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A massive skyscraper proposed for downtown Portland’s West End is already giving rise to questions as the first test case of a major project governed by the city’s new zoning rules.

The tower would replace dozens of food carts and a surface parking lot on Block 216, which is bounded by Southwest Ninth and 10th avenues and Alder and Washington streets. The building will be the first large project governed by the city’s newly adopted Central City 2035 plan.

The project was the subject of a Design Commission meeting Thursday. Conversations between the project team and commissioners revealed the nascent project remains at an early stage despite an aggressive development schedule.

A second design advice meeting will be held in August. The project team plans to proceed to formal Type III design review in October with a goal of breaking ground in May 2019. 鈥淭hat’s pretty fast for a project of this scale,鈥� said Phil Beyl, president of GBD Architects.

Yet Beyl confessed the design team had been engaged on the project only 鈥渁 couple of months.鈥� Architects showed only early massing drawings, not realistic renderings. A landscape architect has not yet been hired.

The 782,000-square-foot tower would top out at 35 stories, approaching 460 feet 鈥� the maximum allowed on the property.聽That’s up from earlier plans for 33 stories. The additional height was made possible by the removal of a view corridor as part of the zoning changes.

GBD Architects is designing the building from developer Walter Bowen of BPM (Bowen was not available for an interview, a spokesman said). The block is owned by the Goodman family’s Downtown Development Group through various limited liability companies.

The property is the last undeveloped full block in downtown Portland. The project comes as a remarkable run of economic expansion, locally and nationally, shows few signs of losing momentum.

The project would include a luxury hotel, office space and residential condominiums. Retail use totaling about 10,000 square feet would occupy much of the ground floor. A spa is planned. The building would include four floors of underground parking.

Total floor-area ratio on Block 216 would reach 18.75-to-1.

No affordable housing is planned on the site. Instead, the project team would satisfy the city’s inclusionary housing rules with a $7.5 million fee-in-lieu payment to the city’s housing fund.

Given construction costs for tower projects, more affordable housing could be provided off-site, Beyl said. 鈥溾�漌e can do a far better job of spurring affordable by paying into the fund,鈥� he said.

Chair Julie Livingston responded, 鈥淚’m an affordable housing developer, and I agree with you.鈥� Funding for affordable housing construction is difficult to obtain, she said.

City staff and the development team are tackling unexpected issues related to the new zoning regime, which was adopted Wednesday by the City Council. Among them: The Green Loop, a newly adopted and loosely defined concept to link downtown and the Central Eastside with bike and pedestrian-friendly streets. The Green Loop would run beside the tower along Ninth Avenue, requiring 12-foot setbacks along 75 percent of the property line on the tower’s east side. It’s unclear what other changes the Green Loop would bring.

鈥淚t seems the Green Loop is so not baked 鈥� it’s impossible to see how this is going to influence the ground floor,鈥� Commissioner Sam Rodriguez said. 鈥淎nd it seems it’s not going to get baked for a long, long time. I don’t know how you can expect the design team to react to something that’s not fully thought out.鈥�

The skyscraper would tower over a number of notable adjacent buildings, including the Governor Hotel, Galleria Building, Woodlark Hotel, the Stevens Building, the Morgan Building and the Pittock Block building (Disclosure: The Daily Journal of Commerce’s office is in the Pittock Block building). At 460 feet, it would be slightly shorter than Park Avenue West, which reaches to 502 feet in height.

Architects are working to minimize the shadows cast by the building. They’ve rotated the top of the tower into a north-south orientation, a change from earlier plans, to reduce shading on O’Bryant Square.

The project would displace the city’s largest collection of food carts that has itself become a tourist attraction. Several food-cart owners testified Thursday, urging the project team to find a way to accommodate food carts.

O’Bryant Square was raised as a possible home for food carts. The developer hopes to purchase floor-area ratio allowances from the closed plaza and transfer the FAR to Block 216, Beyl said. That could pay for improvements to the plaza, which has been closed since March because of structural issues related to a small parking garage underneath the north side of the square.

It’s unclear if Portland Parks & Recreation, which controls O’Bryant Square, would be amenable to moving food carts onto the public space. The plaza is also half the size of Block 216 and includes structural elements that would reduce the amount of space available to food carts.

鈥淲e are not blind to the consequences of a project like this to the food cart community, which is near and dear to our hearts,鈥� Beyl said.

Jane Kim of No. 1 Bento said she purchased the cart a year ago from a friend who had owned it for more than a decade. Visitors from around the world stop by to eat bento there, she said. Another woman said her family’s cart paid her way through college.

Suzanne Lennard of Portland said the development would be out of place. 鈥淧ortland does not need a Trump-style luxury hotel with condos,鈥� she said.

Design commissioners said they were on board with a large, contemporary building on Block 216.

鈥淭his isn’t an infill building,鈥� Rodriguez said. 鈥淚t’s a main actor building, and it needs to be a main actor.鈥�

The building could be an architectural landmark of its time, Commissioner Zari Santner said.

鈥淵ou have an opportunity to make a statement 鈥� a statement about who we are right now,鈥� Santner said. 鈥淚’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.鈥�