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An Old Town Chinatown warehouse that’s been through fits and starts of development may soon get a full renovation into creative offices.

The new owners of the two-story building at 208 N.W. Fifth Ave. have applied for design advice from the Portland Bureau of Development Services. Plans call for renovating the 75-year-old structure’s core and shell.

The warehouse 鈥� an annex to the Mason-Ehrman Building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places 鈥� was originally used as a storage facility for Zellerbach Paper Co. The Kalberer Company owned the building, and attempted in the past to renovate it. Then, on Jan. 8, the local, family-owned real estate investment company sold the parcel for $14.5 million.

City information lists the new owners as Los Angeles-based GC Mason Ehrman LLC. Patrick Gortmaker, vice president of Kalberer Co., said representatives of the purchasing LLC 鈥渃ame in with Gaw Capital Partners鈥� when negotiating the sale.

The design advice application submitted to the city names Jonathan Malsin, a principal at Portland-based Beam Development, and Valerie Yip, senior vice president of investments at Gaw Capital Partners USA, as the building’s new owners.

鈥淚t’s a partnership between Beam and Gaw Capital USA,鈥� Malsin Said. 鈥淭hey reached out to us because they were interested in doing a creative office project in the area.鈥�

Portland-based SERA Architects has been hired to design the renovation. Plans for the approximately $450,000 project include door and window upgrades, seismic upgrades, a roof upgrade and construction of 鈥渃ore additions,鈥� such as restrooms and bike parking, according to documents submitted by SERA to the city.

Renderings of the exterior indicate that the most visible changes would be the replacement of two roll-up doors on the Fifth Avenue facade with windows and a pedestrian entrance.

On the interior, drawings show restrooms with showers and bike storage built in to an otherwise open space. The first floor will have nearly 9,000 square feet of leasable space for one tenant, or almost 7,000 square feet of total leasable space if the space is occupied by multiple tenants. Plans for the second floor resemble the open first-floor space, with about the same amount of leasable space.

Gortmaker said Old Town Chinatown is ideal for renovations like this one because it offers large spaces with relatively low rent.

鈥淭here aren’t a lot of developable pieces like this one left in the city that are perfect for those creative tenants that are moving into Portland,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he spaces we have right here are everything Class A building owners are trying to replicate.鈥�

Today, the 20,000-square-foot building sits mostly vacant, though the Portland Development Commission 鈥� a neighbor 鈥� uses a portion of the second floor to store records.

The PDC has occupied the adjacent seven-story Mason-Ehrman Building since 2001, after Kalberer Co. completed a $12.3 million remodel and partial seismic upgrade. The Mason-Ehrman Building is due for another seismic upgrade by 2018; Malsin indicated that they will complete that work during the warehouse renovation.

The occupancy and future of both the Zellerbach Paper Co. warehouse and the Mason-Ehrman Building have been uncertain in the recent past.

In 2010, the PDC considered leaving its Mason-Ehrman space in favor of a move into the unbuilt Park Avenue West, but reconsidered and released the space through 2020.

In January 2014, Portland-based Ankrom Moisan Architects Inc. began working with Kalberer Co. on a design concept for renovating the annex. Those designs included full occupancy of the warehouse space and occupancy of the second and third floors of the adjoining Mason-Ehrman Building. The firm also considered constructing a penthouse atop the warehouse. Ultimately, those plans were scrapped and Ankrom Moisan instead opted to renovate Block 8L nearby.

The current renovation project doesn’t include plans for additions to the existing structure, Malsin said.

The project team on Wednesday presented its plans for development to the Old Town Chinatown Community Association, and Malsin said attendee reactions were favorable.

鈥淭he presentation went really well; they clapped when we were finished,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think people are happy to see progress. A lot of passes have been made on development, but nothing has stuck. We fully intend to move forward.鈥�

The Historic Landmarks Commission will offer design advice March 9, beginning at 1:30 p.m., at BDS offices, 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave, in room 2500A.

Malsin said the project team has a pre-application conference scheduled with the bureau on March 10.

鈥淲e’re really trying to move as quickly as possible on this project,鈥� Malsin said.