Historic Resource Review Approved for 1010 Flanders

July 1, 2016

The historic Ballou & Wright Building, located at 1010 NW Flanders was acquired by Flanders Venture LLC, an affiliate of Specht Development, Inc., in January 2016. Specht is currently renovating the 60,000 sf building into creative office space.

This incredible building, located in the Pearl district, is on the local and national historic registries. As a result, any modifications to this historic landmark must be approved through the City of Portland’s Historic Resource Review. The process includes submitting an application and detailed plans describing the proposed modifications, which are reviewed by the City and also issued to surrounding property owners for comment.

The review application for the project was submitted in March 2016 and the City of Portland issued their approval decision on July 1, 2016 with no revisions to Specht’s proposed plans.

The building is a five-story concrete building with a prominent tower on its northwest corner. Unlike most of the warehouses nearby, the building has high-quality exterior finish work on its east and north elevations including sand gray brick, cast stone ornamental string courses, and parapet escutcheons bearing the Ballou Wright Company’s emblem of a winged tire. The building was constructed in 1921 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. While it was formerly surrounded exclusively by industrial uses, the surrounding area now consists of a mix of light industrial, commercial, office, and residential uses.

The exterior modifications approved through the Historic Resource Review are scheduled to start in September 2016 and include:

Construction of a wood roof deck on the southwest corner of the building

The proposed roof deck includes clear railings at the edges of the building and a landscaped strip at the center of the deck.

Construction of new stair and elevator enclosures

These two features will be set back from the edge of the façade to minimize their scale and to give the building’s character-defining tower primacy when viewed from the ground.

Removal of fire escape ladders

The applicant proposes to remove the ladders between the fire escape landings to satisfy a request from Fire Bureau staff. The landings between the ladders remain in the proposal to preserve this character-defining feature of the warehouse.

New storefront northeast ground level

Improvements include an additional door, designed to match the existing warehouse door on the north elevation. It will be surrounded by an extension of the building’s existing transom and new steel windows designed to closely match the historic windows on the building. This work also includes the removal of a portion of the loading dock on this elevation that was added after the building’s historic significance.