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New plans are in the works for a long-vacant site in a popular North Portland corridor.

Developer Vic Remmers, via VWR Development, is under contract to purchase three adjacent lots on the northeast corner of North Vancouver Avenue and Fargo Street, where he plans to build a five-story, mixed-use building with roughly 70 to 80 apartment units. The property is currently owned by developers Loren Waxman and Jim Meakin, who paid $445,000 for it in 2005.

Remmers, owner of Everett Custom Homes, has built numerous single-family houses in the neighborhood. He learned of this opportunity about six months ago while searching for potential multifamily sites along the corridor. He said Waxman and Meakin were interested in refocusing their efforts on other locations, but also hesitant to let the land go to just anyone.

“A lot of the reason they wanted to sell it to us is we’re using Bob Thompson and TVA Architects,” Remmers said of his chosen design team. “(Waxman and Meakin) really were concerned about what was going to be built there. They wanted to make sure it was a really high-quality, nice-looking building.”

Remmers and TVA also are working together on a 68-unit development in the Overlook neighborhood, and a 36-unit project on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Ground is slated to be broken on both soon.

Remmers’ purchase of the North Vancouver Avenue property is expected to close this summer. Planning is still early – construction likely won’t begin for at least a year – so project designs are still conceptual. But given the frequency of bicycle traffic along the corridor, the development will definitely play that up.

“It’s still early on and we haven’t finalized anything, but that will be a big part of what we do there,” Remmers said.