slides: Official Audited for $11.5 Million Office Project Also Rents City’s Most Expensive Private Office

Monday, December 01, 2014

Shelby Sebens, GoLocalPDX Contributor

BES Director Dean Marriott works in private offices that the city rents for almost $30 a square foot. Marriott recently got into hot water after a office building his bureau built in North Portland tripled in cost.

The Bureau of Environmental Service director that landed in hot water after construction costs for a city office building more than tripled, has his own luxury private office space that costs the ratepayers nearly $500,000 a year.

Bureau of Environmental Services Director Dean Marriott, was put on paid leave after an audit found massive cost overruns in an $11.5 million office building that was built at the city’s wastewater treatment plant in North Portland.

Slides Below: Inside BES's Private Offices

While the Columbia Building was being constructed, Marriott, a 20-year veteran of the city bureaucracy, was working from an upscale private office building in downtown Portland.

The office at the Pioneer Tower, 888 SW Fourth St., is the most expensive private office space the city rents. It has six conference rooms and was upgraded by a local interior design company for the city in 2008 with a more open concept feel, sustainable materials and natural lighting, according to the website for CZOPEK Design Studio Inc.

Located above the new downtown Apple Store, the BES offices are located in what is called a Class-A office building, a real estate term for prime market rate space. Marriott's corner office features a view of downtown. The entire space, which includes 64 Bureau of Environmental Services employees, costs $28.50 per square foot or $477,489 a year. The city’s lowest rent is City Hall at $12.53 per square-foot.

Cost Overruns and Expenses at New BES Building

Marriott was put on paid leave after a city audit found enormous cost overruns in a new office building at the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant. In 2010, the building was originally budgeted cost $3.2 million but ended up costing $11.5 million by 2013.

Cost overruns included $120,000 in adjustments to the building’s eco-roof, including $30,000 for soil barriers, and $40,000 to print of an areal photo onto glazed tiles for the building’s entry wall. Other items in the lavish building included a $1,400 coffee table, and a dozen different lounge chairs ranging in price from over $800 to almost $2,000, according to a report by KOIN-TV.

The Columbia Building in North Portland houses 38 workers and cost $11.5 million.

Commissioner Nick Fish, who took over as the commissioner in charge of the bureau in 2013, called for Marriott to be put on paid leave while an independent investigation was conducted.

Commissioner Fish and former-BES Commissioner Dan Saltzman did not return calls from GoLocalPDX in time for publication.

Marriott's Own Private Offices

Marriott and his team have occupied the Pioneer Tower since 2012.

The city leases nine off-site offices for various government employees.

The city also rents space at the Portland Spaulding Building for the Office of Management and Finance and at Columbia Square for the Revenue Bureau.

The average rental rates for Class A-Office space in downtown is around $26 a square foot,” said Michael Kapnick with the real estate firm Marcus and Millichap. Kapnick said that the city’s costs per square foot appeared to be in the ballpark of average for downtown space, if a little on the high side. “Are they getting a deal? No."

The BES grew into its own downtown offices over time, according to BES public information officer Linc Mann.

The original decision to rent space in the Pioneer Tower came in 2008 when BES, then under the leadership of Marriott, asked commissioner Dan Saltzman to move employees out of the Portland Building, at 1120 SW 5th Ave., where most of the city’s bureaucracy is housed.

In 2012, Marriott moved his own staff of 28 employees.

At the time, the bureau had closed satellite offices following the end of the city’s $1.4 billion Big Pipe Project.

“We needed to free space in the Portland Building to allow those employees to return. The bureau already leased Pioneer Tower space to accommodate employees from our Business Services and Pollution Prevention Services groups,” Mann said in a written response to GoLocalPDX. “The Office of the Director’s 28 employees were the best fit for the additional available Pioneer Tower office space. Other groups would have had to split up in order to make the move.”

But the move meant expanding the city’s lease in the building space for 9,851 square-feet to 16,754 square-feet at a cost of $153,000.

“The standard ratio is 200 square feet per employee and BES employees in the Portland Building average 139 square feet per employees,” he said. “BES contacted the city Office of Management and Finance to see if there was additional space in the Portland Building that could be made available, but there was none. The next option was to find leasable space within walking distance of the Portland Building for a comparable rate,” Mann added.

The Bureau of Environmental Services has the option to extend its lease by a year when it’s up in November 2016, but Mann said the department is waiting to see what the city will do with The Portland Building. The building, considered an iconic landmark of Post-Modernism by some, and as an eyesore by others, has problems from leaking to cramped interior spaces. The city has been grappling with whether to make repairs or tear the iconic building down.

Marriott has told the Oregonian he expects to be cleared of any wrongdoing and be back to work after the investigation is complete.