Designed in accordance with the world’s most rigorous sustainability standards, the PAE Living Building in Portland, Oregon, is the first developer-driven and largest commercial urban Living Building in the world. Constructed with mass timber and nontoxic, bio-based materials, the building sequesters carbon while delivering health and economic benefits to its occupants and owners. The five-story, […]
GERDING EDLEN—a real estate investment, development, and asset and property management firm—pursues green certifications for each asset in its portfolio, aiming to achieve LEED Gold certification or higher for all new developments.
Jolene’s First Cousin is a two-story, 6,600 square foot retail and residential building in Portland, Oregon with three small retail spaces, two one-bedroom apartments, and 13 bedrooms leased to a transitional housing service provider. Its equity investors, both accredited and unaccredited, accepted a lower current return in order to contribute to the building’s social mission.
Hassalo on Eighth is a multifamily rental housing project located in Portland, Oregon, that includes the largest bicycle parking facility anywhere in North America. The building features 657 residential units and 58,100 gross square feet of retail space across three buildings. Its location in Portland’s Lloyd District provides easy access to downtown Portland through a variety of transportation options. Taking advantage of its location along streets with protected bike lanes, project developers have included features that promote active transportation and sustainability, and enhance the appeal of the project.
The Burnside rocket is not your average project. The LEED-Platinum infill development in Portland features a ground-floor pub, two levels of shared office space, a top-floor restaurant, and a rooftop garden. The four-story building is a case study in multifunctionality: operable window panels double as canvases for local artists, the roof garden provides fresh produce for the restaurant, and water from an underground aquifer both cools the building and yields 4,500 gallons (17,000 L) of potable water each day—profits from which the developer plans to donate to local public schools. The project embodies the do-it-yourself ethos of its host city and acts as a proper hinge along Burnside Street, the dividing line between north and south Portland.
The Mirabella is a sustainable vertical retirement community in the South Waterfront area of Portland, Oregon. Comprised of a 30-story building on 1.15 acres (0.47 ha) just south of downtown Portland, the Mirabella houses over 400 residents. The 517,000 square-foot (48,031 m2) building has 224 upscale apartments, 16 assisted care units, 23 skilled nursing beds, 25 memory care beds, 70,000 square feet (6,503 m2) of common area amenities, and a 250-car below-grade parking garage. The amenities offered include dining areas, commercial kitchens, retail space, fitness areas, office space, and classrooms.
The 11-acre (4.5-ha) Adidas Village, a redevelopment of the Bess Kaiser Hospital complex in North Portland, marks the consolidation of the global corporation’s dispersed, suburban offices into a central urban campus. Through a clever mix of adaptive use and new construction, the corporate village transcends a myriad of site constraints while transforming a formerly moribund project area into a community asset. The new headquarters for Adidas’s North American operations consists of 360,000 square feet (33,445 m2) of office and design space, a large fitness center, playing fields, a public park, a restaurant, and an 830-space underground parking garage.
Transforming the historic Portland Armory into a performing arts center required a thoughtful approach as well as creative financing and design. Built in 1891, the armory stood for many years as one of its neighborhood’s defining elements, but by the turn of the 21st century it was in dire need of repair. Armed with a sales pitch for his partners and a plan for Portland Center Stage (PCS)—the city’s premier theater company—to raise funds to buy the armory, local developer Robert Gerding set out to convert the former fortress into a permanent home for PCS by reconstructing its distinctive facade and installing a state-of-the-art theater within. The redeveloped Gerding Theater achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification at the Platinum level, becoming the first building on the National Register of Historic Places, as well as the first performing arts center, to do so.
Although it is the second-largest 19th-century building in Portland, the armory has a footprint of only 20,000 square feet (1,858 m2). And the theater required 55,000 square feet (5,110 m2). The solution was to excavate 30 feet (9 m) below street level—requiring extensive shoring—to create enough volume to fit a 200-seat “black box” theater (placed underground), a 599-seat main theater, rehearsal spaces, and administrative offices.
One North comprises three architecturally distinctive, energy-efficient buildings, with a total of 88,857 square feet of office space and 15,712 square feet of retail space, surrounding a 14,000-square-foot common courtyard. Developed collaboratively by two developers on three parcels, One North brings a new public square and new jobs to a historically disadvantaged urban neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.
The well-insulated buildings at One North use less than half the energy of a typical new office building but were built at a comparable cost per square foot. They feature timber construction for its structural, environmental, and aesthetic qualities; the resulting office interiors have proved alluring for fast-growing creative firms.
A 141,000-square-foot, transit-oriented mixed-use building on two city blocks in southeast Portland, Oregon. The mixed-income project is built on the former site of a dairy built in 1929. Today, the development features 85 apartments built atop street-level retail stores Including a restaurant, a hair salon, and a 20,000-square-foot grocery. The project was constructed as a “green” development and incorporates recycled materials, water-saving shower heads, extra insulation, and skylights. In addition, more than 90 percent of the construction debris on the site was recycled.