91ÊÓƵ

The Portland Design Commission has approved an amendment to the Con-way Master Plan that will pave the way for more development on the 17-acre area in Northwest Portland.

Commissioners on Thursday granted city staff’s request to remove a vehicular access restriction in the plan on portions of Northwest Pettygrove and Thurman streets, city planner Hilary Adam Ìýsaid.

The amendment will allow Portland-based developer Cairn Pacific to include a parking garage in a proposed mixed-use development on Block 294, near the intersection of Northwest Thurman Street and 21^st Avenue, she said. The development will now likely have a garage entrance on Northwest Thurman Street, Adam said.

Initial plans call for a 13-or 14-story tower on the north end of the site, she said.

Adam said city planners were baffled why the Con-way Master Plan, approved in 2011, included the vehicular access restriction on Pettygrove and Thurman and concluded that it must have been connected to plans to extend the Portland Streetcar into that area.

Cairn Pacific also developed a New Seasons Market store on the master plan site, scheduled to open this summer, and is partnering with Capstone Partners to renovate a nearby former Con-way office building, at 1621 N.W. 21^st Ave.

Design commissioners on Thursday offered feedback in a design advice request for another Con-way development being designed by Portland-based YBA Architects for Portland-based Guardian Real Estate Services on Block 290. The proposed mixed-use development, at 1417 N.W. 20^th Ave., would include ground-floor retail and residential use on the upper floors distributed across three buildings with heights varying from one to seven stories. The buildings would surround a public plaza.

Design commissioners weren’t entirely sold with initial proposed designs for the development, Adam said. Another challenge to the project will be the restrictions of the site, she said.