91ÊÓƵ

The Portland Design Commission on Thursday unanimously approved two Portland high-rise projects.

Commission members first OK’d the modified 30-story design for TMT Development‘s Park Avenue West mixed-use tower, between Southwest Yamhill and Morrison streets, and Park and Ninth avenues. Members later helped clear the way for construction of Key Development Corp.’s Block 67 mixed-use tower between Northeast Couch and North Burnside streets, and Northeast Second and Third avenues.

Crews are scheduled to begin building the $55 million Block 67 project, also known as the Burnside Bridgehead, early next summer, said Jeff Kovel, principal with Portland-based Skylab Architecture, which designed the building. JE Dunn Construction will serve as the contractor, he said.

Skylab received design approval for two versions of the building. One design would have 21 stories – 16 floors of apartments on top of five floors of retail and office space – and a parking garage with 200 spaces. A second version of the building would have three fewer floors of apartments.

Kovel presented revisions to the project based on feedback from the commission. A planter in the entryway was changed, trees were added, and a covered walkway on a plaza above the building’s office and retail space was modified.

He highlighted the way the building facade transitions from glass at the top to mostly metal panels at the bottom.

“We think that it’s going to be a unique aesthetic,” he said.

Design commissioner David Keltner told Kovel he worried that the lower floors wouldn’t have enough windows.

“My concern is that the bottom part gets heavy with all that metal,” he said.

Overall, commission members said they were pleased with the project design. Commission vice chairman David Wark praised Skylab’s efforts to make the building’s ground floor inviting to pedestrians.

“I think it’s a very compelling first floor,” he said. “Whether it’s a gateway project or not, it definitely marks its place. It’s going to mark its place in a creative way.”

Commission members gave Park Avenue West, designed by Portland-based TVA Architects, final approval. The general design was OK’d by the commission twice previously, first as a 33-story tower in 2007 and then as a 26-story tower in 2009.

Hoffman Construction restarted construction of the $175 million project recently after it stalled during the recession because of a lack of financing. In October, TMT Development announced that it had secured a construction loan from Pacific Coast Capital Partners LLC and could resume work on the project.

In September, labor union SEIU Local 49 appealed the updated 30-story tower design – 15 floors of apartments, 13 floors of office space and two floors of retail space – because it would lack affordable housing. Before the Design Commission approved the revised design, chairwoman Guenevere Millius said she believed the union’s appeal was inappropriate.

“To ask a development team to change use becomes a slippery slope,” she said. “The request made me extremely uncomfortable.”