Native Land Development is replicating its multifamily model around Portland.

The latest project calls for an 85-foot-tall modular building at North Minnesota Avenue and North Jessup Street. The project, Minnesota Places, would offer approximately 90 residential units in an eight-story, 54,000-square-foot structure.

Minnesota Places underwent an initial design advice hearing Thursday with the Portland Design Commission. The project will later go through a Type II staff review. It will not return to the Design Commission unless a decision by Bureau of Development Services staff is appealed.

Native Land Development has been busy. The Lacey, Washington-based developer also recently proposed an 11-story, 89-unit modular multifamily building for a property south of Portland State University. Earlier this year, the firm constructed two small stick-built multifamily buildings (one with 30 units and another with 28) along Southeast Milwaukie Avenue in Sellwood.

Minnesota Places would rise in a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes west of Interstate 5. Developers have added larger projects, however, such as Nomad, a seven-story, 130-unit building from Ethos Development and Works Progress Architecture. Nomad is nearly completed, with delivery expected in November, Ethos founding principal Paul Del Vecchio said.

The neighborhood is designed for dense urban development, said Tim Heron, a BDS reviewer. Killingsworth Station, serving the MAX yellow line, is nearby at North Killingsworth Street and Interstate Avenue.

Minnesota Places is being designed by John Wright of Wright Architecture. The structure would consist largely of mass-pressed plywood. The ground floor would have a lobby, community rooms and loading area topped by seven stories of apartments with one, two or three bedrooms apiece. BDS valued the project at $8 million.

An entry courtyard would have a colonnade using mass plywood along with metal or cementitious stucco.

The project will bring affordable housing to the neighborhood, said Austin Turner, a development consultant working with Native Land Development. Information on the affordability level of the apartments was not immediately available.

Commissioners on Thursday were largely complimentary of the design, particularly the H-shape. Commissioner Brian McCarter said the shape “does a pretty nice job of taking a building this big and breaking it down to a more human scale.”

Concerns centered on the durability of the mass plywood material in Oregon rain. Commissioner Jessica Molinar said the exposed plywood on the colonnade could present maintenance issues.

“You’re in a losing battle,” she said. “So unless the owner is willing to commit to serious maintenance of this, another option would have a much greater chance of success.”

Commissioners also took issue with the height of the ground floor and the design scheme of numerous small, vertically oriented windows.

“I am really concerned about the window-to-wall ratio,” Molinar said. “I’m worried that it will feel really institutional and not residential.”

Wright said the windows could be made about 6 inches wider without significant plan changes.

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Works Progress Architecture has more work to do before its design for a multifamily building in North Portland can gain approval, design commissioners said.

The Portland Design Commission heard an appeal from the firm on Thursday; a proposal for a five-story, 73-unit building was denied previously. The project, called “,” is being led by Ethos Development LLC. The proposal for property at 5626 to 5632 N. Montana Ave., in the Overlook neighborhood, is scheduled to return before the commission on Aug. 20.

“The proposal continues to fall short of guidelines,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said, referring to design guidelines for public realm and quality and permanence.

Works Progress Architecture asked for an exception to allow for oriel window projections – a signature element for the firm – despite objections from the Portland Bureau of Transportation. A staff report also raised concerns about window louvers that were “not well integrated into the overall design” and the use of “fiber cement panels and fiber cement shingles” at ground level.

Facing a likely adverse vote, Works Progress Architecture asked the commissioners not to vote, but to instead hold the record open until the August meeting.

Frustration surfaced both for the project team and city officials. Carrie Strickland, founding principal of Works Progress Architecture, urged the Bureau of Development Services to “have an interactive process with us this time around so we’re not wasting everybody’s time and money.”

Conversations with the BDS need to happen before project drawings are submitted, said Benjamin Nielsen, a senior planner with the bureau.

“I need that interaction to happen up front and not at the end,” he said.

Livingston acknowledged that the design review process is more challenging now.

“It’s a clunky process and it’s been made clunkier by the fact that we’re all remote,” she said. “This has gotten exponentially harder.”

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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’s Kerns neighborhood could soon gain another boutique hotel.

Works Progress Architecture is proposing construction of a new four-story building above and adjacent to an existing single-story building at 1642 N.E. Sandy Blvd. That 99-year-old structure holds the See See Motor Coffee Co., which is owned by Portland businessman and developer George Kassapakis. The 3,500-square-foot building occupies a small, trapezoid-shaped parcel.

As proposed in documents submitted to the city, the new hotel building would only partially replace the existing structure. See See Motor Coffee Co. would remain. A pre-application conference with the Bureau of Development Services is scheduled for Jan. 16.

Drawings included in the submission show a four-story structure that mirrors the property’s sharply angled shape. The sharpest angle, in the northeast corner, is shown rounded off, while a sizable canopy covers the building entrance along Northeast 17th Avenue.

A ground-level floor plan shows the coffee shop taking up much of the floor space, with retail space and the hotel lobby fronting Northeast 17th Avenue. A stairwell for hotel guests would exit the south side of the building onto another sidewalk.

No additional vehicle parking is proposed for the project.

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An adaptive reuse project that combined a pair of Northwest Portland industrial buildings into a single creative office campus took top honors at the Portland Architecture Awards ceremony hosted by AIA Oregon last month.

earned LEVER Architecture an Honor Award for what judges described as a “rather sublime conception of how design might better relate to ecology in this century.” The project, completed earlier this year for Langley Investment Partners, involved stripping a pair of 1940s-era heavy-timber buildings down to their structural elements before rebuilding them into an open-office building with an industrial aesthetic respectful of the site’s heritage.

Old-growth timber posts, beams and joists were refurbished and left exposed, and mezzanines were installed in both buildings. New banks of clerestory windows provide natural daylighting. The buildings were clad in weathering steel and joined by a glass-enclosed breezeway that serves as a main entrance and reception area.

In their judging notes, Quebec-based competition jurors Cécile Combelle of Atelier Barda and Kiel Moe of McGill University lauded the building as an example of a design ethos that “… carefully considers and interprets what already exists in order to nudge and extend the life of our building environments.” The jury also included Kim Pariseau of Quebec-based Appareil Architecture.

Judges bestowed four Merit Awards, including two upon Hacker: one for a private residence in Bend, and another for Berwick Hall, a building that provides music rehearsal/performance space and offices for the Oregon Bach Festival on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene.

Merit Awards also went to Architecture Building Culture for Jarrett Street 12, a modular affordable housing project containing 12 for-sale units in North Portland, and Opsis Architecture for the Navigation Center shelter project in the Pearl District.

Citation Award winners included Silica by William/Kaven Architecture, the Oregon Conservation Center by LEVER Architecture, OHSU Center for Health and Healing – Building 2 by ZGF Architects, and Howard Residence by Architecture Building Culture. Works Progress Architecture‘s 7 SE Stark won a Citation Award as an unbuilt project.

In addition to the judged entries, two projects were honored for meeting or exceeding 2030 Challenge standards for carbon neutrality. Those honors were based on energy data from project submissions and with assistance from BetterBricks and the University of Oregon School of Architecture’s Energy Studies in Buildings Lab.

Tillamook Row, designed by Green Hammer director of design Erica Dunn, won a 2030 Award. Also, Hennebery Eddy Architects‘ Great Smoky Mountains Institute second campus in Townsend, Tennessee, won one for an unbuilt project.

Three design professionals were recognized for contributions to the community and the profession. John Reynolds, professor of architecture emeritus at the University of Oregon, was named the AIA Portland President’s Award winner; Carin Carlson, an associate with Hennebery Eddy Architects, was given the Young Architect Award; and Whitney Ranson, a designer with SRG Partnership, was honored with the Emerging Professional Award.

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Harsch Investment Properties‘ 7 SE Stark building is either a major new office project with ample parking, or a major new parking project with an office component.

Hoffman Construction has erected the core and shell of the 10-story building in the Central Eastside Industrial District. Exterior and interior work is ongoing, with completion expected in late July.

Works Progress Architecture designed the 200,000-square-foot building to feature a modern concrete-and-steel structure and extensive exterior glass.

Parking is the differentiator at 7 SE Stark. The first six floors are dedicated to structured parking – 275 stalls. The building offers at least two stalls per 1,000 square feet, dwarfing most modern office developments in Portland’s Central City. Some of the parking will be rented out to other users in the fast-growing Central Eastside office market.

The building is a response to a pronounced lack of parking for the Central Eastside’s growing employment base, said Jake Lancaster, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle in Portland.

“There’s a tremendous need for parking in the neighborhood as it evolves from its industrial roots,” he said.

The area has several adaptive reuse spaces, including Autodesk‘s office at the Towne Storage building, with limited parking.

Parking may be a key selling point for 7 SE Stark, said Macadam Forbes President Kevin VandenBrink, who is not involved in the project.

“While no one wants to admit that parking is an issue, the tenants have told us you still need to find ways to get people into and out of those spaces,” he said.

The Central Eastside is becoming more of a “24/7 neighborhood” where people live and work, Lancaster said. The building is pinched on a half-acre parcel between Interstate 5 and Union Pacific tracks. Eateries such as Olympia Provisions, Steven Smith Teamaker and Wayfinder Beer operate nearby.

On Wednesday, Lancaster led a tour of 7 SE Stark as construction winds down. He pointed to a small, modern lobby that will be decorated with murals commissioned by Jordan Schnitzer, Harsch’s owner and a noted art collector.

The top floor has a floor plate of approximately 17,000 square feet, while the three lower office floors offer about 20,000 square feet apiece. Lancaster said the brokerage would be willing to split the top floor with potentially more than one user, but is looking for tenants willing to take an entire floor for the three others.

The office floors have 12 decks in total, and offer sweeping views, including the Willamette River and downtown to the west.

Lease rates are expected to be $33 to $35 per square foot on a triple-net basis, Lancaster said. Other expenses will add $10 to $12 per square foot.

The entry of 7 SE Stark to the office market comes as construction continues nearby on other office projects, including District Office from Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners, and Tree Farm from Guerrilla Development. Gerding Edlen‘s 5 MLK mixed-use project will bring 120,000 square feet of office space to market in early 2020. Oregon Square from American Assets Trust also has office space on the market.

Central Eastside office tenants are no longer limited to the “funky spaces” in adaptive reuse projects that typified the area a few years ago, VandenBrink said.

“It has kind of grown up on the Eastside now, where you have tenants paying rents even with the Pearl (District) or the (Central Business District),” he said.

With rents even across the area, leasing decisions often come down to noneconomic factors, VandenBrink said.

“It comes down to what feels right, who has the best amenities (and) what spaces are most efficient for the layout and the employees,” he said.

Harsch acquired the property via a limited liability company for $375,000 in 2012, according to Multnomah County records. The seller was Francis Development LLC.

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The Jupiter NEXT hotel was designed by one of Portland’s hottest architecture firms in a hip stretch of Lower Burnside. At night, the block pulses with the energy of tourists with money to spend and young locals on dates.

The hotel, at 900 E. Burnside St., pops up in Instagram with pictures of its new bar, Hey Love, and thoughtfully designed interior settings. The exterior was clad with asphalt shingles after the City Council overruled a condition imposed by the Design Commission to require metal cladding.

Yet, according to Julie Livingston, the Design Commission’s chairwoman, the $200-a-night hotel has a problem. Some of the shingles appear to be sliding out of place only a few months after the hotel opened, she said.

In places, the shingles are affixed with only adhesive. A visit to the building revealed some shingles are not fully flush against the façade.

Erik Timmons, president and CEO of general contractor Yorke & Curtis, acknowledged some of the shingles need additional work. The issues are fixable and under warranty, he said.

“There is a detail on that building where a certain number of shingles – it’s a very small percentage – are adhered to with adhesive rather than a fastener,” Timmons said. “So we’ve had some issues with that, and we’re dealing with it. It’s still a warrantable issue.”

The asphalt-shingle exterior was allowed by the City Council in a one-off exception in 2016. The Design Commission had pressed design firm Works Progress Architecture (then called Works Partnership Architecture) to use a different cladding material. The project team appealed the Design Commission’s decision to the City Council, which overruled the commission.

The building was constructed with asphalt shingles that hug the exterior as it moves around sharp edges, rounded curves and overhangs. The shingles give the building’s exterior a “soft, sexy feel,” Works Progress Architecture principal and owner Carrie Strickland said.

The shingles’ durability was discussed at an Oct. 17 City Council meeting. Commissioner Nick Fish asked Livingston for her thoughts on Jupiter NEXT, which officially opened June 1.

“It’s now been built and I’ve been dying to ask you after the fact what your verdict is,” Fish said.

Livingston replied that the shingles are not holding up.

“When you visit that building, you will likely notice that on the surfaces that are vertical or inverted, that the shingles are responding to gravity,” she said. “And the way that shingles are attached, it’s a pretty simple system. There are few points – for all intents and purposes, just simple nails that hold the shingles in place – and so there is an immense amount of gravity acting against those points where the shingles are attached. Some of them are already starting to slide.”

The council chamber was quiet for a moment. Then, Fish responded, “OK. So, I should have assumed you were prepared for that.”

The council quickly moved on to other topics.

Iain Mackenzie, a local architect and blogger, drew attention to the issue on Twitter.

“So maybe it wasn’t a great idea for the City Council to play Design Commission, and allow asphalt shingles?” he wrote. “Now that the project is built, I think it’s clear that the Design Commission was right.”

The success or failure of the shingles as exterior cladding could influence future projects. While the shingle cladding has been used in other cities, Jupiter NEXT’s extensive use of the material makes the hotel a singular demonstration of the technique in Portland.

Strickland, in an interview, defended the use of asphalt shingles at Jupiter NEXT.

“It’s an incredibly unfair account of the actual situation,” she said of Livingston’s comments. “In any building that’s newly finished, something comes up on a punch list to fix it. It doesn’t mean that there’s a system failure.”

Livingston did not respond to a message left at her office at Home Forward.

The Design Commission is tasked with weighing proposed designs against city guidelines, including one that calls for materials with “quality and permanence.” The commission frequently asks architects and developers to switch out cheaper materials for more durable ones.

The shingles carry a longer warranty than comparable cladding materials, Strickland said. The council’s 2016 decision to overrule the Design Commission was an appropriate move that recognized an innovative use of building materials, she said.

“Commission just didn’t want to set a precedent, and they were afraid to do that,” Strickland said. “So that’s why we went through the process we did.

“I’m sure they’re sensitive to being overruled by City Council.”

Kelsey Bunker, the owner of Jupiter NEXT and the neighboring Jupiter Hotel, said no issues with the shingles had been reported to her.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Bunker said of Livingston’s comments.

Bunker said she paid for extra sealant to properly affix the shingles.

“I know I paid a heck of a lot of money to have everything double-sealed,” she said. “You need one bead – I had to pay for two beads. It absolutely doubled the cost of gluing for the entire building. It was significant when you get a change order like that.”

The project was built by general contractor Yorke & Curtis. The shingles were supplied by Malarkey Roofing Products, a Portland company, and installed by subcontractor Rodeo Roofing.

Malarkey spokesman Bobby Lambrix said the company had not been contacted regarding any post-installation issues.

“Malarkey Roofing Products worked closely with the architect and roofing contractor to reach a desired and durable result,” Lambrix stated in an email. “Made with a proprietary blend of polymer modified asphalt, our shingles perform beyond industry standards of flexibility and impact resistance. These exceptional attributes allowed the shingles to be utilized in this unique design.”

Jupiter NEXT’s visible issue with the shingles’ adhesion threatens to cloud discussion of the project, which has been praised for its strong form, distinctive mirrored overhang that reflects the sidewalk and hip interior spaces. The building is scheduled to host events such as an upcoming $150-a-ticket fundraiser for the Portland Winter Light Festival.

“It’s a beautiful building,” Timmons said. “We’re pretty proud of it.”

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These days in Portland, buildings are popping up everywhere.

For example, in the Central Eastside, at the junction of Southeast Stark Street and Water Avenue, a 10-story mixed-use building is being squeezed into an industrial space mere feet away from Interstate 5 to the west and Union Pacific railroad tracks to the east.

“You can see the close proximity of the building to the freeway,” Hoffman Construction Superintendent Mark Rado said during a walk around the site last week, pointing out how close workers were to passing vehicles. “The building itself is a little further away, but because we need a work deck, we’re even closer; you can see that Aluma deck there. That one is probably about 10 feet away, and that one up there is probably 15.”

The started as an innovative parking solution, but evolved into one of the few Central Eastside work-space buildings to be constructed from the ground up. The building, known as “,” will hold approximately 70,000 square feet of office space and 265 parking spaces for motor vehicles. Secured bike parking and a fitness center with locker rooms also will be included.

Works Progress Architecture to stand out among the vintage industrial shells that dominate the immediate vicinity. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows will provide occupants views of the city. As the structure rises, portions of the façade will “erode” back toward the core, and the top will feature several shared terraces. The bottom six stories will be devoted to public parking.

“We think there’s tremendous demand in the neighborhood for parking,” Harsch Investment Properties Senior Vice President and Regional Manager Steve Roselli said. “It has the added bonus of getting you above the freeway and the railroad noise. It gets you up there to where you’re in a world of your own.”

The building will feature six stories of post-tensioned concrete topped with four stories of structural steel with slab-on-metal decks. Crews are about six weeks away from finishing structural concrete work, Rado said.

“We start structural steel after Thanksgiving,” he said. “Today we’re loading our PT deck number six, and we have three more decks to pour, but right now we’re loading rebar and PT on the deck and getting ready to pour next week.”

The development is not necessarily a new direction for Harsch Investment Properties, Roselli said, but rather a reflection of earlier property investments made in Portland’s inner east side.

“We’re a pretty active developer in markets where we can find land for our light industrial products, but there are no industrial sites left up here,” he said. “So, we’re a very active developer in Las Vegas and Sacramento and now starting in Tucson. It just happens that in Portland, where we’re based, we have a lot of downtown blocks that are or will be redevelopments as the market dictates.”

Harsch Investment Properties purchased the 7 Southeast Stark site five years ago when it was a surface parking lot. Then it six months ago purchased the site to the east with the intention of either redeveloping the existing warehouse or replacing it with something new.

“We have quite a few sites around town in Portland that are redevelopment sites that could certainly sustain much higher and better uses,” Roselli said. “Several of these blocks that we bought on the east side qualify.”

Nearby, Harsch Investment Properties has its eyes on 151 S.E. Alder St. The firm was working with Works Progress Architecture on a potential 10-story mixed-use building there; however, plans were put on hold, Roselli said.

“This one went first; it made more sense because we could do more parking,” he said in reference to 7 Southeast Stark. “That one, being a corner block, it’s more limited and we’ll hold for now.”

Substantial completion of the project, Roselli said, is expected by June 2019. , with JLL agent Jake Lancaster handling inquiries.

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For developers keen to use cross-laminated timber, the failure in March of CLT panels at a project on Oregon State University‘s campus has been met with a widespread shrug.

CLT is being used for a number of Portland-area projects, some with material from D.R. Johnson, the Southern Oregon supplier at the heart of the OSU incident.

For its proponents, CLT offers an attractive combination of warm aesthetics, a buy-local economic story and shorter construction schedules. Developers who are using the products say they are satisfied D.R. Johnson has fixed the issues that caused the material to reportedly delaminate at Peavy Hall in Corvallis.

Key Development‘s Block 76 West project, near the Burnside Bridge‘s east end, is using CLT materials from D.R. Johnson.

“We did not have any reluctance to go with D.R. Johnson,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development. “They’ve been great to work with.”

The Block 76 West project, formerly known as SideYard, will have 23,569 square feet of space over five floors. Office users are being sought for the top floors, Flotow said. Key Development is in talks with the owners of Hood River’s Ferment Brewing Co. and Camp 1805 Distillery to open tasting rooms in the building.

Andersen Construction is building the project based on a design from Skylab Architecture.

District Office, a Central Eastside Industrial District project from Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners, will also use CLT from D.R. Johnson.

“It’s a positive connection between the urban economy and rural economy here in Oregon, and aesthetically, it’s more compelling,” said Jonathan Malsin, a principal at Beam Development.

Hacker, which designed District Office, will itself occupy 20,000 square feet in the six-floor, 110,000-square-foot building. Andersen Construction is building the project.

Beam Development was already interested in CLT, Malsin said, before a suggestion was made that it be used for District Office.

“We’ve been keen on using CLT for a while now,” he said. “When we started planning the project with Hacker (officials), they proposed it.”

The OSU incident did not dissuade the District Office project team from using D.R. Johnson’s CLT.

“We did our due diligence,” Malsin said. “We remain thrilled to be working with them and are confident in their ability to deliver.”

Brandon Brown, a Portland developer, also did not hesitate to use CLT materials on the Flatiron building. Construction of the six-floor, approximately 25,000-square-foot office project is wrapping up, with completion expected by Nov. 1.

CLT was more appropriate for the building, with its envelope reaching the triangular lot’s boundaries, Brown said.

“The wood performs in a much better way than concrete for that specific design,” he said.

Brown also favored the aesthetics of CLT.

“Part of the driver was just the warmth the wood brings to the feel of the buildings,” he said. “That’s something that concrete just doesn’t allow for.”

Works Progress Architecture designed the Flatiron building; Abbott Construction is serving as general contractor.

D.R. Johnson, based in Riddle, offers regional ties and a feel-good story for local projects looking to support Oregon’s timber industry. But the company does have competitors, such as Structurlam of British Columbia, in addition to traditional concrete-and-steel construction. Structurlam provided CLT to First Tech Federal Credit Union‘s newly opened 156,000-square-foot office building in Hillsboro.

D.R. Johnson did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Not every CLT proposal has moved forward. Most notably, Framework from Portland’s Project^ was halted in July after the 12-story proposal attracted a range of grants and months of publicity. Project^ blamed escalating construction costs, fluctuating tax-credit markets and inflation.

In August, Oregon issued new building codes for CLT structures. Known as the Statewide Alternative Method, the codes are drawn from the 2021 International Building Code and allow for tall wood construction.

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