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With a rising demand for quality veterinary clinics in northwest OR, a citizen of Portland proposed an idea to build the Overton Street Veterinary Hospital in their hometown. The proposed building is located in the northwest part of the city and is comprised of a below grade parking garage, two floors of clinic and office space, and one floor of shell space that can be adapted for future tenants. The intent of the building is to provide Portland pet owners with a reliable clinic to better serve their pet’s needs.

V5 engineering was contracted to design the structural and water management systems for the veterinary hospital. The team responsible for the design was made up of three structural engineers and two water resources engineers. Their objective was to design a facility that met the needs of the community, provided a modern aesthetic to match the surrounding structures, and efficiently managed the high annual rainfall of the pacific northwest. The structural team strove to deliver cost effective gravity and lateral force resisting systems capable of countering forces induced by daily use and earthquakes. The water resources team focused their efforts on designing an environmentally conscious water management system suitable for the wet climate present in Portland.

The main challenge associated with this design was the “postage stamp” project site. The client prioritized maximum space utilization of their property, necessitating the design of a building in very close proximity to other surrounding buildings. There were also busy city streets to the north and south of the site, limiting the ability for the contractor to store equipment and materials nearby. Both of these limiting factors affected constructability and required the design team to adapt to non-ideal conditions and consider the logistics of constructing a building under such tight constraints. The end result was a building design that filled the allotted space, could handle vertical and lateral demands, could process high volumes of precipitation, and served the community both aesthetically and functionally.