Tag: Related Northwest

New Residence

Glisan Landing Opening to Residents

On April 11th, project leaders and development participants gathered to celebrate the opening of Glisan Landing at NE 74th Avenue and Glisan Street. The event occurred as residents continued to move into the two buildings offering 137 affordable housing units. Transforming a 1.65-acre underutilized commercial property into housing required many partner organizations, and the 2018 voters approved Metro Housing Bond. The project also faced funding constraints beyond the developer’s expectation after Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) determined the project was not exempt from the higher labor rates of prevailing wage rate laws.

The property once housed a grocery store but later became the transmission facility for the Trinity Broadcasting Network before Oregon Metro bought the site in 2019. In June 2023, demolition crews razed the single-story building. They began constructing the first two buildings focused on housing with storefront space for Stone Soup culinary training center and supportive ground floor resident amenities. A third building under construction on the south end of the site will house the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization’s (IRCO) free preschool in a single-story structure. In December 2024, residents started moving into the first building, offering 41 units of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). Catholic Charities of Oregon runs Beacon at Glisan Landing apartments at 7450 NE Glisan Street. That nonprofit jointly owns the four-story PSH building with Related Northwest as part of the public-private partnership that made this project possible.

Related Northwest partnered with IRCO for the 96-unit C-shaped building Aldea at Glisan Landing. That four-story development recently started moving people in and is nearly 50% leased. It features many family-sized units with secure ground-floor parking containing enough stalls for its higher-capacity residences. However, developers constructed this site with the support of Metro’s Transit-Oriented Development Program (TOD), which stimulates high-density housing development within frequent transit corridors like NE Glisan Street, accommodating residents who live car-free. Aldea reserves its units for people earning at or below 60% Area Median Income (AMI). That threshold is a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) determined rate by region adjusted by family size. The leasing company will also hold 15 of Aldea’s 96 units for people earning up to 30% AMI. Operators also reserve all of Beacon at Glisan Landing’s 41 PSH units for people making up to 30% AMI.

Although designed for income-restricted residents, this complex features amenities not seen in many market-rate units east of the City center. Residents have access to indoor and outdoor exercise equipment, a youth reading room, a computer lab, a teen lounge, and a fiber studio with sewing machines and work tables. Residents can access onsite laundry rooms on each residential floor, and in-unit washers and dryers are available in the three and four-bedroom apartments. The fenced central courtyard contains play equipment and a garden trail alongside seating. A ground-floor breezeway at the south gap between the two parking garages leads to the preschool and its adjacent community garden space. Designers wanted to connect the residents with the community in the building while allowing neighbors living outside Glisan Landing opportunities to interact with the site through its natural spaces. The building features several exterior murals by Jeremy Nichols (Plastic Birdie), with two visible from NE 75th and 74th Avenues. Muralist Alicia Schultz (Vine & Thistle) produced interior artwork warming the space for residents. Colorful punched metal screens obscure the parking while letting air flow through the courtyard.

Glisan Landing is a loosely integrated complex with shared spaces, but independent lots contain each building with differing ownership and financing. Related Northwest and its partners arranged the development’s structure to treat each building as an autonomous project with separate funding, general contractors, and other considerations. This approach has several operational benefits, but it also has the potential to save on labor by avoiding prevailing wage requirements for public works projects. Contractors hiring labor for government-funded projects over a specific budget are often required to pay a rate based on the average wage paid to similarly employed workers within a particular occupation. The prevailing wage requirement ensures that low-bid rules on government-funded projects do not use the power of public money to suppress labor rates. However, many affordable housing projects with participation from for-profit developers are not always financially sound when paying the prevailing wage. Consequentially, officials exempt completely affordable development from paying the prevailing wage. “Affordable housing will be non-prevailed if it’s 100% affordable, meaning 60% AMI or lower, four stories or less, and no ground floor commercial,” explained Stefanie Kondor, Executive Vice President of Related Northwest.

The development group’s experience with affordable housing led them to think BOLI would not require a prevailing wage workforce for the affordable housing buildings. However, two months before closing on the project, Kondor says BOLI informed the team that the free preschool was considered a commercial use and that the whole Glisan Landing complex would need to pay prevailing wage labor rates. It was challenging for the team that was looking at a ten to twenty percent increase in building costs, but they were able to bridge the gap and break ground. “We prevailed when we were prevailed,” remarked Kondor. Still, she feels Oregon has some work to do with its interpretation of prevailing wage rules. “The question becomes, is a preschool considered ground floor commercial, even if we’re not charging the residents to take care of the kids? Is that a commercial use, or is that a residential use benefiting the residential community?” said Kondor. “I think that is why you’re not seeing a lot of co-located preschools, and it’s a shame.” Studies often identify accessible childcare and early education as essential to improving a family’s success and future prosperity.

The Related Northwest team took on the budget challenge and continued with their plan, offering a high-quality, affordable housing development. “Even though we are for-profit, we are mission-driven. Every person in my office was formerly a nonprofit person,” explained Kondor. The group pursues projects based on their experience in the region and the guidance from nonprofits they partner with. Stefanie Kondor wanted to work on Glisan Landing because of her appreciation of the Montavilla neighborhood, and she is currently working on a project in her hometown of Seaside. “The places where we develop are places that we would want to live ourselves and want to be, that we feel that we can add value, that we can do something special,” said Kondor.

The Northwest division of Related develops housing projects in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The group wants to take on more development in Portland and other areas of Oregon. However, the 2018 Metro Housing Bond has depleted its $652.8 million budget, significantly exceeding the delivery of its planned 3,900 affordable housing units. Taxpayers will continue to pay off the bond for over a decade, inhibiting another bond issuance without impacting the tax rate. If the community wants more affordable housing developments like Glisan Landing, Kondor feels that the region will need to recreate the funding conditions created by the 2018 Metro Housing Bond. “The partnership with Metro and Portland Housing Bureau came together with resources. If it was just one of them, I don’t think you could accomplish this [type of development]. Metro donating the land, they contributed TOD funds, infrastructure funds, and Metro bonds. The Portland Housing Bureau administers the housing bonds, and they do the property tax exemptions and the SDC (System Development Charge) waivers. All of those things really help make the project come to fruition.”

Kondor also attributes Glisan Landing’s success to the work of the stakeholder committee and support from local organizations like Vestal Elementary School, which has already seen enrollment expand due to the families moving into the housing complex. The Montavilla community will see more people living in NE Glisan as this building changes the dynamic of the street to support more human-scale and family-oriented activities.

Article and photos by

Jacob Loeb

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

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

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Construction, Demolition, New Residence

TBN Demolition Clears Way for Affordable Housing

This week, demolition crews began deconstructing the former Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) building at 432 NE 74th Avenue. Last month, crews removed asbestos and cleared large portions of the asphalt parking lot surrounding the old television studio. Next week, project participants and funders will gather to officially commence construction on the 137 units of affordable housing planned for this site.

Developers split the residences across a pair of four-story buildings. The combined site will contain a wide assortment of apartments, from studio units to four-bedroom homes. The first building under construction is named Beacon at Glisan Landing. The bar-shaped building offers 41 units of permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless, low-income individuals earning at or below 30% Area Median Income (AMI). Catholic Charities of Oregon will own and operate this site with development support from Related Northwest.

As work is underway on the northwest corner of the expansive half-block property, crews will break ground on the second building called Aldea at Glisan Landing. That larger U-shaped building is co-owned by Related Northwest and Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization (IRCO). This structure will provide 96 apartments, with 41% of units available to people with a 30% AMI.

The Glisan Landing affordable housing development is part of a 2018 voter-approved Metro Housing Bond. Aldea and Beacon represent the sixth and seventh bond-created projects that put the regional housing effort on track to bring over 1,540 affordable homes to Portland, surpassing initial expectations. Ground floor commercial space included in these buildings will offer an onsite cafe with a culinary employment training program run by Stone Soup PDX.

Rendering of Beacon at Glisan Landing courtesy Related Northwest

These housing developments represent years of planning and community outreach with funding from Oregon Metro, Portland Housing Bureau, and Oregon Housing & Community Services. Over half the units offered in the Aldea building are family sizes with two, three, and four-bedroom homes available. Project planners made significant efforts to include onsite parking for residents, dedicating a large portion of the ground floor to vehicle storage. This design choice and other community-supporting amenities responded to neighbor requests. Construction crews expect to complete work on these buildings by May 2024. Expect temporary sidewalk closures and other building-related disruptions in the project area over the next 12 months.

Glisan Landing Groundbreaking ceremony June 12th, 2023

By

Jacob Loeb

Disclosure: The author of this article served on the Montavilla Neighborhood Association board during the community outreach phase of this project’s development and participated in some of those conversations.

Housing project’s site plan

Promotion: Help keep independent news accessible to the community. Montavilla News has a Patreon account. We invite those who can contribute to this local news source to consider becoming paid subscribers or sponsors. We will always remain free to read regardless of subscription.

Community, Construction, New Residence

Glisan and 74th Affordable Housing Meeting

We All Rise and Related Northwest invite residents and business owners to a public meeting regarding the Glisan and 74th Affordable Housing project. The in-person and online event will take place on April 14th at 6:30 PM. The developer hopes to attain a building permit by the end of 2022, with construction beginning soon after. The City has a website for those interested in following the project’s progress, and the developer produced a one-page fact sheet that includes information about the upcoming meeting. This public forum is the best opportunity for the community to ask questions and voice opinions about this development.

By early 2023, demolition crews will remove the former Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) building at 432 NE 74th Ave. Before that time, the current short-term tenants, African Youth & Community Organization (AYCO) and Portland Indigenous Marketplace, must relocate into new facilities. Once crews clear the site, the developer will begin constructing 137 units of affordable housing split between two four-story buildings.

Early rendering of 7450 NE Glisan

Housing at the site will serve families and individuals earning 30% and 60% of Area Median Income (AMI). The site will contain a wide assortment of apartments ranging from studio to four-bedroom units. The smaller structure at the northwest corner of the site offers 41 units of Permanent Supportive Housing reserved for the formerly homeless or people at risk of homelessness. The large “U” shaped building will contain the remaining 96 units intended to serve families. Homes will range in floorspace from 400 square feet to 1,200 square feet, with rents ranging from $507 to $1,616 per month.

Affordable housing is just one part of the support system built into this project. Wrap-around services delivered by Catholic Charities and culturally specific family services through Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) place residents on a path to financial stability and success. Ground floor commercial space on NE Glisan Street will offer a Café with Commercial Kitchen, offering residents culinary and barista training opportunities. Other storefronts in the building support small business incubator spaces.

Glisan and 74th Affordable Housing project’s site plan

The development will provide several community-facing amenities intended to blend the complex into the neighborhood. Developers plan for a Community Garden at the south end of the site, acting as a buffer between the new tall building and the block’s existing single-family homes. The courtyard spaces will include a playground, outdoor grill, picnic seating areas, and a walking path running throughout the property. Onsite parking for residents is included on the main level with access from NE 75th and 74th Avenues, alleviating pressures on local street parking.

Highland Christian Center will host the April public meeting in their Fellowship Hall located at 7600 NE Glisan Street. People planning on attending in person or remotely are encouraged to review the fact sheet before the event. Look for project designs to finalize later this year, with significant construction beginning in 2023.

By

Jacob Loeb

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