KBS bought Portland’s 16-story Meier & Frank department store for $54 million in 2016; it then transformed the landmark into Class A mixed-use space

KBS bought the 16-story Meier & Frank Building in downtown Portland, Oregon, in November 2016 for $54 million. It bought through a joint venture with private development firm Sterling Bay. The plan was to turn part of the old department store into fully leased Class A space, meaning top-tier office and retail space, without losing its historic character.

The terracotta building at 555 Southwest Morrison Street covers a full city block near Pioneer Courthouse Square. Many Portlanders still know it for the phrase “meet me under the clock,” which referred to the clock on the store’s main floor.

German immigrant Aaron Meier opened a dry goods store in downtown Portland in 1857. Emil Frank, an employee, became his partner in 1873. The company later added stores in Oregon, Washington and Utah.


The store was known for events. The “Friday Surprise,” a weekly sale that began in April 1887, drew crowds from across the city for decades. Its Christmas events were a tradition for generations of Oregonians.

Architect A.E. Doyle designed part of the current building, which was finished in 1909. It was expanded in 1915 and again in 1932. In the 1930s it was the largest retail outlet west of the Mississippi.

The National Register of Historic Places added it in 1982 as an outstanding example of Commercial Style architecture.

May Department Stores bought Meier & Frank in 1966. The store became a Macy’s in 2006 and closed in May 2017.

Why KBS saw potential

KBS pointed to several reasons for the purchase. The first was Portland’s tech workforce. At 60,550 workers, it’s the 26th largest in the country and makes up 5% of the city’s workforce, compared with a national average of 3.7%. Portland also has a lower cost of living than other major West Coast cities, and it has attracted a steady stream of millennial residents.

Large tenants had also been signing long-term leases downtown, including Nike and Intel. Intel is the largest private employer in Oregon, and its Portland office employs more people than its Silicon Valley headquarters.

The third reason was location. The building is near all four of the city’s rail lines. Within a mile are hundreds of restaurants, cafes, retailers and breweries, along with the Pine Street Market food hall.

KBS also expected tech companies to want more space as workers returned to offices after COVID, in order to allow for social distancing.

What changed inside

KBS hired Bora Architects in 2016 to convert the first five floors and the basement levels into flexible office and retail space. The Bora team included interior designer Sarah Weber, project architect Josh Brandt and project manager Leslie Cliffe.

The project cost $16.6 million and took a year. That figure covers the lower floors only, not the whole building. The work included 200,000 square feet of core renovations and 23,000 square feet of interior renovations.

The top nine floors are occupied by The Nines, a luxury hotel with two restaurants and a rooftop bar and lounge. The name nods to the phrase “dressed to the nines,” which fit the store’s reputation for fashion.

One basement level became a 15,000-square-foot amenity floor for tenants. It has a spin, yoga and meditation room, a fitness room with personal training available, and showers. It also has a bike room with 200 parking spaces, plus lockers and drying closets. The closets are ventilated compartments that dry clothes during the day, which helps in Portland’s rain. Many employees bike to work, so the bike facilities get heavy use.

In the common areas, crews built multiuse lounges and gathering spaces and added exposed concrete ceilings and brass finishes. They restored the lobby clock and uncovered the original elevator’s marble, which an earlier renovation had hidden. Because Portland has a strong coffee culture, the team also added a coffee bar in the lobby.

On the outside, contractors removed the awnings and canopies and restored the terracotta façade to its original look. They also reopened several historic entrances that had been closed for 50 years.

The building is both a local and a national landmark, so the team worked with the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and the City of Portland Design Commission. Historic consultant Peter Meijer, who regularly handles SHPO compliance in Oregon, advised on the exterior changes. He also helped develop an interior renovation standard that SHPO approved in advance. Tenants can now make improvements without a separate SHPO review, which saves them time and money.

Exterior work also fell under city rules and was subject to review by the Historic Landmarks Commission.

Problems that came with an old building

To open up the floors, crews had to move building systems that ran along the perimeter. The goal was to make the leasable space flexible enough for everyone from traditional office users to high-tech companies.

The Meier & Frank entrance on the southwest corner of Pioneer Square had to stay. After the renovation, that entryway would sit 54 inches above the lobby floor, so the team built a ramp to close the gap.

Bora knew building information modeling (BIM) software and Revit, but those tools couldn’t capture the realities of a 109-year-old building. So during meetings with Turner Construction and the mechanical consultant, Bora drew the planned duct work and conduit routes on the floor by hand. The team then walked the paths to decide what would work.

Cooling was a bigger problem. Offices full of people and heat-generating computers need larger air-cooling systems than retail space does. Replacing the smaller system meant getting equipment onto the roof, and the team couldn’t cut through the nine floors of hotel below. PAE Engineers solved it by installing a high-efficiency evaporative fan from an existing cooling tower on the roof, which pipes cold water down to the office floors.

In 2019, the Oregon chapter of the International Interior Design Association gave the project its Best in Category and Jurors Choice awards.