides, and framing and roughing in MEP work.

The project is slated for completion in mid-2016.

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More than a year has passed since Kevin Cavenaugh of Guerrilla Development first proposed his “Fair-Haired Dumbbell” building for a site at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. On Thursday he finally got the Portland Design Commission‘s approval.

Cavenaugh’s design, which won a city competition, features two six-story, cantilevered buildings slightly angled away from each other and joined at every floor level by eight-foot-wide, 30-feet-long open walkways. Both buildings will be completely covered with an original design by an artist yet to be selected.

Design Commission Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser voted against approval, but commissioners Julie Livingston, Tad Savinar and Jeff Simpson all gave approval for the art-inspired project after about an hour of discussion. Commission Chairman David Wark and Commissioner Don Vallaster were absent.

Kaiser was not explicit about his reasons for voting no, but he seemed to be concerned about how the building would fare in the long term.

“We have to think about 80 or 100 years from now,” he said.

At a previous design hearing for the project earlier this month, commissioners brought up concerns about perceived insufficient glazing, whether a covering should be placed over the sixth-floor walkway and how the roof would be treated.

Kaiser said then that he thought not covering the sixth-floor walkway would be a mistake. But Savinar said Thursday that after studying a rendering of the proposed building, he decided that covering the top walkway would affect the design.

“I think a canopy won’t work and it seems stupid,” he said.

Livingston said she was satisfied with plans for the building and Simpson said he was in favor of approval. And although he voted in favor the proposal, Savinar said he still had some reservations about being able to maintain the texture of the building’s skin.

Before the vote, Joe Zody of FFA Architecture & Interiors, representing Cavenaugh, defended the percentage of windows in the building by pointing to other buildings with similar percentages of glazing. Zody added that ground-floor windows accounted for 50 percent of surface area. He also pointed out that the Regional Arts & Culture Council had approved the building.

Zody also said that covering the top walkway wouldn’t work with the design.

“We look at the exterior bridges as exactly that,” he said.

Zody added that he had requested that the RACC include the building’s roof in the design that will cover the exterior walls.

After the meeting, Zody said he was pleased with the outcome.

“It’s a milestone for us, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

The next step will be to complete documents required for a building permit, which Zody said he expected to be done by Christmas. He said construction could begin by next spring and finish in about a year.

In the meantime, Zody said the RACC can now initiate the process of selecting an artist to create a design for the building’s skin.

“We can start very quickly now with approval and really begin the process,” he said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is one of three projects at the Burnside bridgehead; the other two are already under construction.

Works Partnership Architecture designed a 10-story mixed-use building for Block 75, at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., with both office and residential space in a modular format above ground-floor retail space.

A 21-story tower designed by Skylab Architecture for Block 67 will have 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading public park at the bridge level.

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Portland could soon become home to the world’s tallest cross-laminated timber (CLT) building.

An application requesting design advice for a 19-story mixed-use tower in Northeast Portland was submitted recently by Mark Nye of Works Partnership Architecture, on behalf of Block 75 LLC. A 10-story concrete and steel-frame building is already being constructed on Block 75; however, this proposed second building – at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Couch Street – could differ significantly. That is because Brad Malsin, owner of Beam Development, the project’s developer, is considering using CLT.

“We consider ourselves pioneers in a lot of the real estate and development that we have done,” Malsin said. “Our general mindset is not just building things, but trying to provide opportunities for ourselves, for the city, for others. It’s important to identify new construction types, especially if it produces jobs. We realize the impact that CLT construction could have on the Oregon economy in stimulating the lumber business. We’re aware of both the direct and the indirect benefits of doing a first-of-its-kind high-rise CLT building. We’re hoping that this could really, really stimulate a lot of people to take a look at what the opportunities are.”

Of course, before a CLT building taller than six stories could be constructed in Portland, city building codes would need to change. The possibility of modifying those codes is already being reviewed.

“Recently the (International Code Council) sent out a call for an ad hoc committee,” said Catherine Heeb, building plans examiner with the Bureau of Development Services. “The American Wood Council requested that ICC start this committee to look at code change, so it’s at the very beginning stages.”

Beam Development’s proposed building could be either 19 or 20 stories. Currently, an 18-story building planned in Vancouver, British Columbia, is on track to become the world’s tallest constructed with CLT.

Before deciding whether to use CLT for the second building at Block 75, Malsin said that he will have to consider numerous factors. Those include constructability, cost, permitting and possible financing obstacles.

That said, after checking out some University of British Columbia buildings that have used CLT, Malsin wants to follow suit.

“We’ve gotten comfortable enough to try to see if we can make sense of it,” he said. “We would prefer doing it. I want to make it clear that we are continuing to investigate. We’d like to do a CLT building, but (we do not know) whether it’s feasible to go 19 to 20 stories.”

Ethan Martin, Northwest regional director for WoodWorks, an initiative of the Wood Products Council, said that with city codes currently limiting mass-timber buildings to six stories, one 19 or 20 stories would have a dramatic impact on the industry.

“It will be a landmark opportunity,” he said. “It will put us into a section of our building code that has never allowed the use of wood. It will really open up the door for people to use mass timber in buildings in the six- to 20-story range.”

On Tuesday, Beam Development hosted a “topping off party” to celebrate the last floor being poured for the 10-story building representing phase one of the project.

Malsin said that he has received a number of letters expressing interest in leasing commercial space in the first building. The team has not started to market the residential units yet, but occupancy is expected to begin sometime next summer.

Malsin added that he believes the use of CLT in the second building would add to the aesthetic value of the first building, which will have a modern appearance.

“The (CLT) buildings themselves are so unique with the warmth of the wood and the feel and fit and finish,” he said. “It’s really a different experience. Instead of building a monolithic type of development, with a number of buildings that kind of mimic each other, we’re really set on trying to have an array of different types of buildings and different types of ideas and different types of forward thinking.”

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The brains behind the designs of three very different developments planned at the east end of the Burnside Bridge revealed their motivations – and even exchanged a few barbs – during a panel discussion in Northwest Portland on Monday night.

Randy Gragg, executive director of the John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies at the University of Oregon, served as moderator. Panelists included Works Partnership Architecture principals Carrie Strickland and Bill Neburka, Skylab Architecture principal Jeff Kovel and Guerrilla Development principal Kevin Cavenaugh.

Each, in turn, talked about the motivations and thought processes behind their designs.

Kovel’s firm is behind the design of a $58 million, 21-story tower under construction on Block 67. The building will hold 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 284 apartments. A lower adjoining structure on lot 76 will have a parking garage for 200 vehicles and be topped with a green, cascading park.

“The two things at the core for me are abstraction and improvisation,” Kovel said. “There is a big musical influence in my life and my work, as well as a real fondness for abstraction, to try to look for different ways, even in the same project, to express an idea.”

Kovel said that inspired the decision to put a park atop the underground parking lot.

“We had a parking lot and thought why not make it a park and lift it up to the bridge level,” he said. “It’s a conceptual link to the wild river bank that existed before the city was formed. We used that as an amphitheater for viewing the city, for stormwater treatment and put our parking below it.”

The Works Partnership project at the Burnside bridgehead, a 10-story mixed-use building on Block 75, also is under construction. Retail space is planned for the ground floor, but Strickland said the upper floors could be used for either apartments or offices.

“It’s a 10-story building with 1,500-square-foot spaces,” Strickland said. “They are cellular spaces and anything can happen at any level.”

Neburka said his team traveled to Chicago to get ideas for the project.

“At the corner of Dearborn (Street) and Jackson (Boulevard) is the city’s tallest masonry building where the bottom walls are eight feet thick, and right across the street is Federal Plaza, the essence of free space, with ephemeral buildings above,” he said. “Our building is about these ideas, and the idea of permanence and history and modernity began to take shape.”

The project talked about most during the night was Cavenaugh’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. All panelists agreed that it will be the centerpiece of the bridgehead projects because of its conspicuous location. The project is due to receive its final design review this week.

“You got stuck in the throne site, the island in the middle of a traffic pattern in the middle of a development,” Neburka said. “You’re on the main stage and I wonder how that affected your design.”

Cavenaugh’s original design for two six-story, cantilevered buildings joined by elevated walkways raised concerns because it called for an exterior resembling brightly-colored Florentine wallpaper. That plan changed, and now the Regional Arts and Culture Council is working with Cavenaugh to find an artist to create an original design.

But Cavenaugh said he wants the building, the smallest of the three developments at the bridgehead, to pop out to passersby. The exterior design will be “a crazy color,” he said.

“I don’t want people to die, but I do want people to get in little, small fender benders driving by,” he said.

Cavenaugh said his best creativity comes when his thought processes are balanced.

“I had my ass handed to me after the recession and now I want to make sure I balance between right brain work and left brain work and, ideally, the result is something quirky,” he said.

Quirkiness is what Cavenaugh hopes will help him promote the building to design firms, which he’d like to have as tenants.

“Each floor plate is only 4,000 square feet, so it’s ideal for a 10- to 15-person office,” he said. “If my client ends up being design firms, those are design firms who shouldn’t be on the 20th floor of Big Pink, eighth door to the left. They should be in a building like this.”

All of the Burnside bridgehead designs are very different, Neburka said, because there was no master planning process as there was for the South Waterfront District.

But Strickland said that not planning ahead was the point.

“The danger is in developing a multi-block at the same time and there being too much consistency,” she said. “Breaking it down with different developers and different programs – that’s how real cities develop over time.”

After about two hours of discussion, Gragg asked the panelists how they would work together moving forward and what the neighborhood will look like.

“I think you’ll see a lot of people taking pictures of these buildings for a long time to come,” Cavenaugh said.

Gragg also asked panelists to critique each other’s designs, and Strickland obliged.

“We all really do like each other, but before we even started the building we had done so much work on the east side, and I don’t think your building is authentic east side,” Strickland said of Kovel’s design.

Kovel smiled.

“I actually like the view of your building from my building,” he replied.

Strickland also criticized Cavenaugh’s design.

“Maybe you’re putting up a building that is not as important as everyone is expecting it to be,” she said.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell’s standing as the centerpiece is “the elephant in the room,” Kovel said. Neburka added that the location is “a very, very loaded site.”

But Neburka said organic growth is continually occurring in the Central Eastside and that the Fair-Haired Dumbbell may become something entirely different in 50 or 75 years.

Cavenaugh said that’s OK with him.

“We tend to take ourselves too seriously,” he said. “I think amazing ideas will follow me, and I don’t think I am the pinnacle of ideas.”

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Construction of Framework, a new five-story commercial building at the corner of Northeast Sixth Avenue and Davis Street in Portland, is nearing completion. The project is being built by Yorke & Curtis for developer Urban Development + Partners, and was designed by Works Partnership Architecture.

Framework will house four floors of flexible creative office space over an 1,800-square-foot ground-floor retail space and seven parking spaces. The upper floors measure nearly 5,000 square feet and feature exposed structural glue laminated beams, tongue-and-groove car decking, and floor-to-ceiling windows. The project is slated for completion this month.

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