The Grande Dame Of Portland Retail Sports a Facelift and Structural Upgrade

By Amy Rose Davis

Portland - The Macy’s Building has been a Portland icon for almost 100 years.

This 16-story, 650,000-sq-ft steel-framed building was constructed for Meier & Frank, the upscale Oregon-based department store, between 1909 and 1930. The building is Oregon’s earliest example of the white terra cotta, commercial-style department store and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

Meier & Frank occupied the entire building. The top five floors were used for office space and the lower 10 floors housed the department store. When the project is completed, Macy’s will occupy the bottom five floors and a hotel the top 10. Macy’s will also occupy the four basement levels.

To preserve the building’s use as a department store, a plan was created to compress Macy’s into the lower floors and use the upper floors for a boutique hotel.  Hoffman Construction Co. is working on the hotel portion of the building, which is expected to be completed in August of 2008.

Macy’s remained open during most of the renovation, “Until we realized we would be able to finish much more quickly if we closed the store,” says Frank Harris, project manager for S.D. Deacon, who conducted the store remodel.

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This complex historic preservation project includes major seismic upgrades and LEED certified features though the building itself is no longer slated for LEED certification) such as construction waste management recycling, flooring, paints, and adhesives with low VOC content, air quality management and filtering systems, and use of recycled materials.

The new seismic system uses dampers which decrease in size as the building gets taller.

“The one on the third floor is massive. The ones on the higher floors you could pick up yourself,” says Harris.  Deacon also upgraded the columns by building concrete forms around them and adding pressurized concrete from the side of the form

“We were very lucky and none of the forms broke,” says Harris. In all, the seismic upgrade required 1.5 million pounds of steel.

Transportation throughout the building will now be accomplished on newly renovated escalators and updated elevators. Deacon drilled two new elevator shafts to accommodate the hotel above. Half of the first floor also acts as the hotel lobby.

Some important historical finishes are being renovated and reinstalled.  Elevator controls, escalator handrails and a mailbox on the first floor are all made of nickel brass.

Other highlights of the project include:

• Coordinating with hotel construction above.
• Coordinating with light rail construction on 5th and 6th Streets in downtown Portland
• Coordinating with installing intricate finishes on the project.