A new 100-foot-tall office building in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District is expected to become the tallest cross-laminated timber building in the American West.
Once completed, the new Flatworks building on Southeast Grand Avenue will be higher than another record-breaking CLT building in town: the 85-foot-tall Carbon12 building on Northeast Fremont Street. CLT is a type of wood panel created by gluing layers of lumber that are cut from one log.
Flatworks was formally announced on Thursday by Sturgeon Development Partners, the company founded by Portland developer Vanessa Sturgeon. Groundbreaking is slated for the end of this year, and it’s scheduled to complete in the second quarter of 2022.
The building will include 130,000 square feet of office space and 16,000 square feet of retail. The Business Journal earlier reported it was supposed to have 140,000 square feet of office. The number was scaled back under a redesign spurred by comments from the Historic Landmarks Commission, according to Sturgeon.
Flatworks also will have 42 parking spaces and will bring a combined 45 short-term and long-term bike parking spaces to the district, according to SDP.
Chris Duffin, president of Tualatin-based LMC Construction, said his firm has worked on several commercial office buildings, but this will be its first large-scale CLT building. He said it’s exciting to work with TVA Architects and Sturgeon Development Partners.
One of the challenges of working on a CLT building: procuring panels well enough in advance, he said. Company officials have been reaching out to large CLT manufacturers and working to get in the queue. Bob Thompson, design principal at TVA Architects, said the building is highly-sustainable.
The project is inside one of Portland’s opportunity zones. Those give investors tax breaks for paying into so-called Qualified Opportunity Funds. SDP created one such fund in 2018, which is also behind a 123-room hotel project in Salem called the Holman Riverfront Park Hotel.
“I’m so thrilled to announce our latest construction project in Portland, which will give us the opportunity to be part of this thriving district,” Sturgeon said in a news release. “We are confident in Portland’s future to attract more businesses and talent to the region.”
“These have been challenging times for our city, state and country amid the coronavirus, but we will emerge from this stronger,” she said. “SDP is investing now, because we believe Portland’s commercial real estate industry will continue growing, and that our city’s economic future is bright.”
The project also netted praise from Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.
“Flatworks is a visual, tangible representation of how connected we are as Oregonians,” Wheeler said in a news release. “Cross laminated timber offers rural economic development, provides sustainable, low-carbon construction materials for all kinds of projects, and helps spur an environmentally-friendly way to manage our state’s forests.”