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An eight-story condominium building at the corner of North Williams Avenue and North Fremont Street has already set a record as the nation's tallest all-timber structure.
Now the building may set another record: The most expensive condos for sale in a complex on the east side of the Willamette River.
The asking price for two of the 14 condos in the Carbon12 building is close to $1.5 million—a hefty sum for any eastside neighborhood, but especially in the North Williams area, where gentrification and displacement is a raw issue.
The precise figure: $1,469,000 for 1,972 square feet, including balcony and storage space, on the seventh floor.
The developers are offering to customize the two top floor units, so they aren't listing prices for the penthouse, but presumably those units will fetch an even higher price.
The prices are a benchmark in the gentrification of the Eliot neighborhood, which within recent memory was an affordable African-American enclave.
It also appears to mark a record price tag for any condo complex east of the river. Data from the real-estate website Redfin show only one eastside condo in the last three years fetching a price above $1 million—a duplex in Kearns that sold earlier this year for $1.08 million. Condos have regularly sold for upwards of $1 million in the Pearl District and the South Waterfront.
Real estate broker Erin Livengood, a principal with Windermere Stellar, says the building has unique features not available elsewhere in the city, including elevators that open directly into the units.
"It's definitely not a new high for Portland or for new construction," she says. "It's not a price-breaking for this city or modern new construction condominiums."
The building website describes the features: "A boutique collection of residential condominiums, Carbon12 offers what no other building in the Northwest does: an elevator entrance directly into your home, generous balconies with mountain, city and treetop views, a private entry for owners only, and a mechanized parking valet that stores your car below ground, automatically."
Because Carbon12 is constructed from cross-laminated timber instead of concrete, the building was able to far exceed the previous high bars for environmentally sustainable construction, says Ben Kaiser, of the Kaiser Group, the contractor and developer.
"The costs of construction in Portland are at an all-time high," he says. "We think the expense was worth it because of the impact the building is going to have. With Miami sinking and our state is burning, we have to do our part."