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To this point, Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard has failed to attract much new development.

While construction has exploded along popular two-lane thoroughfares like Division Street and Hawthorne Boulevard in Southeast Portland, as well as Mississippi Avenue and Alberta Street, and Vancouver and Williams avenues in North Portland, the four-lane thoroughfare of Northeast MLK Jr. Boulevard has sat largely untouched for years. Only affordable housing developers have staked major claims.

That may be changing.

“I think it’s going to start happening now,” said Vic Remmers, president of Portland infill development company Everett Custom Homes. “I know we’ve looked at some other properties on MLK recently that are also being developed. I think there’s more in the works there. So it’s just a little behind some of the other areas, but it has a lot of the same things as those other locations you’re talking about.”

Everett Custom Homes recently purchased a lot at 407 N.E. Mason St. and with TVA Architects is planning a five-story, mixed-use building with 36 apartments. It’s the first market-rate project along MLK Jr. Boulevard in recent memory, according to Premier Property Group commercial broker Eli Haworth.

“It’s really interesting because to me that’s always been a subsidized housing row,” said Haworth, who represented the seller in Everett Custom Homes’ acquisition. “Every project that I’ve seen proposed or built has had some kind of subsidy involved, or some kind of low-income housing component. I was really worried that it was going to be a low-income housing district … I’m excited to see how (Everett Custom Homes’ project) turns out. I know there are other parcels of land in that area that are available, so if it works it could be really good.”

Designers are looking to create an attractive, but feasible building by pairing a simple, low-cost structural composition with high-end materials. The project has not gone through design review yet, but Robert Thompson, founding principal of TVA Architects, said a simple, clean and elegant facade is planned.

“There’s not a lot of gymnastics to this building,” said Thompson, who also is the lead designer of TMT Development’s 30-story Park Avenue West project in downtown Portland. “We’re taking the money out of areas that people don’t see or experience and putting those dollars into what’s important, and that again is how people perceive the building – the level of finishes (and) the quality of the building itself.”

For instance, instead of breaking up the building’s massing and investing in load-bearing walls, Thompson said designers are planning a simple square structure in which units are stacked vertically. That frees up money for the exterior, which will employ a high-end metal paneling system – the same TVA used in its design of the Nike Air Hangar in Hillsboro, and the Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene.

The metal paneling not only has a sophisticated appearance, Thompson said, but also requires less maintenance and weathers better than popular alternatives, like HardiePlank. Another unique design feature will be the units’ width: 30 feet.

“Rather than deeper units that are more traditional with less window frontage, we’re actually keeping the units shallower so we can get more exposure,” Thompson said, “so all the rooms in the units will have direct views to the outside.”

Units will be 500 to 650 square feet. Remmers said he hasn’t fully completed pricing for either the units or the entire project, but he expects leases to go for around the market rate of $2 per square foot. The development will include a small retail space that fronts MLK Jr. Boulevard, as well as seven parking stalls.

The King Neighborhood Association got its first glimpse of the project at a meeting on Nov. 14. Chairman Alan Silver said that many attendees showed support for the owner of Signature Cutz – a barber shop that operates on the site. Remmers said he is talking with representatives of Signature Cutz and another nearby business about leasing retail space in the new building.

“I think folks were surprised that we’ve gone that far that fast,” Silver said of Remmers’ anticipated lease rates. “The prices for that size (of units) were a bit of a shock to us.”

Everett Custom Homes isn’t the only business interested in the boulevard. Trader Joe’s recently announced it will anchor a new shopping center planned at the corner of Northeast Alberta Street (approximately half a mile north of Everett Custom Homes’ site).

Haworth also recently represented the seller of a small vacant building at 3525 N.E. MLK Jr. Blvd., slightly north of Northeast Fremont Avenue. Bill Jackson, an agent at Meadows Group Inc., represented the buyer and said his client plans to renovate the property into new retail and creative office space.

Jackson said the comparatively low price of real estate along the boulevard could make the corridor the next logical place for infill development. His client paid $410,000 for its 5,000-square-foot building; Everett Custom Homes paid $399,000 for its property.

A private party recently purchased the building due north of Everett Custom Homes’ site for $300,000, and Silver said that the owners of a property at the corner of Northeast Shaver Street may have development plans now that Christopher’s Gourmet Grill has closed. The owners could not be reached for comment.

One challenge that has yet to be tackled, however, is making the heavily traveled, four-lane thoroughfare more pedestrian friendly.

“There’s a long ways to go,” Silver said. “Is it beginning? Absolutely. If private developers are bringing themselves into the boulevard and saying, ‘We finally feel ready,’ then I think that’s a good thing. We want a denser and more vibrant boulevard – something that makes people feel like the neighborhood actually is a neighborhood. That’s hard with MLK because of the amount of traffic – it’s often difficult to cross the street. It discourages integration from one side of the street to the other. That’s a long-term challenge for everyone.”