Architects launch project to add 650 housing units to Lloyd District

PORTLAND — Developers and architects are launching a project they say will transform a part of Northeast Portland from a commuter destination to a round-the-clock neighborhood.

San Diego-based American Asset Trust is breaking ground on a four-block project anchored by more than 650 units of housing. The company is working with Portland’s GBD Architects.

Architect Kyle Anderson said the goal is to put housing and a grocery store into the Lloyd District.

“But also to reinvigorate this neighborhood to become a community,” he said. “It’s not intended to be another Pearl District or South Waterfront, but merely an extension of the existing neighborhoods that is, and was, in the past.”

The project has high environmental goals.

Anderson said the project will attempt to get three LEED certifications: one for new buildings, one for the retrofits it’s doing on an existing office building, and one for the neighborhood scale.

Developers also hope that the project will re-use all of its own wastewater, and potentially send treated water through a filtering system back to underground aquifers.