Tag: Glisan Landing

Community, New Residence

Beacon at Glisan Landing Welcomes Residents

In the final weeks of 2024, support staff readied 41 units of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) in the recently completed Beacon at Glisan Landing apartments. The four-story building at 7450 NE Glisan Street, run by Catholic Charities of Oregon, welcomed its first four residents ahead of the new year and will gradually bring in more people transitioning from homelessness. Beacon is the voucher-based housing that Metro and the Portland Housing Bureau worked to create on a half-city block that includes a second building offering income-restricted affordable housing.

Related Northwest won the bid to develop the former Trinity Broadcasting Network property with different co-sponsors / service providers for each project. Sally Erickson, Community Services Director for Catholic Charities of Oregon, explained Beacon is just one of nearly two dozen locations the group operates to help shelter the state’s housing-insecure population. “Catholic Charities has about 23 affordable properties statewide. All of them are affordable to people [earning] below 60 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) and in some cases zero to 30 percent,” said Erickson. As with this Montavilla location, many properties offer subsidized units for senior citizens on fixed incomes, Social Security, or those with disabilities living on Supplemental Security Income (SSI), currently $943.00 monthly in Oregon.

Telehealth room

Erickson noted that older people are continuing to make up a significant portion of the unsheltered population each year. Individuals in that demographic are likely to move into places like Beacon. Catholic Charities recently opened a similar location to Beacon in the Buckman neighborhood called Francis + Clare Place. That building added 61 units of PSH with a population trending towards older adults up to 76 years old. “People’s perception of who is experiencing homelessness would become very skewed if you went and joined a community meal [at Francis + Clare] on a Friday night and saw the people coming in,” remarked Erickson. The Multnomah County Coordinated Access program, administered by the Joint Office of Homeless Services (JOHS), manages resident placement in PSH housing.

  • Community room TV area
  • Community room kitchen
  • Community room activity shelves

That county-wide Coordinated Access program prioritizes placement in housing programs based on environmental threats to unsheltered persons and their health needs. “We take referrals from that coordinated county-wide waitlist, and everybody who’s on that waitlist has been assessed by an outreach worker or social worker. They’ve gone through a very intensive series of questions to determine their relative vulnerability. People moving into new supportive housing like this project are individuals who outreach workers have deemed the most vulnerable. They are most likely to die if they continue to live on the streets,” said Erickson. “So it tends to be people that are older, people with chronic health conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or COPD.” Ken Davis, the Supportive Housing manager for Catholic Charities of Oregon, explained most PSH communities he oversees have large numbers of medically fragile residents. Some locations require access to various levels of onsite medical care. However, Beacon at Glisan Landing, as a smaller facility, will not have that level of support. Instead, it features a Telehealth room across from the ground floor community room. Residents who can afford the discounted internet service could always use their apartments for virtual doctor appointments, but people may need better digital access or privacy if they share a studio apartment with a significant other.

Food pantry stocked with home goods ahead of food delivery

Unlike temporary shelters, Beacon at Glisan Landing residents do not have a time limit on their stay in the subsidized apartment building. Erickson explained that a segment of the PSH population moves out after a few years, finding other living situations that better meet their changing needs or social dynamic. However, some people will stay housed in the building for the rest of their lives. The program requires that people pay a third of their income towards the rent and allows for incomes to drop to zero without the threat of eviction. When supporting people with constrained incomes or mobility, food access is a critical component of resident services at Beacon. Due to a grant from the LDS Church, this building will have a free food pantry for residents. “It’s really important to provide [a pantry] onsite because healthy food has gotten so expensive for our residents. This will be our 10th food pantry that opens in our buildings, said Erickson. Not only do residents receive food, but funding allows the support team to provide essential home goods, including plates, silverware, pots, pans, and other kitchenware. Residents also have access to personal hygiene supplies and many of the standard items of life that are not regularly available to those living without shelter.

Building management limits the pace people move into the building to ensure the team has time to help them with the extensive application process needed for residency and settle into their new living situation. “There’s quite a bit of paperwork with Home Forward to qualify people and do background checks,” said Erickson. They will work with five to eight people weekly until residents occupy all 41 studio apartment units. The resident services furnish the units with a small table and chairs, a nightstand, and a Central City Bed®. Residents can upgrade their furniture, and building management will store the provided items for future use. Project planners designed this housing for adult living. Couples can share a unit, but the Coordinated Access program steers people with children towards other PSH options with play areas and family-oriented amenities. Communal spaces on the ground floor centers around a large community room with a TV, kitchen space, and other entertainment items. Ken Davis explained that an essential part of the supportive housing program is drawing people out of their rooms and into the community. “Seeing people come out of their shell and engage with others, create friendships, it’s just great. We know it has all sorts of other beneficial health effects,” said Davis. “COVID [mandated distancing] has been brutal for folks, compounded by the social isolation of being houseless for a long time.”

The building also features outdoor tables with seating in a communal courtyard area next to the secure bike storage lockers for those who do not want to park their transportation in the units or laundry rooms. Keyfob-operated locks secure the building at all times, and a security guard is onsite when the ground-floor offices close. The residents are free to come and go as they like, as Beacon at Glisan Landing is not a facility but an apartment building with other add-on services. Residents can invite guests over and enjoy the freedoms of independent living while having access to supportive services. This building will have two full-time case managers and three resident service specialists working with the people living at Beacon. A peer support team will work onsite a couple of days a week. When crews complete work later this year, the property management company will support Beacon and the Aldea at Glisan Landing affordable housing development next door.

Coin and app operated laundry room with bike storage

Within the next two months, Beacon will become the home for over 40 new Montavilla residents. As the other Glisan Landing facilities open to tenants, NE Glisan Street will become more active, with residents looking to eat and shop along the commercial corridor. Area residents interested in participating in programs at Beacon can contact Catholic Charities Oregon to participate in operating the food pantry or other help for people who may need assistance navigating the neighborhood.

Article and photos by

Jacob Loeb

Business Relocating, Community, Food and Drink, New Business

Stone Soup at Glisan Landing

The culinary training organization Stone Soup PDX recently relocated its operations from downtown Portland to the Beacon at Glisan Landing building on the corner of NE 74th Avenue and Glisan Street. Educational programs are currently underway inside the storefront space, and their publicly accessible cafe will open in March 2025, when they expect residents to move into the apartments above the shop. This location will provide people facing employment barriers with critical job skills through a 12-week program.

Stone Soup occupies three adjacent storefronts in the newly constructed NE Glisan Street building. The corner cafe will operate as a community-facing space, selling morning coffee, pastries, and cookies. Throughout the weekdays, they intend to have a more extensive menu in the cafe, offering soup and other meals prepared in the training kitchen next door or from the group’s production kitchen on SE Powell Boulevard.

The third Montavilla storefront serves as Stone Soup’s classroom. In the space, program participants receive basic instruction and engage in weekly “check-ins” with the support services coordinators who work to ensure students have the supplies needed to succeed in the program. According to Ellen Damaschino, Executive Director at the nonprofit, this can include help with transit, work-appropriate clothing, or USB cables needed to keep their phones charged. Damaschino explained that culinary skills are the central curriculum in the program. However, the instructors also teach workplace success tactics to help people find jobs and stay employed in various fields. “Some of our participants are also interested in using the skills we teach in resume building, getting to work on time, and working with others to maybe enter other fields, which is OK with us. Culinary is [just one] way for us to get people into work,” said Damaschino.

Stone Soup PDX opened in its original location on NW Everett and Broadway in 2019. They operated primarily as a cafe and training kitchen until COVID-19 forced a shift in the group’s operations. “So it slowed down a lot during the pandemic, and that is when we really kicked up the Community Meals program,” recalled Damaschino. “We make about 1,500 meals a week for the community. Those are for places like shelters, mental health facilities, and transitional housing. So exactly the places that our participants come from.” That shift allowed the organization to open a production kitchen on SE Powell Boulevard, where program participants spend their final four weeks cooking meals that volunteer drivers transport to Portland locations.

When Stone Soup backed away from serving walk-in customers downtown in favor of providing delivery meals, they expanded training operations wherever they could. However, that downtown space was not ideal for the growing program. “It was originally opened as a restaurant and a cafe, and they were making the basement downstairs into a school. So when Catholic Charities approached us about this space [on NE Glisan] that would have an externally facing cafe again, a brand new kitchen, and a classroom space, it was very enticing to take that space and jettison our old space, which wasn’t really working for us,” said Damaschino.

Classroom kitchen on NE Glisan courtesy Stone Soup PDX (Julia Granet)

The Beacon at Glisan Landing offers 41 Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units above the ground-floor storefronts. Damaschino sees an opportunity for a symbiotic relationship with the building’s residents and the families living in the adjacent affordable housing complex. They want to create programs teaching home cooking to their neighbors and work to assist those around them with access to healthy foods. PSH program operators may also guide some residents into the program. “We mostly have a referral in program, you can join just by signing up, but we have found that it is better if people are in some kind of housing, whether it’s transitional or shelter. We have found that people who are housed have had better success in the program,” explained Damaschino.

Many students are recently houseless and need help finding employment that can secure stable housing. However, Stone Soup designed programs for anyone with employment barriers, including young people without any work experience, people who recently transitioned back into the workforce, or those looking to switch jobs but have limited resources. “We recently had a graduate in his 60s who wanted a career change. [He was] on a fixed income and felt worried about retirement. Now, he’s working at a retirement community as a chef. So that’s a success story for us,” remarked Damaschino. Program instructors segment the classes into three tiers, each lasting four weeks. All tiers currently have eight people learning culinary and workplace skills. Damaschino explained that they intend to grow the program’s 24-person capacity to 30 with this new location. The organization often has around 35 to 45 people waiting for a place in the program, providing a sustainable flow of participants.

The menu taught to students changes with each class and the season. “Our community meals vary in what we make. We also try to engage the participants and meet them where they’re at. In the first and second tiers, we ask what they want to learn, matching them with skills that are also going to get them jobs. Often, in the community kitchen, we’ll make lasagna or enchiladas. We always have salads, and we [make] nice soups and stews in the winter,” said Damaschino. “We tend to make meals that shelters respond to. We want to make things that kids are going to eat, and the parents are going to eat in the shelter. We want them to be nutritious and we follow the county’s guidelines, so we have a dietitian that we work with.”

As Stone Soup transitions into this new space, they hope to build the same level of community integration they developed in their years downtown. “We partner with our community. So, if we had too many onions, we would offer them to other nonprofits in the area. People were giving us food, and we were giving them food. We want to make ourselves visible and useful,” explained Damaschino. The group works to avoid food waste and shares practice meals when they have a surplus by allowing participants to take food back home to their communities.

In addition to a core group of instructors who came to the program from culinary or social services professions, Stone Soup relies on ten to 20 volunteers per week who distribute prepared meals to the customer organizations. Damaschino explained that they intend to keep growing their educational offering, filling the gaps in Portland’s food-related employment sector. “We want to see Stone Soup as the premier workforce training program. All the culinary schools are gone from the area,” remarked Damaschino. She feels Portland has a significant need for what this organization can offer the community. People can already see weekday activity in the storefront now and should expect to see the cafe open in March.

By

Jacob Loeb

Community, Construction, New Business

IRCO Free Preschool at Glisan Landing

As construction crews work four stories high on two affordable housing projects at Glisan Landing, developers are planning a third building on the site. Recently, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) received conditional use approval for a new single-story preschool spanning a mid-block lot from NE 74th to 75th Avenues. The two-classroom building provides a buffer between the large multifamily buildings on NE Glisan Street and the single-family housing located south of the project while serving a vital community need.

Sitemaps from Land Use 23-073813 Case file

The proposed IRCO Early Learning Center will serve 36 to 40 students in a new 2,784-square-foot building. Preschool classes feature developmentally appropriate and culturally specific books, toys, and curriculum. The nonprofit organization will offer no-cost tuition for up to 40 families. This new facility follows IRCO’s work with a similar Multicultural Preschool in Washington County. IRCO will not limit student spaces to children living in Glisan Landing units but anticipates many families from the apartment complex will utilize their services.

Rendering from Land Use 23-073813 Case file showing building from NE 74th Ave

In addition to the two classrooms, the building offers a lobby, staff break room, office, kitchen, restrooms, and storage space. The building’s trapezoidal-shaped roof overhangs the base structure, covering portions of the outdoor play area at each end of the preschool. A continuous tree line along the southern property boundary creates a green buffer for residents living in the adjacent homes. A nine-bed community garden on the site’s NE 74th Avenue frontage will also provide more green space buffers. Glisan Landing residents will directly access the preschool property through a passageway from the complex’s central courtyard.

Rendering from Land Use 23-073813 Case file showing building from NE 75th Ave

The preschool building sits on its own lot owned by IRCO Glisan Preschool LLC and is not directly related to Glisan Landing. However, IRCO’s common ownership stake in both buildings will complement the culturally specific wraparound services offered to families living in the neighboring Aldea apartments. This section of the former Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) site that Oregon Metro acquired for affordable housing exists in a Residential 2,500 (R2.5) zone. Developers could not extend the four-story building created in a Commercial Mixed Use 2 (CM2) zone onto this parcel, creating an opportunity for a low-scale supportive use. This usage as a garden and daycare facility fits with the zoning standards for this land and helps transition the scale of the buildings from two-story single-family homes to a four-story development.

IRCO Executive Director Lee Po Cha during Glisan Landing’s groundbreaking ceremony

The land use review focused on an exception to the 15-foot landscape buffer required between institutional operations and residences. IRCO will provide a compliant hedge and tree screen but plans to build a 4-foot-wide maintenance pathway from a back door on the south side of the building to NE 75th Avenue in that buffer zone. That pathway would usually not comply with standards. In January, the Hearings Officer concluded that IRCO’s plans would meet the screening standards and approved the project to move forward to permitting.

Future preschool site filled with construction equipment

The IRCO Glisan Preschool site is currently used for construction staging by crews working on Glisan Landing. Work on the site’s third building will begin after the housing projects are further along. When completed, it will provide an active daytime use and a quiet evening buffer for residents living south of NE Glisan’s mixed-use developments. Expect more information on this building and its programming after crews break ground in the coming months.

Article and photos by

Jacob Loeb

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Community, Construction, New Residence

Glisan Landing Buildings Become Montavilla’s Tallest

This week, the two low-income buildings at NE 74th Avenue and Glisan Street became Montavilla’s tallest structures. Construction crews recently completed the roof framing atop the fourth floor, redefining the neighborhood’s skyline. Future residents of the upper floors will have unobstructed views of Mt. Tabor and the mostly low-slung streetscape surrounding this site. This development marks a change to area housing height and density with 137 new residences in a half-block site.

View South of Mt Tabor from Aldea unit

The two distinct apartment buildings under construction form Glisan Landing and serve different needs in the affordable housing market. Aldea is the larger of the two, spanning the entire width of a block between NE 74th and 75th Avenues in a “U” shape configuration. The building features 96 homes ranging in size from studios to four-bedroom units. Property managers will reserve 81 apartments for people making at or below the 60% median family income (MFI) level for Portland, with the remaining available to those earning 30% MFI. Beacon is a bar-shaped building on a quarter-acre lot carved out of the complex’s northwest corner. This building has 41 Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units for those who were recently homeless or housing insecure. The structures encircle a center courtyard containing a play area and exercise loop.

Fiber and textile arts studio

The architects of this project placed all housing above the ground floor. Two parking garages under the southern portion of Aldea at Glisan Landing offer 56 stalls. Vehicle access parking on NE 74th or 75th Avenues. The northeast corner of the building next to the NE 75th Avenue garage contains culturally specific building amenities. The building’s co-owner, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO), will anchor Aldea’s community space with a fiber and textile art studio in the corner room looking out onto NE Glisan Street. Residents can also access an adjacent multicultural reading room, teen room, and property management office. Designers placed a gated open wall courtyard facing NE 75th Avenue. The green space is accessed through the lobby, providing residents a secluded outdoor space. Over half of the units in this building have multiple bedrooms, providing the family-sized apartments often overlooked in affordable housing.

Planners placed the main entrance to both structures off NE Glisan Street in the gap between the new buildings. Site operators intend to keep gates to the property open during daytime hours when staff are in the resident services office facing the entrance. Although separate projects, Related Northwest is the co-owner and development partner for both buildings. That relationship helps create a cohesive site plan with shared resources and a communal space.

Beacon at Glisan Landing is co-owned by Catholic Charities and features the only storefront space in the complex. Non-profit Stone Soup will offer a barista and culinary training program from the ground-floor shop with a cafe open to the public. The northwest corner will have bar seating against big windows looking onto NE Glisan with bistro seating outside. Catholic Charities will provide case management and services to PSH tenants living on the three floors above the cafe. Each of the 41 studio apartments features tall ceilings and deep storage areas. The building provides a table, chairs, and a durable bed designed by Central City Concern in each unit. Beacon offers several Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant units accessed by an elevator, providing accessible housing for seniors and those with special mobility needs. 

View from Stone Soup cafe

Completing the vertical structure of a building is a significant construction milestone. It is the beginning of a shift to interior work and lets the community see the new structure’s placement in the skyline. Although four stories is not tall for city-scale buildings, these new structures stand above all others in the neighborhood and signal a new high-water mark for development. Crews with LMC Construction have many months of work ahead of them as developers expect them to complete Beacon this year and open Aldea to residents in 2025.

Article and phots by

Jacob Loeb

Promotion: Help keep independent news accessible to the community. Montavilla News has a Patreon account or you can pay for a full year directly online. We invite those who can contribute to this local news source to consider becoming paid subscriber or sponsor. We will always remain free to read regardless of subscription.