Hotel construction is red-hot in Portland these days, and one of the projects under way is the sizable Hyatt Centric Portland in the West End of downtown, at the corner of Southwest 11th Avenue and Alder Street.
The 15-story, 215-room hotel is being built on a quarter-block parcel that formerly held a three-story office building occupied by the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette. Mortenson, the design-build contractor and lead developer, purchased the property in 2017 after it was declared surplus by United Way.
Construction has moved quickly since demolition of the office building in March 2018.
“It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, no,” Mortenson Construction project manager Angie Helfert said. “We’re topped off, we’ve got enclosure basically run up through 13 and we should be enclosed on three through 15 in the next week and a half or two.”
Now, the construction site is swarming with up to 80 craft workers daily, Helfert said. Substantial completion is expected in approximately six months.