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Plans for the new Multnomah County Health Department headquarters in Old Town Chinatown will go before the Portland Design Commission later this summer.

ZGF Architects is wrapping up design development for the $46 million project, and has submitted materials to the city for approval, project designer Jonah Gamblin said. The firm expects a hearing for the project to take place in mid-September.

The building is designed to have six stories and 96,000 square feet, and occupy a lot east of Bud Clark Commons. Approximately 300 health department employees are expected to work in the building. It will contain administrative offices, three clinics, a pharmacy and an incident command center.

Plans call for many sustainable features, such as a green roof and efficient mechanical equipment, ZGF principal Peter van der Meulen said. The building will be constructed with locally sourced, nontoxic materials.

The understated design responds to surrounding Old Town buildings, Gamblin said.

“The simple massing and the open structural frame I think … contextualizes the building in the neighborhood,” he said.

ZGF designers also considered how the new building would contribute to the neighborhood, Gamblin said.

“It’s a neighborhood that is very much in transition, and I think the county moving to this neighborhood will be a positive thing,” he said.

The new building will provide a vastly improved space over the one the department occupies in the Gladys McCoy Building currently, Multnomah County spokeswoman Julie Sullivan-Springhetti said.

“They’ve been working in this 1920s former department store,” she said.

General contractor JE Dunn Construction is scheduled to start work on the project early next year and wrap up in time for employees to move into the building in fall 2016.