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A new, 13-year lease by the General Services Administration in the South Waterfront District has initiated the addition of 74,000 square feet to an office building on Southwest Macadam Avenue.

Representatives of Lindquist Development Company and GBD Architects met with the Portland Design Commission last week to get design advice on the addition to the 39,000-square-foot former Bank of America building. It will house the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit.

The three-story expansion will be attached to the north side of the existing four-story building at 4310 S.W. Macadam Ave. The addition will include 20,000 square feet of office space above two above-ground levels of enclosed parking totaling 46,000 square feet. There will also be 8,000 square feet of below-grade parking. The entire property will be surrounded by an 8-foot-high metal fence that has a security checkpoint, a guard house and a vehicle inspection site. That fence will be surrounded by another fence.

Ross Buffington, a GSA spokesman, said that, as a rule, contractors and subcontractors must navigate an extensive process to secure work on property owned by the federal government. But because the Macadam building is privately owned, that process will not be necessary, he said.

A lot of design work remains before construction can start, according to Keith Skille, GBD’s lead architect on the project. The addition is labeled a major expansion under design guidelines, so it will be required to meet Central City Fundamental Design Guidelines and South Waterfront Design Guidelines, he said.

Kara Fioravanti, land-use review specialist for the city’s Bureau of Development Services, said one challenge presented by both sets of guidelines is the required number of windows and amount of active space for the first floor of a commercial building. The Macadam building was formerly operated by a bank and consequently has a large vault on the first floor and no windows.

GBD Architects has proposed adding first-floor windows to the existing space and including a workout facility to accommodate both requirements; however, it is still working to add windows around the vaulted area, said Agustin Enriquez, an associate architect with the firm.

But probably the biggest issue on the site is that a proposed streetcar line to Lake Oswego is planned to run along Moody Street, which sits directly to the east of the building. The streetcar tracks, which are supposed to be completed within the next five years, will be built 12 feet higher than Moody is presently. Architects must meet street-level requirements for the building, even though it will eventually be underground.

“The dedication along Moody (Street) is the biggest challenge,” GBD’s Skille said. “How do you incorporate the street-level requirements to the initial design when the site will eventually be a basement?”

Another issue is accessibility. The only entrance to the facility right now is on Bancroft Street, which has only one lane for each direction. With more than 54,000 square feet of planned parking on the site, traffic could be heavy in mornings and evenings, especially with fast-moving traffic on Macadam Avenue, which runs perpendicular to Bancroft.

Jeff Stuhr, chairman of the Portland Design Commission, said he is concerned that Bancroft Street’s narrowness and fast-moving traffic on Macadam Avenue could hamper accessibility. He said GBD may want to fine-tune its plan for handling that portion of the project.

Stuhr added that he is excited to see such a sizable project in South Waterfront, and one backed by a long-term federal lease. He gave the design team a nod for the work it has done so far on the project.

“(Architects) have answered the question: ‘How do you take a building built in a past generation and atone for its sins?’ ” he said.