Crews from Chris Arsenault Costruction last week moved the final house that had been standing in a Lents area that the city wants to restore to a floodplain. (Photo by Dan Carter/DJC)

The city of Portland recently cleared its largest hurdle for a construction project to reduce flooding in Lents, when the last house within the floodplain was trucked to a new home.

In order to reduce flooding along Southeast Foster Road between 106th and 111th avenues, the city for the past few years has been working to relocate homeowners living in the area so that it can become a floodplain again.

But unlike other homeowners, who let their homes be deconstructed in exchange for new homes paid for by the city, resident Wes Wolfe chose not to part with his house. After months of negotiations, the city and Wolfe reached an agreement for his home to be moved south on Southeast 108th Avenue, and out of the floodplain. The deal allowed the city to meet a crucial deadline, according to Mike Rosen, watershed manager with Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services.

“There were $2.7 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency grants set to expire next month for this project,” Rosen said. “Now we will absolutely be able to use our grant. The final obstacle of getting that house off the site has been cleared.”

In February, Wolfe still had not signed a final agreement with BES, leading to concern in the agency that it would not be able to start construction on the $4 million floodplain restoration project in time to use federal grant money. Wolfe finally agreed to a deal in which the city purchased his property and gave him salvage rights so that he could relocate his house close to its current location. Additional time and effort were required to relocate Wolfe; however, Eli Callison, environmental program specialist with BES, said the deal will actually save the city money.

“Wes’ situation was unique,” Callison said. “He and his wife, Joyce, had a strong connection to the area. We finally have everyone out and everyone seems pretty happy.”

Crews from D&T Excavation are removing trees from the 30-acre project site so that excavational work can begin next summer, according to Lloyd Stahning, supervising engineer with BES. The goal is to create an open space where floodwaters from nearby Johnson Creek can collect during the rainy season.

Floodwaters presently flow onto nearby Foster Road, where businesses like Precision Auto Glass are affected at least once per year. Precision employees have a plan in place to meet at the nearby New Copper Penny restaurant, at 5932 S.E. 92nd Ave., and carpool to work in a truck or SUV on days when floodwaters become hazardous for most vehicles.

Lents resident Wes Wolfe has lived in this house for 30 years. He reached an agreement with the city of Portland for this home to be relocated outside the floodplain on Southeast 108th Avenue. (Photo by Dan Carter/DJC)

“We’re lucky in that the previous owner built up our building so it won’t flood,” said Cheryl Van Alstine, a Precision employee. “Driving down the road to get to work is the big issue. Last year when it flooded, you could have swum in it. The water was so high.”

A request for bids will go out later this year for contractors to remove 50,000 square feet of earth from the area. Excavational work and habitat enhancements will be performed in 2011. Trees removed from the area will be used to create habitat for wildlife living near Johnson Creek. In 2012, several bridges will be removed and a new road will be constructed between Southeast 112th and 108th avenues to complete the project.

“We have a certain in-water period where we can perform this work and that’s during the dry season,” Stahning said. “Getting the work done in the timeframe allowed will be our next big challenge.”

Wolfe, while watching crews from Chris Arsenault Construction prep his 30-year-old home for its move, said he looked at other places in Portland to build a new home. But in the end, he couldn’t part with the quiet, natural beauty of the neighborhood where he has lived for three decades.

“There are not many people or developments here. We like that,” Wolfe said. “At the same time, I’m going to miss having a creek in my yard and my giant tree. Coming home to this house feels like putting on an old pair of slippers.”

Timothy Buckley of Greenstone Architecture wants to see Clark County alter its building codes to ease the process to construct highly sustainable structures. The Clark College at Columbia Tech Center project, designed by Buckley’s former employer LSW Architects, is seeking Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certification. (Photo by Dan Carter/DJC)

Living buildings are being constructed from Seattle to Portland. But in between the two cities, in Clark County, no one is building net-zero-energy projects. The reason, according to county sustainability coordinator Pete Dubois, is that local building codes won’t allow it.

For the next five years, however, Clark County will be testing to see if changes should be made to building and development codes to allow for more advanced green building construction. The county will relax certain building codes to allow six pilot living buildings to be built in the area, but it remains to be seen whether those changes will become permanent.

“It’s a little scary for us because our job is to enforce and write code,” Debois said. “The goal of this is to see how we can maintain the intent of code while creating a more fluid process that allows builders to the do right thing.”

The Living Building Challenge, which requires all of a building’s energy to be produced on-site, is widely considered the most stringent green building program.

A recent study by the Cascadia Green Building Council found that the 2006 international building, mechanical and fire codes used in Clark County contained 50 possible obstacles to constructing living buildings.

In Portland, when building codes conflict with the Living Building Challenge, city staffers review building designs and hand out special approvals on a case-by-case basis. Portland also has altered some of its codes to make it easier for builders to install solar panels and treat storm water on-site.

Katie Spataro, research director for the Cascadia Green Building Council, would like to see something similar happen in Clark County.

“In some instances, the regulatory agencies in (Clark County) weren’t open-minded enough to look at these projects and support them through the approval process,” Spataro said. “With this ordinance, those agencies can start to see how they can institutionally support innovative projects.”

A major barrier to constructing living building projects in Clark County is that codes there require all potable and non-potable water to be connected to the public water system. In order to meet Living Building Challenge requirements, however, a building’s water must be completely treated and reused on-site, Spataro said. In addition, land-use and development codes include height restrictions that increase the difficulty of installing solar photovoltaic systems and wind turbines that allow living buildings to produce their own energy.

Clark County wants to encourage sustainable projects, such as the Clark College at Columbia Tech Center project. (Photo by Dan Carter/DJC)

Many architects and builders in Clark County want to work on more sustainable projects, according to Vancouver-based architect Timothy Buckley. Constructing a net-zero or energy-efficient home can be more expensive. But energy efficiency is attractive to buyers, who often are willing to pay more up front in exchange for utility savings later, Buckley said.

“There are a lot of savvy builders and architects who understand that this helps their business,” Buckley said. “Originally, home-buyer demand was about granite countertops. Now it’s about how much a house will cost in the long run.”

Buckley will be working with the county in the coming months to construct a living building for Evergreen Habitat for Humanity. Executive Director Kristina Aitchison hopes the project will allow her organization to build more energy-efficient homes in the future.

“It’s our goal to provide affordable homes, and also homes that are affordable to operate,” Aitchison said. “I don’t think every house can be built this way, but in the future it will be easier for us to go to that next level after this pilot.”

Promoting living buildings and other sustainable building projects is important for the county economically, Dubois said, especially as cities in Clark County compete with Seattle and Portland to attract sustainable businesses. With the county’s pilot ordinance in effect, he hopes to discover that living buildings can be built as safely as any other. The county is accepting applications for other living building projects for the pilot.

“It will all come back to incentivizing what you want and disincentivizing what you don’t want,” Dubois said. “We want affordable houses and new businesses that support green. Hopefully we will discover a triple bottom line of equity, environmental consciousness and economic benefit with this ordinance.”

The Hung Far Low sign, seen here in this May 13, 2006 photo, has been refurbished and will be rehung in Chinatown. (Photo courtesy of Mike Krzeszak)

The Hung Far Low sign will hang once more in Portland’s Chinatown, with an unveiling of the sign at the First Thursday art event on Sept. 2.

The sign was taken down during a 2008-2009 renovation of the Hung Far Low building, located at Northwest Fourth Avenue and Couch Street, when an inspection of the building’s roof showed the sign’s support structure was deteriorating.

Some details about the unveiling are still up in the air, said Anne Mangan, spokeswoman for the Portland Development Commission, but owners of the restaurant Ping, which operates out of the ground floor of the Hung Far Low building, hope to have the street shut down for the occasion.

Mangan said the sign means a lot to anybody who grew up in Portland because it represents the history of the Chinatown.

“It’s something people have just always associated with downtown,” Mangan said. “People are so fond of it. It’s iconic.”

Portlanders rallied to bring the sign back to Chinatown and raised $8,600 toward the effort through T-shirt sales and other donations. The PDC put $45,000 in grant money toward restoring the sign.

The cost to rehang the sign, which is a two day process, is expected to to be $77,461. The sign will be hung prior to the Sept. 2 event, but it will be wrapped to hide the restoration work until its unveiling.

Portland State University will soon use the steel frame of a recently demolished building to study living walls.

Different types of green walls will be built in the 800-square-foot space, which was formerly a small building for campus security. The space, called the Ecological Learning Plaza, will be monitored by architecture students and the college’s Green Building Lab. The project is being developed by architecture professor Jeff Schnabel and PSU’s student-run sustainability club.

“As designers, what we can’t talk about clearly are the cost-benefit analyses of green walls,” Schnabel said. “We can’t tell a developer or building owner how much water those consume. We can’t tell the aesthetic performance over time. With this project, we can get some of those answers.”

Schnabel and the college in September will bring together members of the design community to give input on the research agenda for the learning plaza. Those interested in participating should contact Schnabel at jjsch@pdx.edu.

Lewis & Clark College in Portland is considering construction of a system to deal with wastewater from its swimming pool after receiving a citation from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The DEQ on Friday issued a $77,927 fine to Lewis & Clark College for discharging chlorinated wastewater from its Zehntbauer Natatorium into a stream north of campus. The violation was discovered when crews from Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services observed the runoff while investigating an unrelated water quality complaint on Oct. 12, 2009.

Temporary measures have been taken at the natatorium to keep the runoff from going into the stream, but the college is investigating how to improve the water system in the long term, according to Tom Krattenmaker, spokesman for the college.