Weekly Roundup: Meyer Memorial Trust HQ, Adidas Campus Expansion, Old Town heights, and more

Posted on March 27, 2018 by nextportland

An earlier scheme for the redevelopment of Old Town Chinatown Block 33 was presented to the Landmarks Commission in January 2017. The same architecture and development team are now working on a revised proposal that would orient the mass on the western half of the block, where they are seeking an increase in allowable height.

The Oregonian reported that the Adidas Campus Expansion will more than double the size of the company’s North American headquarters.

The Daily Journal of Commerce wrote about the public forum where the three developers* who are vying for the Broadway Corridor Development Opportunity introduced themselves. The Related Companies, Continuum Partners and McWhinney are competing to be chosen as the master developer for the 32-acre site.

Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly reversed her vote on height increases at the waterfront. The change will allow the Riverplace Redevelopment to move forward.

The Oregonian wrote about the debate at City Council over whether heights should be increased on Old Town Chinatown Block 33.

City Observatory published an open letter on housing affordability to Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish, written by Portland State University Emeritus Professor Ethan Seltzer. An editorial in the Oregonian argued that the Portland City Council needs to reset its compass.

The Oregonian reported on high-rise apartment units rented as hotel rooms, including at The NV, Block 17 and Park Avenue West.

Portland Architecture interviewed GBD Architects’ Kyle Andersen & Phil Beyl about the firm’s 50 LEED projects (and counting).

A guest editorial in the Oregonian, written by Mark Edlen and Denis Hayes, argued that wood skyscrapers are coming and should be built with Forest Stewardship Council certified wood.

The Skanner News broke the news that the Meyer Memorial Trust, the state’s second largest foundation, plans to build a new headquarters at N Vancouver and Tillamook.

The Portland City Council voted to approve a tax break for the developments that voluntarily choose to include affordable housing, writes the Oregonian.

*This article will be unlocked for the rest of this week. After this week it will only be viewable by DJC subscribers.

Focus: Our 25 Most Popular Posts of 2016

Posted on December 31, 2016 by nextportland

The post about 5 MLK’s first Design Advice Request hearing was Next Portland’s most popular post of the year. [See this follow up post for the most recent images of the project.]

2016 is the second full year Next Portland has been in operation. With development showing no signs of slowing down it’s been a busy year. We published 234 new blog posts, and our development map now has almost 800 unique projects listed (including completed and cancelled projects). Over the course of the year the site had almost 900,000 page views; up 84% over 2015.

6 of the articles that made the top 25 viewed posts were published in 2015; 2 were published in 2014. Our second most popular article from the 2015 list, about the Goat Blocks, was still the fourth most popular article of 2016 despite having been written in December 2014. Our most popular post of 2015, about the 25 tallest buildings planned in the city, remained in the list at third place, and was just beaten out in popularity by the updated 2016 list. Two pioneering Cross Laminated Timber buildings, Carbon12 and Framework, took up three places on the list.

In reverse order, here are our 25 most popular posts of the year:

Weekly Roundup: the NV, Zidell Yards, Goat Blocks and more

Posted on June 5, 2016 by nextportland

The NV apartments in the North Pearl by ZGF Architects

The Business Tribune wrote about The NV, one of the growing number of residential towers in the North Pearl.

Eater PDX reported that pizzeria Please Louise will be going into the ground floor of the LL Hawkins building in Slabtown.

Urban Land Magazine analyzed how the mix of uses at the Goat Blocks made the development possible.

The Oregonian broke the news that up to 67 windows will be added to the nearly complete Yard tower at the east end of the Burnside Bridge. The cost of the revisions will mostly be covered by the City of Portland, through fee refunds.

ZRZ Realty has hired Thomas Henneberry, “a longtime real estate consultant from the D.C. area” to oversee development of the Zidell Yards, according to the Portland Business Journal. The firm last year received design advice for Zidell Blocks 4 & 6, though do not intend to break ground on the buildings until tenants are secured.

BikePortland had a look at the 600 space Lloyd Cycle Station, developed as part of the Hassalo on Eighth project.

The Oregonian reported on developer Gerding Edlen’s plans for a 17 story tower at 5 SE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. The building would replace the building that has housed Fishels Furniture for decades.

The Business Tribune checked in on the construction progress at the Japanese Garden Expansion. The new cultural village by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma is expected to be completed in April 2017.

Portland Architecture spoke to Allied Works founder Brad Cloepfil, in advance of a retrospective exhibition about the firm’s work at Portland Art Museum.

The Business Tribune looked at the ongoing restoration of the former Oregonian publishing building at 1320 Broadway. The renovation is set for completion on June 30th.

New restaurant Q, the successor to Veritable Quandary, will be located in the 2&Taylor building, according to the Portland Business Journal. The former Yamhill Marketplace and Bally’s Total Fitness underwent a major renovation in 2014, and is now home to Jama Software.

The Willamette Week asked whether it is appropriate for the new 2035 Comprehensive Plan to downzone areas of East Portland in the middle of a housing crisis.

Eater PDX reported that Danwei Canting Chinese food pop-up is likely going into the under construction Central Eastside 811 Stark building.

Focus: Portland’s Tallest Planned Buildings (2016)

Posted on May 20, 2016 by nextportland

Image from the Discussion Draft of the Central City 2035 Plan (Bureau of Planning & Sustainability).

Image from the Discussion Draft of the Central City 2035 Plan, showing a possible development scenario approximating future growth in the Pearl District over 20 years (Bureau of Planning & Sustainability). At least two of the sites shown as potentially developable have current proposals on them.

It is just over a year since Next Portland last did a roundup of the tallest buildings planned or under construction in Portland. At that time, we counted 25 buildings over 100′ in height planned. Today we count 40. Given the length of time it takes to complete a high rise building, many of the buildings on the 2016 were also on the 2015 list. Four buildings are no longer on the list this year, due to having been completed: Block 17, Pearl West, the Aster Tower and Park Avenue West. Seven buildings that were still in the design phase last year are now under construction. No building on last year’s list is known to have been cancelled.

Read on to see our complete list. Where possible, the heights given are the building height as defined in the Portland Zoning Code and published in the Design Commission’s Final Findings. In some cases the heights have been estimated.

Focus: Our 25 Most Popular Posts of the Year

Posted on December 17, 2015 by nextportland

LOCA @ The Goat Blocks, the subject of our second most viewed post of 2015

2015 is the first full calendar year Next Portland has been in operation, and it’s been a year of huge growth for the site. As the year draws to a close it seemed like a good time to look at what the most popular posts of the year were. If there’s an overall trend evident it’s that posts about tall or large buildings do well. The single most popular post was the round up of the 25 tallest buildings planned or under construction. Posts about high rise buildings under construction—including Block 136, The Cosmopolitan, The NV (formerly The Overton), and Yard (formerly Block 67)—feature prominently in the list. The giant development at Oregon Square makes the list three times, and the redevelopment of the USPS site in the Pearl is included three times. The most popular post about a single project covered LOCA @ The Goat Blocks, a superblock development currently under construction in inner Buckman.

Other posts to make the top 25 were more surprising. The list includes the Worldmark by Wyndham and The Society Hotel, both relatively small hotel projects in Old Town. The initial post about 3rd & Taylor likely performed so well not because of the scale of the project, but because Next Portland was the first place to write about the potential demolition of the Hotel Albion. At only 8 stories Carbon12 wouldn’t come close to making the list of the tallest buildings planned for Portland, but is notable for the fact that the high rise structure will be built out of wood.

Were there any posts you particularly enjoyed reading this year? Let us know in the comments. Here is the full list of our most popular posts of 2015:

1 – Focus: 25 Tallest Buildings Planned or Under Construction

2 – LOCA @ The Goat Blocks

3 – Burnside Bridgehead, Pt II: Block 67

4 – Focus: 20 New Hotels Proposed For Portland

5 – Worldmark by Wyndham set to receive Design Advice

6 – Carbon12, an 8 story wood building, proposed for N Williams

7 – Concepts released for redevelopment of USPS site

8 – Pre-Application Conference scheduled for SW 3rd & Taylor

9 – Under Construction in Old Town: The Society Hotel

10 – Cook Street Apartments

11 – Lloyd Cinemas redevelopment returns in front of Design Commission (images)

12 – The Fair Haired Dumbbell

13 – Burnside Bridgehead, pt I: Block 75

14 – PDC identifies preferred concept for Post Office site

15 – Block 136 heading to Design Review

16 – Under Construction in South Waterfront: Block 37

17 – North Pearl High-Rises, Part II: The Overton

18 – Design Commission approves Oregon Square

19 –Design Commission reviews Oregon Square

20 – Oregon Square update

21 – North Pearl High-Rises, Part I: The Cosmopolitan on the Park

22 – Design Commission approves The Porter hotel

23 – 4th & Harrison returning for Design Advice

24 – Grand Belmont returns before Historic Landmarks Commission

25 – Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center

Going tall: new projects complete the north Pearl District

Posted on October 12, 2015 by nextportland

July 11, 2013 LU 13-139762 DZM AD - Applicant Presentation - 05

There are few neighborhoods in Portland that have seen more changes in recent decades than the Pearl District.

Today the Pearl has evolved from what The Oregonian described in 1994 as “a decaying portion of Northwest Portland once devoted to industry and transportation” into a mixed-use neighborhood with thousands of residents, large offices and numerous shops and restaurants. Despite the huge changes, architects and developers working in the early phases of large development in the neighborhood were often responding to the historic context of one of Portland’s older neighborhoods: Couch’s Addition was platted in 1842; the North Park Blocks were acquired by the City in 1869; and many of the warehouses in the NW 13th Ave Historic District date back to the early 20th Century. Developments such as the Brewery Blocks or the Ecotrust incorporated historic buildings, while new condominiums mimicked their aesthetic. While little of the industry that once defined the area is left today, one of the charms of the neighborhood is the juxtaposition of high rises such as the Casey and historic low rises such as the Bullseye Glass Building.

Further north in the Pearl there was less context to respond to. Much of the developable land was former railway yards, and the warehouses along NW 13th Avenue were more often single-story concrete structures rather than charming brick buildings. As development started to cross Lovejoy—once an elevated ramp leading to the Broadway Bridge—planners and neighborhood activists started to wonder if the North Pearl might develop in a different way. Instead of the bulky full block developments that had been built on some blocks south of Lovejoy, it was proposed that the developers might be allowed to build taller, but narrower.

In 2008 the Zoning Code was amended to incorporate a provision that exists nowhere else in the City: in the North Pearl Height Opportunity Area there are no maximum building heights for buildings with narrow floor plates.

…continue reading our guest post at Portland Architecture.

Focus: 25 Tallest Buildings Planned or Under Construction

Posted on May 15, 2015 by nextportland

It’s now almost 6 months since the first post on Next Portland. Since then we’ve published over 180 posts and added over 350 projects to our map, which is a testament to the staggering scale of development happening right now in Portland. Much of this development is 4-6 story buildings along the corridors such as N Williams and SE Division, but there is also a large number of tall buildings going up in the Central City, which why we decided to list the 25 tallest buildings planned or under construction.

While the boom of the 2000s was defined by the activity in South Waterfront, today that district has no apartments or condos planned over 6 stories tall. By contrast the Pearl, the Lloyd District and the Central Eastside are all seeing their skylines altered. Activity in Downtown has quieter, but it also has the tallest building in our list, which is now the 4th tallest building in the city.

Where possible, the heights given are the building height as defined in the Portland Zoning Code and published in the Design Commission’s Final Findings. Where indicated the heights have been estimated.

1 – Park Avenue West

Height: 460′
Architect: TVA Architects
Status: Under Construction

November 21, 2013 LU 13-214772 DZ - Drawings - 03

North Pearl High-Rises, Part II: The Overton (images)

Posted on December 16, 2014 by nextportland

This post is the second in a series on the high-rises currently under construction in the North Pearl. See also Part I about the Cosmopolitan on the Park and Part III about Block 17.

The Overton apartments are currently under construction on a block that previously housed a single story warehouse. The 26-story building will be 252’ tall, and will include 284 residential units. The design, for Unico Properties, is by the Seattle of office of ZGF Architects with Ankrom Moisan as associate architect.

The Overton - 01