ZETA looks to build in Oregon, expand in Northwest

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A ZETA home in California

ZETA Communities, a California company that specializes in ultra-efficient prefabricated homes, buildings and apartments, is looking to expand in the Northwest.

ZETA is aiming to build a project in the Portland or Seattle area by the middle of the year and potentially locate a modular home factory somewhere in the region if demand for the product shapes up like company leaders think it will.

"The Pacific Northwest aligns with our vision," said Shilpa Sankaran, ZETA cofounder and vice president of marketing and communications. "There are local policies and mandates in place for green building. We thought we should try to develop that market."

ZETA's CEO Naomi Porat will be in Portland next week meeting with Gerding Edlen and other local developers and architects about building a project here.

Backed with $10 million in venture capital, ZETA set out to build affordable net-zero buildings on a mass scale by employing offsite, factory construction. A 10-employee, 91,000-square-foot factory in Sacramento has turned out its projects to date — a handful of multi-family apartments, single-family homes and schools.

"We produce 80 percent to 90 percent complete buildings that are shipped from our factory," Sankaran said. "Everything down to the towel racks. The more we can do in the factory, the better we can contribute to sustainability."

ZETA hired Randy Duggan, a manufactured home veteran, as a regional sales manager based in Cashmere, Wash.

"Portland really loves the kind of projects we build," Duggan said. "There's a huge interest in net-zero for multi-family projects."

ZETA's initial projects were an infill townhouse in Oakland, Calif., and a learning lab in San Francisco's Presidio.

Prefabricated building was identified as a rising trend by Kris Beason, project executive at Skanska USA, earlier this month at the Commercial Real Estate Women forecast breakfast. Portland's Northwest Natural Street of Dreams featured a prefabricated green home by Salem-based Ideabox on its 2010 tour.

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