“The Strand,” a new three-tower mixed-use development in Portland, Ore., hugs a gentle bend in the Willamette River.
Photo courtesy of Walsh Construction Co.
When project manager Brian Johnson was soliciting bids that called for the simultaneous construction of two of three towers in the $110-million “Strand” project in Portland,
he encountered a few raised eyebrows among subcontractors.
“We had to convince the subs that this was not a joke,” says Johnson, one of two project managers for AGC Oregon-Columbia Chapter member Walsh Construction Co. of Portland. Walsh is general contractor of the mixed-use project just east of downtown along the Willamette River. “Basically, they would need two duplicate crews staffing two downtown towers at once.”
It didn’t take long for reality to sink in, and the winning subcontractors quickly cleared their schedules to accommodate the project, Johnson adds.
But he says that coordinating the near-simultaneous construction of two towers while starting construction of a third just six months later wasn’t easy. “We were running two big buildings at the same time,” says Johnson. “It was hard to find subs who could do two jobs at once.”
Consecutive construction of the towers would have been easier but not as economical. Although building the two towers at once requires a second tower crane and considerable coordination of material delivery and placement, it allows completion of the project well within owner RiverPlace Partners’ timeframe. Construction began in February 2005 and the schedule calls for phased completion of the first two towers in December 2006 and January 2007. The third tower completes in June.
The Strand is part of the growing North Macadam Urban Renewal Area along Portland's riverfront. The property was once the site of the Lincoln Steam Plant. Construction of The Strand followed three months of intense abatement of petroleum by-products and asbestos-coated concrete debris.
Image courtesy of Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects
Most of the job’s subcontractors have two foremen, one in charge of each tower, Johnson says. As the trades finish up on the two towers, they have been able to transition smoothly over to the third tower, as well as build the exterior shell of a 7,600-sq-ft restaurant also on the property.
Each is a “point” tower, which has a smaller floor plate. Floor plates in The Strand towers are 10,000 sq ft, as opposed to the 14,000-sq-ft floor plates in most conventional residential towers, allowing nearly every unit a view of the river. Two of the towers are 11 stories and the third is 13 stories. Each tower is free-standing, connected only by a 100-space, one-level parking garage that extends underground beneath the site and under adjacent streets and pedestrian areas.
Coordinating the completion of the interiors has been complex. For a portion of the schedule, finish contractors were at work in all three towers at the same time, says Bhavna Kumar, the Walsh project manager overseeing the interiors. The towers encompass 216 units, with 18 penthouses. The high-end finishes offer dozens of options for flooring, cabinetry, paint colors and other interior choices, so making sure each unit has exactly the right finishes has required extreme oversight, Kumar says.
“It’s been like building 216 unique homes,” says Kumar, who has posted bright orange instruction sheets in every unit to detail the type, style and location of the finishes. Subcontractors are instructed to double-check each installation to avoid mistakes. “We went beyond normal vigilance,” Kumar says.
Units range in size from 650-sq-ft studios to 3,600-sq-ft penthouses, with costs ranging from $300,000 to $3 million. Each tower sold out before completion.
The exterior design of The Strand follows that of other residential and commercial buildings in the emerging South Riverfront neighborhood, which have primarily glass- and brick-accented exteriors, says Rob Roth, project architect with Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects, Portland.
The east and west towers are nearly identical in their solid, rectangular design while the north tower features a curve in its east-facing wall in response to a bend in the Willamette, Roth says.
Approximately 2,000 sq ft of retail space is located at the base of the north tower, but tenants have not yet been confirmed.
The towers are among the first in the city to be approved for occupancy using a stair design new to Portland, Roth says. The “scissor-stair” concept clusters the two stairwells in each tower together instead of on either side of the center core. Designers optimized floor space by spiraling two stairways in one concrete rectangle. Clustering the stairwells is appropriate in small-floor-plate towers such as The Strand’s, Roth says. A conventional stairwell design would have worked, but it would have taken up too much space to be economical, he says.
The Strand development marks the final stage of the cleanup and reclamation of a brownfield site once home to the Lincoln Steam Plant. The site was contaminated with petroleum by-products from years of steam-plant operations and asbestos-coated concrete debris from the plant’s demolition.
The Strand’s developer, RiverPlace Partners LLC—a partnership led by Odevco Development Co. and Williams & Dame Development Inc., both of Portland—purchased the property from the Portland Development Commission for $2.6 million in 2004. The sale provided a critical piece of the long-term funding strategy for redeveloping the 409-acre North Macadam Urban Renewal Area along Portland’s waterfront.
Abatement crews spent three months removing contaminated soil and sending it to licensed landfills for disposal, Johnson says. Once the soil was removed, crews poured a heavy concrete slab before beginning construction on the below-grade parking garage.
The three towers join several low-rise condominium and apartment developments, retail establishments, hotels and restaurants that are already part of the RiverPlace neighborhood. Because the towers are taller than their surroundings, yet smaller than typical residential towers, they blend in well with the rest of the emerging area, says Jack Onder, president of managing partner firm Odevco.
The Strand’s landscaping also blends seamlessly with the southern tip of South Waterfront Park, Onder says. The continuity between the park, the nearby esplanade and The Strand’s landscaping is no accident—all were designed by Portland landscape architecture firm Walker Macy. The firm brought consistency to The Strand and its surroundings through similar walkway patterns and landscaping, Onder says.
The Strand towers and restaurant, along with other development still under consideration to the south, is reinvigorating a riverfront that had long been dormant. An $18-million extension of the Portland Streetcar system to the RiverPlace neighborhood, completed in 2005, is further activating the area. “There’s finally a critical mass of people here,” Onder says.
Construction on the third tower at The Strand completes in June. The restaurant will open in November.
GOING WITH THE FLOW
The Strand development’s stand-alone restaurant gives new meaning to the phrase, “Go with the flow.” The design of the 7,600-sq-ft structure, nestled between the north and east towers along the Willamette River, started out with a fairly conservative “floating” roof with a glass skin, but it begged for something more, says Rob Roth, project architect for Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects.
“It was too static,” Roth says. “I wanted to put my hand on top of it and shift it in the direction the river was flowing.”
Roth created a design that responded to the river by canting the east-west running glass walls approximately 15° to the north. Warrantee issues with the window manufacturer later required the south-facing walls tip to the south to encourage water runoff and avoid potential water pooling and leakage, but the structure still emulates the waterway’s gentle curves.
The restaurant’s structural system appears minimal, with 8-in. round columns attaching to moment frames at the steel roof. With no cross bracing, the roof looks as if it is floating over a glass skin.
