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A debate about ground-floor apartments on Southwest River Parkway didn’t keep the Block 41/44 project from winning the approval of the Portland Design Commission聽on Thursday.

The discussion focused on whether to configure units on the busy street as retail or residential units. After nearly an hour of wrangling, the Commission and the design team agreed to a live/work format and give the units street-level entrances.

The South Waterfront project, which was approved 4-0, will include more than 500 residential units, 10,000 square feet of retail space and 385 parking spaces. The original plan called for ground-floor residential units on the Block 44 portion of the project on Southwest River Parkway to be elevated above grade to give residents more privacy.

Commissioner David Wark voiced concerns that such an arrangement might hurt the vitality of the street, and said he wanted the design to encourage more retail.

鈥淭here is a very good example of the exact same set up of a mixed-use housing project just north of the Convention Center,鈥� Wark said. 鈥淭hat whole north side has the same exact (ground-floor residential) units and it’s 100 percent dead. I just don’t see why we would support that.鈥�

GBD Architects principal Kyle Andersen said the project design team, which included Jones Architecture, wanted to concentrate retail where it had the best chance of success – toward Abernathy Way. The complex will be bordered by Southwest River Parkway to the west, the Willamette River to the east, Southwest Lowell Street to the south and Southwest Lane Street to the north. Abernethy Pedestrian Way will separate Block 44 and Block 41.

Other projects in the south end of the South Waterfront District had incorporated ground-floor retail in the past, Andersen said. The strategy didn’t pay off.

鈥� 鈥� None of it was successful; it all failed,鈥� Andersen said. 鈥淚t was eventually converted back to residential. It’s very quiet up there.鈥�

He added that the Block 44 units were designed in a way that allowed them to be converted into retail if the shopping climate proved it could support more space of that type.

However, Wark remained unconvinced. He was concerned that the level of renovation needed would make such a conversion difficult.

Commission Vice Chairman Tad Savinar had another concern 鈥� ground-floor residential units possibly resulting in a long line of closed blinds at the street level.

During the meeting, the Design Commission offered several approaches that would create enough privacy to encourage residents to leave blinds up, and finally settled on a live/work arrangement as the preferred choice for the ground-floor area.

In the end the design team agreed to that suggestion, with a condition to lower the units to on-grade units with accessible entrances from the sidewalk.

Commissioners complemented other changes that the architects, developer Cairn Pacific and landowner Prometheus Real Estate Group brought from earlier hearings. Those changes included darker roof material that wouldn’t reflect sunlight into other buildings, more signage on pedestrian walkways, and changing the color of pavement on Abernathy Way to show a difference between areas for autos and pedestrians.

A UNANIMOUS APPROVAL FOR TEN WEST

Efforts to renovate the five-story Ten West building at 1017 S.W. Washington St. earned the approval of the Design Commission by a 4-0 vote.

The project overcame concerns about the entrance at the southeast corner of the building, specifically the doors and saving the storefront transom.

Commissioners and project architect Jones Architecture were able to come to an agreement to work with city staff on a design that would simulate the look of the entrance without involving the construction issues that would have been required by saving the transom. Other renovations included replacing 126 windows, seismic upgrades and interior renovations.

MIXED-USE PROJECT SENT BACK FOR REVISIONS

A 200-foot tall proposed mixed use building at 140 S.W. Columbia St. was sent back to GBD Architects for revisions.聽 The building will include 347 residential units, 15,000 square feet of retail and office, and 244 parking spaces.

Commissioners wanted revisions to improve the coherency of the building, especially focusing on the materials on the second through fourth floors. The project will return for a short work session on Sept. 7 before another full hearing is scheduled for the project.