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Good things may come to those who wait. But if Sam Rodriguez had known how long the wait for the Jefferson Street Flats was going to take, he may have thought twice about the Goose Hollow project.

“The project was essentially two years in the making,” said Rodriguez, the managing director of Mill Creek Residential Trust’s Oregon office. “If you expected that you’d say, ‘God, is this worth the brain damage?’ We expected some delays; we just didn’t expect that much.”

Mill Creek recently broke ground on the 134-unit apartment at Soon, a large crane will mark the site as construction of the $27 million project progresses over the next 24 months. For the project team, it’s a major milestone after months of negotiations and obstacles.

First and foremost was acquisition of the property.

Half of it was owned by a private party. The rest was owned by TriMet, which acquired the property during its west side light rail extension in the mid-1990s, and used as a parking lot. Mill Creek wasn’t the first development company to try to assemble the two lots.

Sometime around 2006, a limited liability company for Santa Monica, Calif.-based Worthe Real Estate Group entered into an agreement with TriMet to develop a series of parcels in the Goose Hollow neighborhood.

While the series included the parcel now pegged for the Jefferson Street Flats, according to Rodriguez, the most high-profile component was directly across the street from the Multnomah Athletic Club, where Worthe planned to build a 21-story tower called the Allegro Condominiums.

The Allegro project was highly controversial because the company planned to use a provision in the city’s planning code to essentially double the site’s floor-area-ratio. Neighbors objected to the project’s size, which spurred a citywide debate over FAR transfers. The city council ultimately squashed the project on appeal.

“They used (a provision in the) Central City Master Plan, which is the only way to exceed normal (FAR) transfers,” said Karl Lisle, a senior planner for the Bureau of Development Services. “They were really pushing it in terms of getting the largest building out there.”

Lisle said city planners are currently revisiting some of the FAR questions raised during that debate in its update to the central city plan.

With its high-rise plan scuttled, Worthe reconfigured a smaller project, but by that time its agreement with TriMet had expired. When TriMet moved to terminate the deal, Worthe sued for $53.5 million, according to a 2008 article by the Portland Tribune.

Rodriguez, meanwhile, waited for the litigation to run its course. When it finally did, he approached the transit agency about a new deal for the Jefferson Street Flats. Negotiations took a long time, but considering what TriMet had on its plate, he said, it was a miracle it happened at all.

“TriMet was also doing all the land deals for the (Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail), so this was a pittance next to what they needed to do,” Rodriguez said. “So I must say I was very impressed with TriMet’s willingness to take this on at a time when they were busy as hell with that.”

TriMet, for its part, was eager to see development on that lot – a tiny sliver with a dramatic slope that was also required by the Federal Transit Authority to provide 18 parking spaces to replace the ones consumed by MAX.

“So we thought the site, because of all those burdens, would never redevelop,” said Kathryn Krygier, TriMet’s Transit Oriented Development program leader. “Then when Sam got control of the adjacent property and made the possibility to connect the two that is really what made the project go.”

Ironing the details of the property sale with the FTA though, took nearly 18 months. TriMet only recently closed on the $200,000 sale in September, once Mill Creek had all its permits and financing in order – JP Morgan is the project’s lender.

Getting through the design process alone took a year. Early on, neighbors at the adjacent Arbor Vista Condominiums took issue with the project’s size. Mill Creek worked with design commissioners to break up the building’s massing, but there was little it could do to lower the six-story height and still make the project pencil.

The project got design approval in March. Rodriguez said some of the Arbor Vista people contacted the Goose Hollow Foothills League Neighborhood Association to appeal the development to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, but the association opted to support the project. The issue fizzled.

Numerous other design challenges presented themselves.

Today, the façade features a mix of warmly colored cement paneling and natural wood siding. The building will also have a rooftop deck and garden, as well as three levels of underground parking with 118 stalls – in addition to 18 dedicated public spaces to make up for the ones TriMet is obligated to provide.

Krygier hopes the Jefferson Street Flats will set the stage for future projects.

“I just think it’s an excellent project and a good model for us on how we can redevelop parking lots,” she said. “I think that’s going to be the challenge in the future – how to redevelop some of our park and ride facilities.”

That was a big part of the site’s attractiveness for Rodriguez, who said the building will be a 25 minute light rail ride from either Intel or the airport. Michael Corl, a partner at Vallaster Corl Architects, which designed the building, is pleased to see it finally take shape.

“It’s a very challenging site and that’s taken some time to ferret out all the issues, but we’re happy,” Corl said. “We just want to see it up. We just want to get that baby built.”