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A sheet of flower-pattern wrapping paper inspired the design of Portland-based Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. The office and retail building, planned near the foot of the Burnside Bridge in Northeast Portland, is intended to look like a pair of gift boxes.

“Portland is such a gray city,” said Kevin Cavenaugh, designer and managing member of Guerrilla Development. “I just didn’t want to build a background building. I just knew it had to not look monochromatic. It had to be interesting.”

Cavenaugh said he loves the unconventional look of the Dumbbell; he’s just not sure he can make it a reality.

“There are so many things in conflict,” he told the Portland Design Commission at a meeting last week. “It’s hard to know if I can build this.”

In response to Cavenaugh’s request for input regarding the proposed six-story building, design commissioners expressed multiple concerns. One is a possible disconnect between planned the first floor (parking and retail spaces) and the upper floors. Another is the tight site, which consists of a traffic island surrounded by Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Couch Street and Burnside Street. The developer is working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation to reduce possible traffic backups from cars entering and exiting the building’s parking garage and improve pedestrian access to the site.

“It’s hard to fit into words to find a solution at this site; it’s a strange site,” design commissioner Ben Kaiser said. “It’s hard for me to justify surface parking no matter how it’s wrapped.”

Achieving a facade that looks like the wrapping paper Guerrilla Development used for a model will be just as tricky, said Brett Schulz, design architect for the project. A mural would be too costly to maintain, so the developer is now considering application of the pattern of flowers and birds onto metal panels via a process similar to car painting, he said. The metal paneling would envelop the building, including the roof, to maintain the illusion of a couple of oversize, gift-wrapped boxes.

On the interior, the design calls for heavy timber construction to achieve a look similar to warehouses turned into office space in Portland’s Pearl District, Schulz said.

“For cost purposes, we really wanted to make it work in wood,” he said. “It’s going to feel like an open warehouse. That was the primary challenge … making it look like something that wasn’t a stick box.”

Further complicating the creative project is an experimental fundraising strategy. A portion of the $7 million budget is coming from more than 700 investors who contributed through Fundrise – a real estate crowdsourcing website.

As a result, there was a lot of freedom in the design process; however, a loan to cover the rest of the project cost came with strings attached, Cavenaugh said. A major requirement for the loan financing was the inclusion of parking, he said.

“I have to respond to the market, banks (and) tenants,” he said.

Guerrilla Development considered putting in below-grade parking, but there wasn’t enough space on the highly constrained site to put in a ramp, Schulz said. Even after settling for 72 spaces of above-grade mechanical lift parking, the struggle was to find the best access point for cars and include a series of small retail spaces that wrap around the garage, Cavenaugh said.

The problem with the design is the ground-floor parking garage’s plainness doesn’t match the rest of the building, Design Commission Chairwoman Guenevere Millius said.

“Why not unify them better?” she asked Cavenaugh. “This ground floor is there to meet code, and it’s bankable.”

Commissioner David Keltner suggested that Guerrilla Development extend the wrapping paper facades down to the ground.

“I think this is a strong idea; I’m just wondering if this could be simpler in some way,” he said. “The longevity of your building is important. Thirty to 40 years down the road, is it a building that’s tenantable? I’m worried that you’re just living in the moment and not thinking down the road.”

Cavenaugh wasn’t sure whether he would pursue additional input from design commissioners before submitting the project before them for approval.