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Native Land Development is replicating its multifamily model around Portland.

The latest project calls for an 85-foot-tall modular building at North Minnesota Avenue and North Jessup Street. The project, Minnesota Places, would offer approximately 90 residential units in an eight-story, 54,000-square-foot structure.

Minnesota Places underwent an initial design advice hearing Thursday with the Portland Design Commission. The project will later go through a Type II staff review. It will not return to the Design Commission unless a decision by Bureau of Development Services staff is appealed.

Native Land Development has been busy. The Lacey, Washington-based developer also recently proposed an 11-story, 89-unit modular multifamily building for a property south of Portland State University. Earlier this year, the firm constructed two small stick-built multifamily buildings (one with 30 units and another with 28) along Southeast Milwaukie Avenue in Sellwood.

Minnesota Places would rise in a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes west of Interstate 5. Developers have added larger projects, however, such as Nomad, a seven-story, 130-unit building from Ethos Development and Works Progress Architecture. Nomad is nearly completed, with delivery expected in November, Ethos founding principal Paul Del Vecchio said.

The neighborhood is designed for dense urban development, said Tim Heron, a BDS reviewer. Killingsworth Station, serving the MAX yellow line, is nearby at North Killingsworth Street and Interstate Avenue.

Minnesota Places is being designed by John Wright of Wright Architecture. The structure would consist largely of mass-pressed plywood. The ground floor would have a lobby, community rooms and loading area topped by seven stories of apartments with one, two or three bedrooms apiece. BDS valued the project at $8 million.

An entry courtyard would have a colonnade using mass plywood along with metal or cementitious stucco.

The project will bring affordable housing to the neighborhood, said Austin Turner, a development consultant working with Native Land Development. Information on the affordability level of the apartments was not immediately available.

Commissioners on Thursday were largely complimentary of the design, particularly the H-shape. Commissioner Brian McCarter said the shape 鈥渄oes a pretty nice job of taking a building this big and breaking it down to a more human scale.鈥�

Concerns centered on the durability of the mass plywood material in Oregon rain. Commissioner Jessica Molinar said the exposed plywood on the colonnade could present maintenance issues.

鈥淵ou’re in a losing battle,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o unless the owner is willing to commit to serious maintenance of this, another option would have a much greater chance of success.鈥�

Commissioners also took issue with the height of the ground floor and the design scheme of numerous small, vertically oriented windows.

鈥淚 am really concerned about the window-to-wall ratio,鈥� Molinar said. 鈥淚’m worried that it will feel really institutional and not residential.鈥�

Wright said the windows could be made about 6 inches wider without significant plan changes.