As nearly a billion dollars of bond money was invested in affordable housing projects in the Portland-metro area, architects are finding paths to success. Commenting on what jurisdictions can do to encourage housing development, Don Sowieja, Principal, shares his thoughts on how different approaches to the design process can help push multifamily projects toward construction.
“The city of Portland has taken major steps to encourage development,” Don said. One of these steps was consolidating permitting functions into a single bureau: Portland Permitting & Development. “Prior to that shift in policy organization, you might expect three to four months before you go your first round of plan review,” he continued, adding that it now takes around six weeks.
According to Don, when it comes to overall timeline for a project, the design process is critical.
Simplify the Design Process
“One of the things we’ve found is to keep it simple,” he said.
“Keeping a basic layout and overall composition allows a project to move through the process more quickly,” Don claimed. “Oftentimes a proposal’s details may be unclear to city staffers, so it’s important to keep an open line of dialogue with them to navigate the approval process.”
“The simpler the design, the simpler the compliance,” he said. For multifamily housing, unit size and type matter. “If you have three unit types – studios, one bedroom, and two bedrooms – and you have one of each of those unit plans, that’s as easy as it gets for the city to understand, as well as for the developer to demonstrate compliance,” Don said.
For projects subject to design review, Don encourages teams to know the rules and follow them. “It’s right there on the page,” he said. “Reading and doing what it says is the best way to move quickly through a subjective process.”
Project rendering of Pepsi Phase B, an inclusionary housing project in Portland.
Embrace Inclusionary Housing
Although inclusionary housing is relatively new to Portland, many cities on the West Coast have similar criteria. In Portland, inclusionary housing requires all residential buildings proposing 20 or more new units to provide a percentage of them at rents or sale prices affordable to households at 80 percent of the median family income or below.
“Development teams should embrace the fact that it is a requirement for multifamily projects,” Don said. “While there was some concern at the outset of this new requirement, most of the development community has figured out that it has a financial and organizational impact.”
According to Don, demand for multifamily projects has declined in the past 2.5 years, following a roller coaster of economic cycles, including the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and interest rate increases. However, that has begun to change in 2025.
“The design side is really picking up,” he said. “That takes a while to translate into construction starts, and construction is the big money and the larger economic driver.”
Hopefully, once the industry’s efforts shift toward construction, we will see more architects working with jurisdictions to simplify or streamline the design process to increase housing, and more developments being made to meet the need for affordable housing throughout our cities.
How Jurisdictions can Encourage Housing Development
When it comes to encouraging the development of housing projects, there are a handful of things that jurisdictions can do to support architects and designers, streamlining the process of design and construction from start to finish.
Our projects outside of Seattle, Canopy and Modera Shoreline, benefitted from an accelerated project timeline, a result of the City of Shoreline’s collaborative approach to streamlining the design review process.
Project rendering of Modera Main Street
In the last 10 years as urban affordability and quality of life have become issues to residents, developers and investors have looked to new submarkets for development. Sharing its southern boundary with Seattle, the city of Shoreline has been recognized as one of the area’s fastest-growing residential hubs.
After listening to developers, the city set about enhancing its portals, attracting brand retailers, planning for future TODs, codifying development incentives around sustainability, and streamlining their entitlement and permitting processes. Amidst the challenging economic times of the last two years, three developments alone – Shea’s Canopy and Verdant, and Mill Creek’s Modera Shoreline developments – have created more than 1500 units, demonstrating that a jurisdiction’s focus on encouraging development can have transformative impacts.
Canopy
A motivated jurisdiction can work with the development community to create the vibrant city desired by its constituents. There are several ways this may come to fruition.
Reducing Permitting Timelines
Bypassing Design Review and MUP milestones could yield significant time and cost savings on project delivery, expediting the approval process and speeding up time to construction.
In 2023, the Seattle City Council amended the land use code to make two important changes to the design review program aimed at encouraging additional low-income housing.
The first change permanently exempts low-income housing projects from the Design Review program.
The second change provides a new Design Review exemption for projects that meet Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) requirements by providing units on site via the Performance Option under the Land Use Code.
Due to this change, projects that opt into the Performance Option can skip MUP and Design Review and proceed directly to Building Permit where land use code compliance will be evaluated concurrently with other review subjects.
The impact of this shift is an accelerated timeline for projects to go from design to construction, and as a result, an increase in the number of housing projects being made.
Typically, the design review board can take anywhere between three to nine months to approve a project. During this process there are application fees to be paid by the applicant, as well as other payments made to parties such as land use attorneys who determine jurisdiction or design professionals who prepare and present the information to the review board.
Reducing the permitting approval and design review timeline for a single building translates to more time that can be spent on additional housing complexes, boosting the total amount of available housing in Seattle. It also means less money is spent on a project overall through the extra costs associated with presenting a project to the design review board.
This is just one example of how bypassing Design Review and MUP milestones could yield significant time and cost savings on project delivery. A full synopsis of the impact of reduced permitting timelines can be found here.
Lowering Impact Fees
Impact fees – also called system development charges in some places, like Portland – are the method cities use to collect funds that expand or provide infrastructure to support developments that are going through the permitting process.
These fees cover everything from sewers and transportation to parks and schools and are used to either fund the construction of those services, or the maintenance and expansion of existing infrastructure. Essentially, they’re a city’s way of generating revenue to maintain the services and infrastructure that are needed for a project that is being built.
Based on a per-unit cost, impact fees, along with review and inspection costs, can end up costing a lot more than a simple permit review fee.
To encourage more developments, impact fees can be reduced or lowered. Recently, the city of Portland completely waved those charges until 2028, making it both cheaper and easier to initiate new construction developments within the city. The impact is so large that some projects currently in development would not be able to move forward at all, if it weren’t for the Portland SDC moratorium.
Project rendering for Sandy Pine
Clarifying Code Language
The Portland City Council temporarily lifted restrictions on building heights for housing projects in specific planned districts at the beginning of 2025, a decision that will remain in effect until 2032. On top of changes to code language surrounding building heights, there were also adjustments to minimum lot sizes on single-family dwelling lots.
“These amendments will help spur development to increase housing density, use land more efficiently, and create more affordability,” said Don Sowieja, Principal. “This limitation on height within the urban growth boundary for development has been very frustrating for developers. Hearing about this adjustment opportunity is a tremendous step in the right direction.”
Another somewhat recent code change made by the International Code Council provided significant updates to accessibility clearances, based on a study of wheelchair users. While the overall impact of the code change on buildings was modest/minimal, only expanding a few rooms by a few inches, the impact on impacted users was immense.
From a designer’s perspective, code changes can lead to added complexity, especially for considerations like accessibility. However, by clarifying the language around some of these codes, the design and construction process can be simplified and streamlined, leading to quicker project completion and more housing development overall.
For example, the city of Shoreline provides the Deep Green Incentive Program, which is an opportunity for development to meet certain sustainable development and construction certifications. If met, the city provides developers with increased flexibility regarding development code criteria, such as allowing additional building height, reduced parking requirements, and other substantial cost or yield impacts. Additionally, this incentive program allows jurisdictions to provide preferential treatment during the building permitting review process, fast-tracking approval and construction.
Extending Permit Life Before Expiration
Every jurisdiction has time limits for the permit review process. If there is no movement, a permit can expire, causing the project to have to restart the permitting process, adding additional costs and a prolonged timeline for a project to reach completion.
For both the city as well as developers, it’s important to keep a timeframe on project development, since it helps people plan for future projects. For example, financial transactions like loans only take place once a permit is approved. Since loan repayments need to be budgeted out over time, having that timeline shifted can obviously throw a wrench in any pre-decided plans.
Issued permits also have lifespans. Drawing them out is one way to prevent permits from expiring before a project begins construction, leading to more completed projects overall.
Jurisdictions have realized that there’s a benefit to keeping the development community engaged throughout the permit review process. Desiring to keep people involved, rather than pushing them out, jurisdictions are reaching out to applicants, offering permit extensions if formally requested.
With that change, permits can sit for longer periods of time before they have to secure/receive funding. These longer pauses come with the hope that conditions will soon shift in favor of developers, leading to more developments.
Moreover, as time passes, code and design review criteria change. Essentially, by extending permit life beyond expiration, the efforts of going through the permitting process are retained, and developments are encouraged, rather than given hoops to jump through. If permits last longer, these projects have the potential to save time and money by avoiding being re-tooled to pass review again if a previous permit expired.
All in all, these four examples of incentivizing construction and flexibility in the design review process are excellent options for jurisdictions to take advantage of in order to encourage new building developments.
Adaptive Reuse Conversion Case Study: Warehouse to Residential
There are many unique buildings located along the West Coast. Built in the 1920s and 30s but now vying for a second chance at life, an existing turn-of-the-century warehouse in Seattle is one of them. After having been identified as a prime candidate for an adaptive reuse conversion, the former warehouse is being repositioned as a mid-rise apartment complex.
Leveraging the unique elements from the site’s previous use, adaptive reuse conversions aim to accomplish goals identified by the project’s owner. In this case, maximizing the yield and resident experience, and including amenities that attract and enhance resident life.
This is something that Ankrom Moisan has unique experience in; We embraced adaptive reuse to resurrect downtown Portland’s Pearl District, turning disused warehouses into coveted apartments.
Chown Pella Lofts, a disused factory warehouse that was converted to a multi-story residential condominium in Portland’s Pearl District.
Here’s how we do it:
Maximizing Yield and Resident Experience
Converting an old warehouse into an apartment building with modern luxuries means embracing the elements that made the structure a warehouse in the first place. Finding the design elements that are inherently aged and providing them with a new use is just one way to maximize the building yield, as well as the resident experience.
For example, warehouses typically have floor-to-floor heights that can reach 15 feet, something that’s not commonly found in contemporary housing. The additional space afforded by such heights allows for deeper floorplates and units than modern constructions, up to 120 feet wide, allowing the building to utilize the extra space afforded by the deeper floorplate to enable larger, light-filled units – something residential buildings typically don’t have.
Similarly, older warehouses that did not utilize electricity to the extent that modern buildings do have large windows with lots of glass to bring an abundance of natural light into the space. With an adaptive reuse conversion, what was one intended to bring daylight to hard-working warehouse laborers can be repositioned to provide residents with sweeping views of their surroundings.
Amenities that Attract and Enhance Resident Life
Comparing the resident experience found in an adaptive reuse project to that of modern housing, it’s plain to see that the bespoke qualities of a conversion add richness to a space. Unusual features become draws for potential residents, just as long-empty warehouses are converted into bedrooms and apartments full of life.
It all has to do with spotlighting a structure and emphasizing quirks rather than designing them out.
For this project, we saw the warehouse’s skeleton as an opportunity to create one-of-a-kind amenities that cannot be replicated in a new build. Turning the light well atrium into an internal amenity space, complete with a spa and garden, our design emphasizes resident wellness and provide a peaceful retreat from the city and the urban, hard-edged waterfront found nearby – something you won’t find next door.
Successful adaptive reuse conversions embrace the factors that make their buildings different, using those differentiators to become more desirable in the market. It’s our view that the unique history, location, and geometry of projects like the existing turn-of-the-century warehouse lends itself to the creation of amenities, and apartments, that surprise and delight residents.
Overall, warehouse to residential apartment adaptive reuse conversions are unique exactly because they’re not a unique situation. Older, underutilized, turn-of-the-century warehouses in a downtown core are a very common building typology that exists all across the West Coast. They usually have between five and seven stories, and massive footprints that are a lot larger than what would be expected to be adapted to marketable housing.
Chown Pella Lofts
The unique charm of these conversions comes from how you take a building and use the features that exist because it was designed to meet warehouse code at the time (of construction) to make impactful housing.
Buildings like these are often already landmarks in the cities they’re located in, being 100 years old, sometimes older. The question is, how do you reintroduce a historic landmark after it’s been given a new use? Embracing the existing exterior architecture to retain the site’s identity while adding new features to set it apart from the past will get people into your building.
This could be done by turning an old water tower into an art installation to act as a beacon and attract attention, for example. In most cases, it’s very exciting for passersby to notice an old building in a new light. If you can do this, your adaptive reuse conversion will continue to be a part of the fabric of the city that it’s in, revitalized and full of new life.