PORTLAND, Ore. — At a recent real estate breakfast near the Oregon Convention Center, the keynote speaker told audience members that relatively few dollars tend to come into the Portland region from places like Texas; money usually flows from California, Seattle and New York.
Someone tell that to Matt Segrest.
His firm, Dallas-based Alamo Manhattan, is the developer behind one of the flashiest projects on Portland’s South Waterfront — one he estimates will cost at least $450 million to build. For scale, the much-covered Ritz-Carlton tower going up downtown is supposed to clock in at around $600 million.
With a first phase already under construction, the Alamo Manhattan Blocks should open nearly 1,200 apartments, including 58 units of affordable housing under city rules, to Portlanders within a mix of mid-rise and high-rise buildings on 10 acres fronting the Willamette River where Southwest Bond Avenue and Southwest Lane Street intersect, not far from Oregon Health & Science University.
The towers will be at home in a district that’s polished to a gleam. Just nearby is the 32-floor John Ross, a skyscraper topped by the 5,002-square-foot condo Oregon entrepreneur Nitin Khanna is trying to sell for around $6.3 million.
South Waterfront stands in contrast with downtown, where Alamo Manhattan is trying to lease up its freshly done 348-unit Portland Astoria building by Tom McCall Waterfront Park, which itself advertises “downtown Portland’s largest private dog park located outside on the 16th floor.”
While he voiced optimism about a downtown rebound, Segrest said South Waterfront has benefited from “the chaos there because it’s the first urban neighborhood in the outer ring, so it doesn’t struggle with the same problems as downtown.
“It’s clean. It’s a place where you could comfortably go out and walk your dog any time of day, which is really unique and really juxtaposed against downtown,” Segrest said.
Read more at the Portland Business Journal.
