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It’s been sitting vacant for years, but a boarded-up and graffiti-splattered home near the surge of development along North Williams Avenue also has plans for a higher and better use.

Ken Moholt-Siebert, the principal of KMS Architect in Portland, said drawings have already been drafted and approved by the city for a project to replace a 1,948-square-foot home at 33 N. Fargo St. with four live-work units. Built in 1902, the existing house sits on a mostly vacant lot just south of a planned 206-unit apartment development on North Cook Street.

The property is owned by longtime neighborhood resident Deborah Parker. Moholt-Siebert said it was actually the first home Parker ever owned, so when a fire damaged it years ago she struggled to let it go. For a while the two brainstormed over a plan to move the house to a property Parker owns down the street, but the number of old trees along the way made it impossible.

The current plan calls for four, multistory units with approximately three rooms in each – the bottom ground floor would house retail or office space. One issue Parker and Moholt-Siebert ran into during design was zoning, but not for the usual reasons.

The zoning on the property called for a minimum of nine units, but because of the constricted area of the plot (roughly 50 by 100 feet) making them fit was financially impossible. Parker owns several other lots on the block, including the one currently used as an urban farm on the Northeast corner. Her mother operates the Tropicana restaurant along North Williams.

The rest of the block is owned by Renz Williams Avenue LLC, in which William Reed – a local developer – is listed as a member. Moholt-Siebert said Parker and Reed have discussed consolidations in the past, but a deal never worked out.

Moholt-Siebert said Parker plans to build a home on her other nearby lot before diving into the project on North Fargo, so there’s no set date for when it would break ground.

There are other residential projects rising in the same area, including the early stages of a 39-unit condominium project by developer Ben Kaiser and the 20-unit Kiln apartment project being constructed by Lorentz Bruun.

Most those units will be smaller in size than the live-work units planned for Parker’s project, which means they could fill an untapped niche.

“It would be really cool for the neighborhood,” Moholt-Siebert said.

Block by Block is a weekly look at commercial real estate around Portland. Send suggestions for properties to [email protected].