PROJECT: Grace Chapel

LOCATION: 27501 S.W. Parkway Ave., Wilsonville

SIZE:��34,600 square feet (20,000-square-foot original building plus a 14,600-square-foot addition)

COST:��not provided

START DATE: April 2020

END DATE: May 2021

OWNER: Grace Chapel

ARCHITECT: CIDA

ENGINEER: AAI Engineering

CONTRACTOR:��Yorke & Curtis

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: This project involved the complete renovation of an existing, two-story, concrete, tilt-panel office building (most recently used by Pioneer Pacific College) for the church’s teen and children’s ministry programs. Also, a new 14,600-square-foot addition was constructed to provide entry and chapel space. The chapel area is able to accommodate more than 700 people for worship services as well as basketball and volleyball events.

In addition to blending a new space with an existing one, the project team brought together three different structural systems. The entry flows into the open reception area and lobbies in the original building with a coffee counter in the hub between the new and existing structures. The lobby features two large overhead doors to allow flow into and out of the chapel as well as possible overflow.

The project started at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and neared its finish just as restrictions began to loosen, allowing the church to welcome back its congregation.

“CIDA has been working with Grace Chapel in the Wilsonville area for over a decade at their previous facilities where they were tenants,” CIDA principal architect Chris Walker stated. “We’ve helped Grace evaluate properties and look for a permanent home for their growing church and outpouring ministry to the community. This building is the culmination of their long-term dreams for Grace Chapel and opens the doors to the next chapter to all that Grace offers both their congregation and the Greater Wilsonville community and Portland-metro area. Walking through the building you can feel like this was built exactly for Grace and their style. It’s both warm and inviting while modern and innovative. It’s great to see it coming to fruition and (to have) seen it through from the early stages.”

“Building Blocks” spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcorprod.wpengine.com/building-blocks.

The post Building Blocks: Grace Chapel appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When NBA player Rudy Gobert, a center for the Utah Jazz, last week tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, reactions to the outbreak in the U.S. ramped up dramatically. The remainder of the NBA season was suspended, and countless other organizations have since responded with similar actions.

“It’s been an avalanche since then,” said Mike Salsgiver, executive director of the Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter. “I think it was the thing that broke the dam.”

But while some governments have issued guidelines on social distancing and even instituted temporary statewide closures of places such as restaurants, bars and public facilities, the construction industry in the region so far is still up and running.

“Generally, as far as the impact on construction, we’re not hearing anything conclusively that says projects are coming to a stop,” Salsgiver said Tuesday. “But we’re pulling our information together, talking to agencies – particularly on the public side – to see what they’re thinking. We’ve been in touch with governor’s office, counties and mayors to keep channels open. But so far we’re not hearing anything about an impact to construction broadly; we’re all just chugging along.”

That, however, could change if politicians here follow a move taken by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. He called for a two-week closure of commercial construction sites in the city, beginning March 17.

A day earlier, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation suspended all construction projects for at least two weeks.

The Oregon Department of Transportation, however, has dozens of current projects running – many funded by a massive transportation bill passed by the Legislature in 2017.

“At this point we have not had any changes in our construction schedules over this,” ODOT spokesman Don Hamilton said. “But it’s safe to say we’re watching all of these things very, very carefully. This is a very fluid situation, so we’re going to be carefully monitoring the best safety practices we can both for the impact on ODOT employees and other contract workers who are out there.”

The spread of COVID-19 could impact jobsites many ways in the short term, including employee absenteeism, changes in methods of conducting business, and interrupted supply and delivery schedules.

“We’re certainly monitoring supply chain impacts and we really haven’t experienced any,” said Darin Stegemoller, senior vice president of the Portland office of national contractor JE Dunn Construction. “There are a lot of rumors floating around right now, but no impacts as far as supply chain. But we are watching it very closely and we anticipate impacts in that arena.”

JE Dunn has formed a task force to handle all the changes thrust upon the firm with virtually no notice, Stegemoller said.

“Our doors are open, and we do have some people who are working from home just with the social distancing we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re trying to leverage that and I think everyone in the industry is. So we have made that adjustment.”

Daily head counts on the company’s project sites have taken an estimated 10 percent hit, Stegemoller added.

“We’ve noticed a small change,” he said. “It’s a little bit of an indicator that there are some people worried. There’s certainly lot of concerns out there, but we’re still placing concrete and putting work in place and we’ll keep going as long as we can.”

For some companies, the immediate impact is more focused.

“We had a project with Portland Rescue Mission that was supposed to start on Monday the 23rd, but due to their quarantine requirements we can’t be in the space, so that project is postponed indefinitely,” Yorke & Curtis Inc. President Erik Timmons stated in an email. “We completely understand that they have to do what they need to do and support them 100 percent. It’s tough, though, when you have a team assigned and geared up, then have to call it off.”

If such actions continue across the industry, major changes are inevitable, according to Timmons.

“It’s scary to think that this will last too long,” he stated. “It won’t be good for anyone.��Ultimately, if it does happen and projects can’t start or, worse, get shut down, it will have a huge impact on everyone’s business.��No revenue equals no jobs.”

Meanwhile, local trade unions are restricting access to training centers and offices, and moving dispatch operations online. A large red banner across the top of the IBEW Local 48 website, for instance, states “In order to minimize personal contact and trying to follow CDC recommendations to limit the spread of the Coronavirus we ask that all members needing to conduct business with Local 48 try to do so through our website, telephone, email or texting.”

The statement goes on to ask any members laid off at this time to mail, fax or email their termination slips instead of submitting them in person. Members waiting for dispatch are being asked to use an online process instead of visiting the union hall in person.

Some companies are simply taking a wait-and-see approach and choosing not to speak out. Many of the firms contacted fall into this category.

“Sorry, on this one we have no comment,” Emerick Construction President Corey Lohman stated in an email.

Another aspect of construction that has been impacted significantly by office closures is permitting services. City halls and public buildings in the region have shut down because of the pandemic, including building and planning departments. The Portland Bureau of Development Services is just one that has enacted severe measures – including suspension of walk-in service for new permit applications.

The cities of Gresham and Hillsboro have closed their city halls through at least March 31 and are only conducting building-related business over the phone or online. In Beaverton, in-person services are closed until at least March 29, but building inspection appointments are apparently still being conducted. The situation is similar for smaller jurisdictions.

The most important thing is for people to keep cool and not panic, Salsgiver said, noting the AGC does not support a job site stoppage in Oregon or anywhere else.

“This is a thing we’re dealing with and we’re going to deal with it as directly and quickly and fully as we can,” he said. “At some point this will turn a corner and we’ll move back to normal. And my biggest concern is policy makers not take precipitous action that upends the channels of commerce or the economy, because most of our businesses are small businesses and anything that impacts cash flow is going to be a serious, serious concern of ours. We’re the public too.”

The post Many contractors carrying on amid outbreak appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A large-scale survey of Pacific Northwest real estate and construction professionals found widespread concern with environmental and housing regulation, and health care costs.

The top concern of 776 professionals surveyed was environmental regulation, with 60 percent naming it a major issue; it was followed closely by affordable housing and rent control at 57 percent. Following those concerns were taxation, at 41 percent, and health care reform, with 31 percent.

“Living and working in this market, one of the things people really value is the quality of life and the lifestyle and the natural environment,” said Stephanie Holmberg, leader of the real estate and construction industry group at Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt, which commissioned the survey. “From a business perspective, increased environmental regulation can be at odds with that.”

The results are part of an “age-old tension” in the state, Holmberg said. Oregon lawmakers this past summer passed a law forcing contractors to use newer diesel engines on jobsites to reduce emissions.

Respondents to Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt’s State��of��Commercial Real Estate and Construction��in the Pacific Northwest��survey were broadly confident in their companies, industries and regional economies. Nearly 75 percent indicated they were confident about the state of business. Construction industry leaders were somewhat more optimistic than their counterparts in commercial real estate.

“From my perspective, there’s plenty of work out there right now,” said Erik Timmons, president and CEO of Yorke & Curtis Inc., a construction firm based in Beaverton. “Things haven’t slowed as far as calls for new projects. The only market that’s slowed as far as Yorke & Curtis has seen is multifamily.”

However, contractors’ business may be a lagging indicator – for them a slowdown is apparent only when it hits the ground.

“We’re busy for now, but our pipeline, looking at it, is kind of thin,” said Tom DiChiara, principal at Cairn Pacific, a mixed-use developer that has three major projects under construction in the Slabtown area of Northwest Portland.

“I definitely am expecting a slowdown over the next two, three, four years,” DiChiara said. “Supply has caught up to demand. I expect there to be a flattening; it’s not going to fall off a cliff.”

Cairn Pacific may entitle one more parcel in Slabtown, but not build on it immediately, DiChiara said.

“We’ve been struggling with really low yields and really high costs on projects,” he said. “It’s tough to make new projects pencil.”

Timmons acknowledged contractors see the economic cycle from a different perspective.

“There has to be a leveling, but at the same time there’s this confidence in the market,” he said. “We know that something’s going to happen – but we don’t see it happening.”

Timmons said some projects are delayed by rising costs, and brought to a halt when new estimates come in.

“You’re just constantly getting stuck in not getting projects started even though they’re on the books,” he said.

In the Schwabe survey, Hillsboro and Bellevue, Washington, were most often cited as bright spots for future growth in commercial real estate and construction.

“We know that our region is strong at the moment in terms of the economy, and a growing market and population, and we’ve seen a lot of outside money coming into both Seattle and Portland,” Holmberg said.

Employee retention was another key takeaway for businesses. Ninety percent of survey respondents said they have an “employee-friendly culture,” while 84 percent said they offer “good workplace conditions, perks and amenities.”

Yet more than half of respondents indicated their biggest challenge is finding qualified employees, and 58 percent said they will increase their full-time workforce in the coming year.

The survey was conducted by the American Business Journals June 4 to July 9. Respondents were invited to the online survey by Schwabe, the Daily Journal of Commerce, the Puget Sound and Portland business journals and the Association of General Contractors of Washington.

The full study is available at .

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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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In today’s full-throttle construction industry, tradespeople aren’t the only ones in high demand. Those higher up the salary ladder – project managers and executives – are too.

Construction engineering management (CEM) graduates are in such high demand they often have a job in hand months before they graduate, Oregon State University instructor Joseph Fradella said.

“Students are getting multiple job offers,” he said.

CEM students often get a job offer after serving in an internship between their junior and senior years. Often, an internship leads to a job offer at the same firm, Fradella said.

“It’s common for a student to have a job offer in hand nine months before they graduate, which makes it a problem to get them to focus on their school work senior year,” he said. “But I guess that’s a good problem to have.”

Approximately 100 students are expected to graduate from OSU‘s construction engineering management program in spring 2019. Of that group, two-thirds of the students already have jobs waiting for them, Fradella said.

Typically about 60 percent of the graduates land jobs with major general contractors such as Skanska, Fortis, Turner and Hoffman, Fradella said. Another 20 percent of them end up with heavy civil-engineering firms such as Kiewit or Granite. The remaining 20 percent are hired by specialty contracting firms.

With the economic expansion now in its ninth year, the labor pool for the construction industry is tapped out. Builders are having a tough time filling positions from apprentices to experienced managers. Headhunters send daily e-mail blasts to construction managers with lists of available positions.

Construction employment in Oregon reached a record high in September, according to Associated General Contractors. The industry grew by 9,200 jobs, a 9.3 percent gain, from a year earlier.

In total, Oregon’s construction industry supplied 108,200 jobs, AGC reported.

Yet there is some anecdotal evidence that the market for senior-level positions is loosening up. Erik Timmons, president and CEO of Yorke & Curtis, a Beaverton-based builder, said that in the past few weeks he has received more unsolicited resumés than in the past couple of years.

“I don’t know if that’s a sign they went to a bigger (general contractor) for a bigger project and then that dried up,” Timmons said. “That’s what I suspect.”

Yorke & Curtis is advertising an executive-level director of construction position.

“I’ve gotten really good responses for that,” he said.

The tight labor market also increases the importance of retention. Yorke & Curtis works to maintain a culture appealing to employees, Timmons said.

“If I can’t keep my people happy and keep them here, that’s my fault,” he said.

Pay matters, but culture is even more important for retention, he said.

“We feel like we pay a more-than-fair wage to all of our people,” he said.

Hoffman Construction tends to promote project managers from within, Operations Manager Cary Bubenik said.

“We tend not to hire PMs just because we’d rather people learn the Hoffman culture at an early age,” he said.

Hoffman structures its compensation with long-term employment in mind, Bubenik said.

One trend Bubenik has noticed is more resumés coming in from abroad. In some cases, they’re from Americans who are working in places such as Dubai and trying to return to the United States.

“In general, most of the good people are working in today’s industry,” Bubenik said. “That’s probably true in any field.”

The post In boom times, contractors competing for project managers appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

is poised to gain a larger space, contingent on approval from the city’s Development Review Board.

Grace Chapel has been forced to move several times in recent years to accommodate growth. Currently, the church occupies space in a Wilsonville office park. But church leaders eager to find a long-term home eventually found a vacant, two-story, 20,000-square-foot office building at 27501 S.W. Parkway Ave., across from the Oregon Institute of Technology campus.

The church hired CIDA Inc. to design a two-story, 13,730-square-foot expansion of the existing building. That plan now is set to receive a public hearing before the Development Review Board’s Panel B on Oct. 22.

calls for an overhaul of the existing building so that it could hold new classroom space and gain a second story. The expansion would include a new 319-seat main chapel with a two-story vaulted ceiling and a 30-foot stage. In addition, a “Kidventure” section would occupy space on both floors, as would new classrooms and offices.

In total, the 33,370-square-foot facility would largely meet the church’s stated space needs for the foreseeable future. Church leaders anticipate the project cost to be as much as $11 million.

With the Development Review Board’s approval, building permits can be obtained. That would allow general contractor Yorke & Curtis to begin demolition in the existing structure and excavation in preparation for the addition.

The post Wilsonville church preparing for another move appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Though the shortage of skilled workers is continuing to plague the construction industry, the number of potential solutions is expanding.

One is to reach the next generation of youngsters before they’re old enough to safely use power tools, let alone operate heavy machinery.

“I think with the good intention of making college accessible to everybody we unintentionally made trades appear as a lesser path,” said John Hurd, talent acquisition manager for Lakeside Industries, a heavy highway construction firm with asphalt plants in Portland, Hillsboro and Washington state.

A profound culture change is needed, Hurd believes, before the trades are again considered a viable route to building a successful career.

“When you build this concept that you’re only successful if you go to college, even if you’re successful and work at what is traditionally known as a blue-collar trade, maybe you don’t feel proud about it and maybe you don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “That’s why I get back to the fact that we need to give all students options in what they want to do. We need to stop telling them what success is and give them the tools to decide what success is for them.”

That belief is driving an award-winning program . Leaders of the aim to bring educators from across the state to the metro area to meet with contractors, apprenticeship program officials and others in construction.

2018 marks the third year for the program, which recently wrapped up a two week long camp for approximately 75 teachers. They visited jobsites, checked out business offices and spent time with a construction contractor. Participants also toured both union and open-shop apprenticeship program facilities, community colleges and technical universities. The Educator Externship is run in partnership with the Willamette Education Service District (WESD) and gives participants professional development or graduate-level credits.

While educators gain a better picture of the career possibilities available to their students, the challenge is to convey that information effectively.

“Most of the stuff we’re able to do is get kids to trade fairs,” Woodburn High School teacher Mario Garza said. “But we’d like to bring more of that stuff on campus. It’s important for us to expose them to the different pathways that are available so they can make good choices for themselves.”

That’s where AGC and the WESD are looking to fill a gap.

“The reality is if you go to school and want to be a teacher, your pathway is marked,” said Cherie Clark, WESD manager of careers and college. “It’s the pathway they know.”

The lack of exposure to trades in public schools is so profound that even ancillary areas of construction often are overlooked.

“When kids think of construction they don’t think of advertising, accounting, project management or safety,” Clark said. “So what we tried to do with construction is to open that up so they could see the back office part of it.”

The Externship started July 16, at the Pacific Northwest College of Construction before teachers split into groups and headed to the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute and the Sheet Metal Institute. P&C Construction President Steve Malany and safety coordinator Rick McMurry then led tours of an R&H Construction project site, an Andersen Construction site and a Bremik Construction site. Yorke & Curtis and Lease Crutcher Lewis business offices were shown, and educators visited specialty contractors as well as highway and roadway contractors. Program participants also stopped at the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center, Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and Andersen Construction offices, as well as colleges that host technical training programs.

McMurry is convinced the industry needs to reach young people well before they finish high school. To that end, he’s taken part in the Educator Externship the past two years and found it a great way of making connections.

“This is where we think the real money is,” he said. “If we can get to the influencers of our kids, teachers and guidance counselors, people who are going to steer that decision a little bit in college or career and open their eyes to the fact there is all this stuff out there. There are lots of individual efforts, but this one seems so far to be the most coordinated effort with the target audience in the room. You don’t get the focused opportunity like this.”

Why is it so important to reach kids before they’re old enough to drive? Because if it doesn’t happen then, Hurd said, there will be a lot of baggage to overcome. That alone has led to the average starting age for an apprentice to rise appreciably.

“It starts fairly young,” Hurd said. “I remember growing up, it was about the fourth grade when I was starting to be told that I was either going to be getting a four-year degree or I was going to be flipping burgers.”

Those kinds of messages sink in, he added. But there’s no reason not to apply the same principles to the trades, he said.

“Our best options right now from what I’ve found is we’ve been doing grassroots efforts,” he said. “We’ve been doing teacher externships like this. We visit schools where we’re going in around the fourth grade and setting up field trips and talking to students about what it is, who we are and what it means to the community.”

Hurd’s entire job revolves around recruiting new talent. In that role he speaks with roughly 6,000 to 10,000 high school students annually and hosts more than 1,000 others at Lakeside Industries’ Northwest Portland asphalt plant.

Others in the industry agree that outreach is needed early on.

“I’ve been saying for the longest time the most important work happens in K-12,” said Bob Strader, president of the Northwest College of Construction. “The more exposure they get to all walks of life the better prepared they will be when they walk through the doors here.”

This year’s Educator Externship cohort is roughly three times the size of last year’s.

“It’s big when they tell you, ‘I didn’t know anything about this stuff,’” Garza said. “It makes you think: Why aren’t we talking more about this in K-12? Why just when they’re juniors or seniors in high school?”

A recent commissioned by Metro and the city of Portland arrived at largely the same conclusions in regard to bringing more women and minorities into the skilled trades.

“I think schools is where it has to happen,” said an apprenticeship coordinator quoted in the report. “The counselors and the teachers have to be educated to know the options available and what it takes to get into those programs. Then they can identify those individuals and direct them accordingly based off their interests.”

That’s exactly right, Hurd said.

“We need to help people understand and be able to follow their own desires,” he said. “That’s part of why we’re in the situation we’re in now, where a college degree has never cost more and it’s never been worth less in the marketplace.”

The post Workforce development starts early appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The newest addition to the ever-growing Burnside bridgehead area is nearing completion. Yorke & Curtis is winding down work on Aura Burnside, a five-over-one mixed-use building with below-grade parking encompassing three-quarters of the block bounded by East Burnside Street and Northeast Couch Street, and Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue.

The building contains 157 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartment units over flex retail space along both the Burnside Street and Grand Avenue frontages. Common residential areas include a rooftop patio with a fire pit and grill, a second-floor club room with a kitchen and dining area, and a ground-floor lobby with a fireplace and seating area. A bicycle storage facility will also contain a repair stand and a wash area able to also be used for pets.

The building’s top three floors are nearly complete, the third floor is in the punch-list phase, and levels one and two are in finish stages. Crews are also finishing site work, including pouring sidewalks, patching asphalt, and installing planters and first-floor siding. A temporary certificate of occupancy is expected for the project next week, and substantial completion is expected by the end of the year.

The project was developed by the Seattle office of Dallas, Texas-based Trinsic Residential Group, and designed by Merryman Barnes Architects. DCI Engineers is handling structural engineering, and Harper Houf Peterson Righellis Inc. is performing civil and landscape engineering.

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A six-story hotel under construction on East Burnside Street will serve as an expansion of the Jupiter Hotel, a motor inn located one block west across Southeast Ninth Avenue. Yorke & Curtis is building the 67-room hotel, which was designed by Works Progress Architecture.

The building’s ground floor will contain a restaurant, lobby and programming space, the second floor will feature a lounge, meeting room, banquet hall, and outdoor garden space, and the guest rooms will be on floors three through six. The structure has two floors of post-tensioned concrete on a slab-on-grade foundation, and floors three and above will be wood-framed.

The building will be mostly clad in asphalt shingle panels manufactured by Portland-based Malarkey Roofing Products. Construction on the project began late last year, and is slated for completion at the end of this year.

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Yorke & Curtis has grown steadily over nearly two decades in Portland, winning awards and recognition for projects and increasing its portfolio in size and scope to become a recognizable force in local, state and regional building communities

Over the past few years, the company has been involved in some of Portland’s hottest projects. Working with Works Progress Architecture and T.M. Rippey Consulting Engineers, for example, Yorke & Curtis served as general contractor on the Framework Building, a five-story office on the city’s Central Eastside that received a 2016 award from the Wood Products Council.

“Over the years, we’ve refined our philosophy a bit,” Erik Timmons, president of Yorke & Curtis, said. “We stopped chasing hard bids and looked toward developing solid relationships with existing clients for repeat business. We meet with architecture firms in advance, get ahead of the project and price it to stay within their budget.”

The strategy has paid off. ��By knowing what its clients want and how to achieve those goals, Yorke & Curtis has been able to construct projects for clients in a more efficient way, reducing the time and cost of extensive bid processes and, in turn, reducing the overall cost of projects – even when factors in the market may be trending otherwise.

“There will always be volatility in the marketplace,” Timmons said. “Subcontracting can be difficult. Shortages of skilled labor and price increases on materials make it more difficult to build, and we have to stay on top of those things.

“At the same time, our philosophy is to build excellence in everything we do. We develop trusted partnerships with our previous customers, suppliers and subcontractors. Those relationships make all the difference in performance.”

Yorke & Curtis’s commitment to strong relationships on projects is evident in Slate, a mixed-use building in the bustling Burnside bridgehead area designed by Works Progress Architecture and developed by Beam Development and Urban Development Partners. ��While Timmons takes pride in all of Yorke & Curtis’ work, he admits he has a soft spot for the 10-story building.

“I love that project,” Timmons said. “It has the kind of personality that says who we are.”

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