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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.”