Nike expansion plan hints of ‘Twilight’ feel

BEAVERTON, Ore. – Whether you realize it or not, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the Hoke House. The angular, cantilevered residence in Portland’s West Hills was made semi-famous in the “Twilight” movies and has been lavished with praise in design magazines.

Skylab Architecture of Portland was responsible for the Hoke. And Skylab appears to be bringing that same sense of shape, space and structure to the enormous office building it is designing for Nike’s headquarters expansion project in suburban Washington County. But on a very different scale.

The Hoke measures 3,430 square feet.

All odd angles and stacked floors, the proposed Nike campus “Building 2,” as it has been named in planning documents, would amount to nearly 260 Hokes: 887,000 square feet, roughly nine stories tall. It would be built northeast of the Tiger Woods Center on the north side of the Nike campus.

The other proposed structure – “Building 1” in the planning paperwork – would bring 412,000 square feet of office space, north of the Tiger Woods Center and Jerry Rice Building and on the west side of Building 2. ZGF Architects LLP is designing it.

While Nike is not talking about its grand plan, architectural drawings and other documents filed with Washington County offer a hint at the look of the two buildings.

The county’s Land Use and Transportation Department is weighing whether to approve the expansion project, with a decision expected before the end of the year. Nike representatives have told county officials that construction could start as early as the first three months of next year.

The enormity of the project – Nike’s office footprint will grow by at least a third from its current 2.2 million square feet – makes this a big deal. Earlier conversations about the expansion project called for 550,000 square feet of office space, less than half of what is now proposed.

It’s also a big deal because it involves Nike, one of only two Fortune 500 companies in Oregon. The project makes good on a deal the company cut with the state Legislature and Gov. John Kitzhaber for favorable tax treatment.

And the project near Beaverton reflects the company’s robust growth. One condition of its deal with the state was that it create 500 new jobs in Oregon by the end of 2016. Nike hit the mark and crushed it, reporting to the state in October of this year that 2,000 new jobs had been created. A state official said the jobs pay an average of $100,000 annually.

In addition, the project will create temporary construction jobs in the county.

Nike played a cat-and-mouse game with local and state authorities two years ago, suggesting it might expand someplace other than its Beaverton-area headquarters, considering locations in Portland and elsewhere.

The planning documents that Nike’s construction and design partners have filed with the county offer few clues about exactly what the finished product will look like. But there are some.

For example, the footprint of Building 2 – the one Skylab is designing – extends over Del Hayes Way, creating a tunnel-like opening underneath to allow traffic to pass through. (Del Hayes Way is the campus’s perimeter access ring. Del Hayes the person met Nike co-founder and board chairman Phil Knight when both worked as CPAs for Price Waterhouse in Portland. Hayes later joined Nike in its earliest stages, eventually becoming one of its board members.)

The 887,000 square feet of Building No. 2 is described in planning documents as 649,000 square feet of office space and 238,000 square feet of “auxiliary space.” Spokesmen for Nike and Skylab declined to respond to questions about auxiliary space.