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‘s multifamily project in the Goose Hollow neighborhood in Southwest Portland has evolved quite a bit since the company introduced it this past December, but design commissioners and neighboring residents want more changes.

The developer last week presented to the Portland Design Commission updated drawings of its 134-unit Jefferson Flats building planned at 2040 S.W. Jefferson St. While commissioners liked the overall direction of the design, they and residents expressed several concerns about the project’s mass, ground-floor activation ability and potential traffic impact.

Since December, the design of the facade has changed from a mostly monochrome gray to one broken into distinct masses via the addition of yellowish metal paneling. The building also was reoriented so that the lobby now sits on the lot’s northeast corner. Ground-floor units look like townhomes, and a metal-paneled green wall masks a section of the 121-stall parking garage that peaks above Jefferson Street.

Armin Quilici, an architect at , the project’s designer, said the design was based in part on feedback given at two community meetings. However, the ground floor should do more, according to Commissioner David Wark, a principal at .

鈥淚 think there are some things that I would like to see and that is rethinking the garage at Jefferson at the sidewalk level,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think there has to be a sense of a pedestrian activity. There is a false sense of a pedestrian experience, but there is no enrichment 鈥� there is no connection between (the) sidewalk and what’s happening inside.鈥�

Wark asked the development team if it had considered a more active use for those spaces. Sam Rodriguez, managing director of Mill Creek’s Oregon office, said the group had and that retail would not work.

鈥淭he studies say it would be dark space; it would definitely not lease,鈥� Rodriguez said. 鈥淲e’ve noticed that the sidewalk is not used very much and it’s very narrow, and retail would not do very well with all those factors.鈥�

Part of the challenge for Mill Creek is that the lot is somewhat oblong and the sloped property drops 26 feet from the Southwest corner to the Northeast one. The slope limits the team’s options for creating a ramp to access the garage. The current design calls for the ramp entering the building at the low end of Southwest Howards Way. Rodriguez said the rest of the building’s programming was predicated from that point.

Wark suggested swinging amenities 鈥� such as the lobby 鈥� out to face Jefferson Street, but Rodriguez said the worry is that spaces would then be too narrow and unusable.

Several members of the neighboring Arbor Vista condominiums homeowners association spoke at the hearing. Helen Gundlach, president of the group, said her association believes the Jefferson Flats are too massive. She said that development proposals sometimes must be tweaked to accommodate a neighborhood’s character, and noted that Arbor Vista’s size was reduced significantly and became two buildings divided by a courtyard.

Other residents expressed concerns about ground-floor activation, the preservation of large oak trees (in addition to a large heritage tree already being preserved) and the project’s impact on street traffic. Rodriguez said he also was concerned about traffic impacts and that he had contracted Kittelson & Associates Inc. to conduct an analysis.

Part of the property purchase agreement includes providing 18 public parking spaces to replace a TriMet-owned lot now on the site. A MAX red line station is just a half a block away.

Commissioner Jeff Simpson, a landscape architect and owner of Simp L LLC, said he likes the building’s facade but that it still is a bit imposing.

鈥淚 think you’ve done a really beautiful job with breaking it up for scale and mass, but I think that’s also the problem I’m having with it,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t just feels very heavy to me.鈥�

Other commissioners shared similar sentiments.

Rodriguez said he and the design team will adjust the way external materials are used to lighten the building, and try to activate the ground floor to a greater extent. That could be difficult because of lot constraints and a desire to include parking, but he said the team was going to look at options for swinging some of the programming from Southwest 20th Street to Jefferson Street.

Overall, he said he thought the meeting went well and that the team was on the right track.

鈥淚t’s a process,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t takes time.鈥�