A 250-room hotel is being planned for Portland’s Old Town Chinatown district, but construction has to wait until the city raises commercial building height requirements. And because of current city staff shortages, that could take at least a year.

Daniel Kaven, co-owner of William Kaven Architecture, is planning a striking glass-topped building on Block 33, a 40,000-square-foot parking lot bordered by Northwest Fourth and Fifth avenues and Northwest Couch and Davis streets.

Before the project goes through design review, though, Kaven is waiting for the city to implement a recently approved increase to 150 feet in allowable commercial building height in the central city that will be included in its 2035 West Quadrant Plan. He plans for his building height to be between 10 and 12 stories, he said.

“It sounds like the implementation of increased height is not moving along like it’s supposed to because they don’t have enough staff,” Kaven said. “I’m hoping to start construction next summer.”

Kaven’s assessment is correct, said city planner Nicholas Starin.

The problem is that the proposed Central City Plan must be adopted before new height requirements can be adopted, Starin said, which in the best scenario would be next summer. Under proposed changes, some areas would see lowered height limits while others would be higher. However, the city currently doesn’t have enough staff to do the work.

Starin said Kaven has taken the project “fairly far in terms of preliminary design,” but the city has not caught up. He’s hoping some answers might come from a meeting of the Old Town Chinatown Community Association meeting, where Kaven’s project will discussed by the association’s Land Use Design and Review Committee. The meeting will be at 9 a.m. on July 21 in Room 152 at the University of Oregon at 70 N.W. Couch St.

“I’m hopeful there will be a productive conversation,” Starin said. “This is really a key development parcel with potential for a really catalytic effect that will help revitalize the neighborhood, and I think everybody recognizes that.”

The current height limit for the central city is 100 feet, Starin said, which would be too low for Kaven’s project to pencil out. Even though the West Quadrant Plan would raise the limit to 150 feet, that can’t be implemented until guidelines are adopted.

“The problem is that there are a whole bunch of design guidelines to update and we’re planning to update after city council adopts the Central City Plan,” Starin said.

A draft of the Central City Plan will go before City Council in November.

“I think July of next year would be the earliest we could change the height,” Starin said. “But we don’t currently have the staff to do those design guidelines.”

Lack of staff has been an ongoing problem for the city this year, one of the busiest for post-recession development in Portland. Although some new staff has been hired, it is not enough to keep up with development demands. That’s a problem Starin would like to see solved for Kaven’s development.

“It’s not impossible and a lot of people are excited and see the potential (of the project) for Old Town/Chinatown,” Starin said.  “There is a willingness from all parties to try and problem-solve this.”

AN URBAN RESORT

The yet-unnamed hotel will bring the idea of an “urban resort” to the Chinatown area, Kaven said, with a roof-top swimming pool, outdoor common spaces with possibly a “beer garden” ambiance, a ballroom and space for events. Plans also call for the hotel to house several restaurants.

“We will have a big, beautifully landscaped courtyard,” Kaven said. “One of the exciting things about the whole block is that you can have outdoor spaces that are not afforded when a hotel is fronted on a sidewalk.”

The building’s design will be by William Kaven Architecture, owned by Kaven and his brother Trevor William Lewis. The developer is Kaven+Co., founded by Kaven.

Taking on such a large project is quite a departure from his previous work, Kaven said, when he primarily developed residential and smaller commercial projects. But he said he’s not worried about the challenge.

“I have total confidence in building the team and doing the project,” he said.

Preliminary plans call for the building to have a ground-floor retail, and Kaven is currently interviewing commercial real estate brokers about leasing retail space.

“It’s a night market concept for Chinatown, something to really activate the neighborhood at night,” he said.

A major hotel group already is attached to the project, Kaven said, though he declined to reveal a name.

The concrete-and-steel building will be post-tensioned concrete with a faceted curtain wall system on it, Kaven said. The plinth will be modern brick with steel apertures, with the glass structure on top.

“The outside of the envelope of the building has lots of glass,” he said. “It’s going to be a great building with great views.”

Both Kaven and Lewis studied architecture at the University of Oregon and started their architecture firm in 2004, Kaven said, and he’s pleased with the initial design of the hotel.

“It’s a simple geometric structure,” he said. “The idea is that that the building feels very grounded at the retail and pedestrian level.”

With other hotels in addition to his project planned for the neighborhood, he feels the area is on its way to being revitalized.

“It’s absolutely exciting that this is the oldest part of Portland,” he said. “I believe that neighborhood can be tremendous. There’s a good neighborhood already there.”

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