City Selects Opus, Wood for Burnside Bridgehead

PORTLAND-The five-block Burnside Bridgehead redevelopment here is now in the hands of a three-company team that includes local developer Bruce Wood, local architect Gary Larson (of Mulvanny G2) and Minnesota-based money partner Opus Northwest. The city’s urban renewal agency, the Portland Development Commission, trumped the recommendation of its evaluation committee and chose the Opus-Wood-Larson team’s $195-million proposal.The Burnside Bridge project is a worthy encore for Opus Northwest and Bruce Wood, the former head of Opus’ local operations who last month formed his own company, Foundation Real Estate Development, and will be Opus’ expertise partner for the 1.3-million-sf development. Opus’ last metro-area project, Bridgeport Village, a 465,000-sf open-air retail center off Interstate 5 at Boones Ferry Road, will hold its grand opening later this month. The project was acquired by the California State Teachers Retirement System prior to completion in January for $170 million.The Opus-Wood-Larson team won despite the PDC’s evaluation committee recommending a team led by local developer Brad Malsin’s Beam Development, which was rated the committee’s first choice in three out of four categories–Program and Design, Business Deal and Implementation–and last in the other, Developer Capacity. Opus was rated second in three out of the four categories and came in first where Beam came in last, Developer Capacity. Moreover, in revised proposals submitted in March, Opus’ proposal required the lowest amount of subsidy from the PDC at $6.42 million. “We’re humbled and excited about the experience; I think we had an amazing team and a good story to tell,” Wood tells GlobeSt.com. “We focused on the numbers, our capacity to take on large projects and Gary Larson’s design.”The Burnside Bridgehead property is located at the corner of East Burnside Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, across the Willamette River from Downtown and the Pearl District and across Interstate 84 from the Oregon Convention Center. The two-tower proposal by Opus-Wood-Larson calls for 527 housing units, 120,050 sf of retail, 87,820-sf of light manufacturing space and 23,447 sf of office space. The housing units include 392 for-sale units and 135 affordable apartments. The affordable apartments would be developed in partnership with Homestead Capital and Catholic Charities.PDC’s next steps are to work with Opus Northwest to craft a non-legally binding Memorandum of Understanding stipulating that both parties agree to enter into exclusive negotiations for a Disposition and Development Agreement for the Burnside Bridgehead property that will address land acquisition, development program and design, financing and timeline. As proposed, the Opus proposal calls for $39.16 million of equity, $137.21 million of debt and $19 million in subsidies, $13 million of which will be related to the affordable housing component of the project.