El Centro de la Raza will hold a groundbreaking ceremony at 11 a.m. March 6 for Plaza Roberto Maestas (PRM); a mixed-use affordable housing project located directly south of El Centro de la Raza’s historic schoolhouse building, and adjacent to the Beacon Hill Light Rail Station.

Ecotrust’s “The Redd on Salmon Street” featured in Portland Monthly magazine
Link to the article.
Right now, the dilapidated warehouse stretching a full city block on SE Salmon Street is simply the skeleton of a 96-year-old ironworks, neglected for decades. In 2016, however, the environmental nonprofit Ecotrust plans to turn this cavernous Central Eastside space into an incubator for artisan food businesses, where Oregon-grown crops become new products devised by Portland start-ups sharing production, storage, and distribution facilities.

DJC Photos: Paying homage to industrial past in St. Johns
Marvel 29, the new, four-story mixed-use building for PHK Development at the eastern end of the St. Johns Bridge, has 165 apartment units, 1,721 SF of retail space, 150 bike parking spaces, 79 resident storage spaces and 132 underground parking spaces. The design makes extensive use of reclaimed materials, from hardwood shipping cases to shipping chain, related to the nearby Swan Island dry docks. The building is anticipated to be certified LEED Platinum. Additional amenities include a rooftop terrace, a pet grooming room, a fitness center, a demonstration kitchen and electric vehicle charging stations.
Link to DJC article with photos by Sam Tenney.

Tom Mathews of Walsh is named LIHI’s Housing Hero
LIHI’s Sharon Lee said Mathews helped change the stereotype of low-income housing, making it a community asset that gives dignity to families.
Sharon Lee and Tom Mathews have known each other for about two decades, and that relationship has helped each of their businesses grow.
Lee, executive director of the Low Income Housing Institute, recently presented Mathews with LIHI’s Housing Hero Award for his work on nonprofit housing, including 11 projects for LIHI.

Portland Monthly “Merging Architecture and Recovery at a New Women’s Rehab Project”
Portland Monthly Magazine reports on Lifeworks NW and Home Forward’s new drug- and alcohol-free facility in their January 2015 edition.
O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders (OWCB) recently completed The Center for Hope and Recovery which is a residential drug and alcohol treatment facility in Northeast Portland which includes LifeWorks NW’s 36-bed Project Network and the 32-unit Home Forward Beech Street Apartments.

WALSH Is Excited to Collaborate with QUAD Inc. and DAO Architecture on Station 162
A 44-unit affordable housing complex planned in Gresham is being designed to cater to seniors and individuals with physical disabilities.
Portland-based DAO Architecture is designing the estimated $9 million to $10 million Station 162 for Portland-based QUAD Inc., said Alena Guggemos, the nonprofit’s development director. The four-story complex at 306 S.E. 162nd Ave. in the Rockwood neighborhood will be the fifth affordable housing development that QUAD has built in the Portland metro-area to support its mission of enabling individuals with disabilities to live independently, she said.

Catholic Community Services Opens Nativity House to Bring Shelter and Services to the Chronically Homeless
Tacoma, Wash. — As parts of Western Washington are expected to see freezing temperatures, a new homeless shelter in Tacoma has opened its doors.
The Catholic Community Services’s new Nativity House opened on Tuesday December 30, 2014.

American Baptist Homes of the West Opens Affordable Senior Housing in Bremerton
American Baptist Homes of the West recently opened the Pearl on Oyster Bay senior apartments at 550 Russell Road, within the Bay Vista Hope VI neighborhood developed by the Bremerton Housing Authority on the old 83-acre Westpark public housing site.

Affordable units you can heat with a TV
Jeremy Brooks, a Walsh Construction superintendent on the Orchards at Orenco apartment project in Hillsboro, posted a sign in his trailer that reads “Nothing on this job is typical.”
That’s not an overstatement.

Placing a Concrete Foundation on Rigid Foam Insulation at the Orchards at Orenco Passive House
It should go without saying that any high performance building should be built on a solid foundation. So why would we set our building on a layer of foam insulation? The answer of course is thermal bridging. Those bridging effects can cause a significant amount of heat loss through the mass structure at the base of the building. By thermally isolating the building foundation from the ground, building performance is improved, not only from an energy performance standpoint but also in terms of comfort and moisture management.