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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 2015)
Page 14 Minority & Small Business Week photo by September 30, 2015 M ark W ashington /T he P ortland O bserver Colas Construction’s family executives at the future site for student apartments and ground floor retail they are building for Concordia University at Northeast Killingsworth Street and 16th Avenue. Pictured (from left) are Marc-Daniel Domand, Alex Colas, Aneshka Dickson, Hermann Colas Jr. and Andrew Colas. From the Ground Up C ontinued from P age 3 “My father passed those expec- tations to us that we would dream big and work hard.” With work on dozens of projects across the state, Colas Construction has become a major employer and contractor. Colas is currently working on dozens of projects across the state, including several projects that ad- vance community needs; such as the building of affordable housing in north and northeast for Portland Community Reinvestment Initia- tives (PCRI); student housing for Concordia University in northeast Portland; a headquarters building for Hacienda, a Latino Communi- ty Development Corporation, and soon, it hopes to start construction on a new Natural Grocers as an ad- dition to the Vanport Square shop- ping complex on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. When PCRI recently announced plans to bring 1,000 affordable new homes into the Portland market over the next decade to offset the displacement of people of color from gentrification, construction and development was handed over to Colas, a trusted minority-owned business that the community knew would have an eye out for some of the city’s most displaced residents. Colas’ work on Hacienda’s new headquarters on the corner of Northeast Killingsworth Street and Cully Boulevard is expected to be completed by the end of month. Hacienda strengthens families by providing affordable housing, homeownership support, economic advancement and educational op- portunities “They’ve invested in a commu- nity that hasn’t had a building like that,” said Andrew Colas about the Hacienda project. “They’re invest- ing by putting their headquarters there – and that’s huge for that area.” Colas also explained that the company’s future includes medical building planning. “We’re starting the inroads to that kind of work,” he said. The company also gives back by mentoring young people who want to enter the construction trades. Currently it’s working with stu- dents from Building Blocks to Suc- cess, a robotics program whose mis- sion is to get ethnically and gender diverse at-risk youth excited about science, technology, engineering, and math through exposure and par- ticipation in related programs and activities. Colas also is working with an- other program called Elevate, an organization that builds relation- ships with urban youth to promote education and leadership, giving them tours with the company so they can check out the construction projects underway and get a better understanding of the path to success within the industry. “I hope when kids see someone that looks like them doing meaning- ful work, be it the electrician, the plumber, the owner, or the architect, it turns on a light in their head so they think ‘hey I can do that to,’ and they start thinking seriously about their future,” Colas says. He advises people starting ca- reers to work as hard as they can to be the best, “Whatever industry you choose to be in, try to find a way to emulate what’s working for the peo- ple you are succeeding. I knew my competition before they knew who we were. We all have that power and I would love to see more kids in a field that needs them.”
