The Portland Design Commission on Thursday essentially rejected revised plans for a seven-story mixed-use building at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

At least three commissioners present at the hearing expressed opposition. The developer, Urban Development + Partners, and designer Marcus Lima of GBD Architects opted not to call for a vote, which would have likely resulted in a formal denial and teed up a potential appeal to the City Council.

Instead, UD+P and GBD representatives opted for a continuance, indicating they would rework the design in hopes of winning the Design Commission’s approval. A follow-up work session is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 4.

“I’m not eager to call for a vote,” Sarah Zahn, director of development for UD+P, told commissioners. “That’s not my style. That’s not Marcus’ style. We want to be collaborative.”

As proposed, the building would be a five-over-two structure with 132 residential units. The ground floor would have retail space at each corner, and a lobby space. Parking would be provided via 60 ground-level stalls.

Commissioners said context is where the proposed building’s design falls short. Many of their objections appeared to stem from the difficulty of fitting a primarily residential building among low-slung warehouses and office buildings.

“I’m kind of struggling with this one, because it is a nice-looking building,” Commissioner Chandra Robinson said, “but I’m not sure that it’s meeting the context – and it’s a tough context to meet because it’s historic on one side and Central Eastside Industrial on the other side.”

The site is within the Central Eastside Industrial District, and the eastern portion of it also overlaps the East Portland Grand Avenue Historic District.

UD+P has invested heavily in the neighborhood: Across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, UD+P in partnership with Beam Development last year delivered District Office, a sleek, modern office building. The two developers also partnered for Hotel Grand Stark, which sits east of the 550 S.E. MLK project and opened in May. UD+P is the sole developer for the latest project.

“We’re not unfamiliar with this neighborhood,” Zahn said in an interview. “This is our neighborhood.”

UD+P’s development of the 550 S.E. MLK site has stretched on. Initially, UD+P proposed a hotel at the location. A pre-application meeting was held nearly a year ago, on Nov. 10, 2020.

Commissioners Robinson, Jessica Molinar and Brian McCarter indicated they were not ready to approve the project Thursday. Don Vallaster and Zari Santner spoke in favor, and Chairwoman Julie Livingston said she was a “swing vote.” Sam Rodriguez was absent from Thursday’s meeting, which was conducted via Zoom.

The project team appeared to be taken aback by the Design Commission’s opposition, given earlier meetings where the design seemed to be headed in the right direction.

“I’m slightly speechless,” said Lima, a GBD associate principal. “I’m at a bit of a loss,” he later added.

Some of the design choices stem from the building’s residential program, he said.

“We can’t have large windows like an industrial building or an office building,” he said. “We can’t be the building across the street.”

The building’s windows “need to be more regular,” Molinar said.

“You need to ratchet back a number of moves to be consistent with the context,” she added.

McCarter said the proposal needs to better fit among the surrounding warehouses.

“We don’t need to throw everything out and start from scratch,” he said. “I think something’s got to happen with the windows that bring it somehow into the realm of industrial warehouse architecture.”

Santner argued that the building fits within the Central Eastside’s evolving context.

“We know the nature of development in this area is going to change,” she said. “It is not going to remain industrial. It is not going to remain office. It is going to be more residential.”

In other neighborhoods such as Slabtown, where new buildings have hewed closely to context, the designs have become too much alike, Santner said.

“We rely so heavily on context,” she said. “After a while, it becomes like, gosh, this is all the same.”

Zahn, in an interview on Friday, said the team would work with Bureau of Development Services staff to update the design ahead of the November work session with commissioners.

“Not the outcome we expected,” she said. “We’re regrouping right now and discussing with staff the best path forward. I have a lot of confidence in GBD to respond to comments and frankly, we love our design, and we think it’s a beautiful building. And the commission loved the design. It’s about context.”

The post Context suddenly an issue for Central Eastside project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The pandemic killed Urban Development + Partners‘ plans to build a hotel in Portland’s burgeoning Central Eastside neighborhood.

Now UD+P is back with a proposal for a seven-story building with residential units above a ground-floor café and other space at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

A hotel development “essentially became unfeasible,” said Marcus Lima, a GBD Architects associate principal. Now GBD is working with UD+P on a new program – with a residential scheme.

Plans presented to the Portland Design Commission on Thursday call for approximately 120 residential units on floors two through seven. The ground floor would have a café, bike parking and other amenities.

The hotel project was approved by the Design Commission in 2017. With an essentially new project, the developer and architect must start the design review process anew.

The development will continue to change as the design is refined, Lima said.

“It has evolved and will continue to evolve before we come in for a design review submittal,” he said.

As currently designed, the building would be approximately 85 feet tall. Surface parking would be approximately 60 spaces. The site is slightly smaller than a half-block.

UD+P was thrown a curveball by a Portland Bureau of Transportation decision to designate the frontage along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard as a pedestrian district, requiring a 3-foot-wide dedication. That reduced the footprint available for the building.

“So our site that was already kind of constricted is now even more constricted,” Lima said.

UD+P and GBD floated a potential modification to ground-floor active use design guidelines that require 25 feet of depth from the face of the building to the back of retail spaces. The proposal does not meet the guideline along 50 percent of its façade as required.

A majority of the commissioners said they would not approve a modification; only two were in favor of granting the exception.

“It shouldn’t feel like you’re walking next to a dead zone or alleyway,” Commissioner Jessica Molinar said.

The café would be open after hours to residents who want to work or gather there, Lima said.

Without a modification, the development would have to shrink, said Katherine Schultz, director of GBD Architects.

“The option is to lose units … or to lose parking spaces,” she said.

The building would rise in a fast-growing commercial area. New developments including District Office and Hotel Chamberlain are rapidly transforming the Central Eastside neighborhood into a modern commercial area.

The 550 MLK project would add an atypical residential element.

“It is really hard to land a residential project in a warehouse district,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said.

Commissioners critiqued the initial design. Zari Santner said the building needed a more distinct base, middle and top. Molinar and Livingston suggested the north and south elevations needed improvement so they wouldn’t appear to be sidewalls.

The building should have “one single, clear expression that wraps all the way around,” Livingston added.

The post Out with hotel, in with residential building appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Portland Design Commission shot down the St. Johns Neighborhood Association‘s appeal of staff approval given to the Central Lofts project at 8608 N. Lombard Street, by a 4-0 vote on Thursday. Bureau of Development Services staff had approved the project during a type II review in October.

“The building is very richly detailed and the materials have been well thought out,” Commissioner Don Vallaster said. “My sense is this works pretty well in sense of the diversity criteria in the guidelines. In general you could put the building in my neighborhood and I’d be happy.”

Jones Architecture‘s vision for developer Farid Bolouri’s project is for a 44-foot-tall, 27,000-square-foot structure featuring cross-laminated timber. The ground level would hold a restaurant and retail space, and the upper three stories would hold six one-bedroom apartments and 24 studios.

The neighborhood association based its appeal on three concerns. First, the group said, the design failed to apply characteristics and traditions of the St. Johns/Lombard Plan area. Also, the main entrances were not prominent or interesting, and the development diverged too much from the area’s established architecture, according to the group.

“The neighborhood is generally supportive of this development and excited about the project,” said Josh Guerra, who spoke for the neighborhood association. “The stakeholder group determined that three of the guidelines were not met.”

Of particular concern were the building’s entrances. Their small size, the neighborhood association stated, could negatively impact both the streetscape and the plaza at the corner of North Lombard Street and Philadelphia Avenue. Various community activities, including a weekend farmers’ market, take place there.

Alan Jones, founder of Jones Architecture, countered that given the size of the lot and the likely tenants, the openings were appropriately sized. The entrances’ locations could be altered to suit the types and sizes of tenants, he said.

“It is very likely that retail spaces in St. Johns are going to be smaller spaces geared toward local business,” he said. “That dictates the entrances.”

Another neighborhood concern was that the project would not blend with its surroundings. Designers countered that St. Johns has an eclectic and diverse collection of buildings.

“(The St. Johns/Lombard Plan) goes as far as to say future development should go on the path of diversity,” Jones said. “We take that to mean that future development should be of the time period it is built.”

In response to a claim that this building wouldn’t be on the same scale as others nearby, designers pointed out other projects significantly larger than their proposal.

Overall, the commission sided with the development team.

“Ultimately it is about that corner,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “That corner is just fantastic and its relationship to the plaza is fantastic.”

Commissioners also failed to find enough discrepancy from the St. Johns/Lombard Plan guidelines to justify overturning the approval.

“Regarding the guidelines, they seem to be nebulous enough that either side can find support or not support for this design,” Vallaster said.

Also on Thursday:

550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The Portland Design Commission approved, by a 4-1 vote, Works Progress Architecture‘s design for a seven- or eight-story mixed-use building on Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Market conditions will determine which version of the building developers Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners decide to build.

Livingston was the only commissioner to vote no. She had concerns about the building‘s response to neighborhood context.

Providence Park

The commission approved, by a 3-1 vote, alterations to the Providence Park expansion that was approved in August. Allied Works Architecture will make several changes – the most notable being the type of roofing material and the viewshed.

Vallaster cast the lone dissenting vote because of concerns about how changes would impact the view of the field from outside the park.

The post Design Commission’s decision aids project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Portland Design Commission on Thursday voted 5-0 to approve plans for a mixed-use tower at 140 S.W. Columbia St.

“I think the team has done a remarkable job of responding to guidelines that address the active intersection,” Commission Charwoman Julie Livingston said. “The fact this above-grade parking garage now has really useful space that has presence on the facade of the building on the southeast corner is fantastic.”

The proposal calls for a 20-story, 200-foot-tall project with 349 residential units and 15,000 square feet of retail and office space. The project will include balconies at the sixth, 15th and 20th levels, rooftop decks and courtyards.

Incorporating the 244 parking spaces that developer Alamo Manhattan wanted was a major sticking point previously. The development team had hoped to extend the parking into a section that had a residential facade. The commission wanted a clear delineation between residential space and parking.

The team ultimately settled for 236 parking spaces and adding three residential units on the third level. They also changed the look of the windows on the building’s southeast facade.

“We are looking at a more playful pattern of punched gradient openings,” GBD Architects Associate Principal Craig Mendenhall said. “We are going to look at adding residential into the third floor to better contribute to the pedestrian realm.”

For the facades on Southwest First Avenue and Clay Street, the designers plan to use a gradient pattern stretching from the residential tower to the parking structure. The pattern will begin solid with smaller window openings and become more transparent with larger windows as it approaches the corner of First Avenue and Clay Street.

“The comment we got (from the commission) was this was parking disguising itself as residential,” Mendenhall said. “The idea on the lower elevation was to create a gradient of punched openings that works its way from west to east.”

Designers also used window treatments to help keep light from motor vehicles in the parking garage from spilling out into the public street. The revisions won over the commissioners.

“This project has come a long way and I really appreciate the work you have put into it,” Commissioner Jessica Molinar said. “I think the revisions you made go a long way to contributing to a vibrant streetscape and design corners that build active intersections.”

Commissioners debated the need to use a shadow box to help differentiate the parking and residential even further, but ultimately left that decision up to the architects.

“This is a remarkably strong project for this neighborhood,” Livingston said. “There is such a strong ground floor, such nice building massing and great materials.”

Also on Thursday:

550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The Design Commission informed the team proposing a seven- or eight-story mixed-use building that its design needs more work. Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners are developing the project.

Works Progress Architecture presented an eight-story, 94-foot-tall option and a seven-story, 84-foot-tall alternative. Both versions would include three levels of hotel space and a level of restaurant space. The main difference is that the taller version would have four levels of residential units, while the shorter one would have three. Each design was shown with or without below-grade parking.

“The issue the team is going to study is primarily in regards to contextual response,” Livingston said. “The difficulty is in fitting a residential building into the Central Eastside. They were going to take a look at how the skin might be modified to fit in better with the existing context.”

Both versions would devote approximately 8,650 square feet to the hotel and restaurant, and 107,544 square feet to residential and retail uses.

The project will return before the Design Commission on Dec. 14.

1500 N.E. Irving St.

The Design Commission approved plans for the Glisan Street Apartments with a 5-0 vote. C2K Architecture made additions to the canopies on the east side, revisions to a wall treatment on the north elevation, revisions to a rooftop unit and better definition of the program for a glass display case.

Second City Real Estate’s 69,130-square-foot project will include 750 square feet of ground-floor retail space, 22 parking spaces and 86 residential units.

The post Design for 20-story building gets go-ahead appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Developers of a proposed 13-story mixed-use building got their first feedback from the Portland Design Commission during a design advice hearing on Thursday.

Commission Chairman David Wark and commissioners Sam Rodriguez and Julie Livingston listened to the team of Works Progress Architecture, Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners present early plans for an estimated $40 million project at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The building would sit on what is currently a parking lot, and include two or three levels of hotel rooms and eight or nine levels of market-rate apartments. Also, two levels of parking would be constructed underneath the structure.

Plans call for a 146-foot-tall building that would tower over surrounding ones – including several that are within a historic district. The proposed floor-to-area ratio (FAR) would be 9 to 1.

The commissioners in attendance took issue with elements of the proposed project, but height wasn’t one of them.

“I don’t have a problem with the height,” Wark said.

One of the bigger issues for commissioners is the building’s strong vertical presence compared to the horizontal aspects of the surrounding buildings.

Commissioners also expressed concern that plans call for part of the development to jut into the East Portland/Grand Avenue Historic District. However, the proposed building would be set back from the neighboring historic Hotel Chamberlain – a move that commissioners praised.

“I think it’s great that you pulled back from the historic structures,” Livingston said.

The Hotel Chamberlain could be incorporated into the overall design. One idea suggested was to create a walkthrough between the lobbies of the Hotel Chamberlain and the new building.

Preliminary plans also call for a covered public area that could feature anything from trees and green space to lily pad structures.

Wark cautioned the developers about the way the building was configured relative to the historic district. He suggested that builders may want to look at reducing the building’s massing on the side facing the historic district. He also urged the developers to come up with a creative way to separate the building and the historic district.

Developers stressed that all ideas are still on the table and that plans are “very preliminary” at this point.

Also on Thursday, the Design Commission took a second look at the Pearl Apartments project proposed for 1319 N.W. Johnson St. The development would extend a quarter of a block and consist of five levels of market-rate apartments.

Changes were made to the facade and balcony configuration to comply with the commission’s previous recommendations.

The three commissioners in attendance praised changes that developers made following an earlier design advice hearing.

“It’s a fantastic project and it’s well on its way,” Rodriguez said.

The post Design advice given for project bordering historic district appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The partnership between Portland developers Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners started with Slate, a mixed-use project in the Central Eastside Industrial District with 75 luxury apartments and 45,000 square feet of commercial space.

Beam had been a player in the Central Eastside for years – mostly retrofitting large, historic buildings such as the Eastside Exchange and Water Avenue Commerce Center into creative office space. But Beam, led by Brad Malsin and his son, Jonathan, had less familiarity with other kinds of projects.

“We didn’t have experience building ground-up multifamily, so we set out to partner up with a team that had experience with that product type,” Jonathan Malsin said.

Meanwhile, Urban Development + Partners was looking to get more involved in the Central Eastside. It was a match made in heaven, or at least the Burnside bridgehead.

“We found that our firms have similar goals or values; we’re in alignment,” said Joren Bass, project manager for UDP. “Beam has a deep history of creative office space. UDP, we have pretty broad experience on the residential component. That was beneficial at Slate.”

Slate is opening to tenants this month. Yet that’s only the beginning of the Beam-UDP partnership. The companies are in the thick of developing three other projects together in the Central Eastside along Stark Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Hotel

First comes the renovation of Hotel Chamberlain, at 509 S.E. Grand Ave., which for decades housed a Shleifer Furniture store. The upper floors of the four-story building contain hotel rooms that have sat empty since the 1970s, when Shleifer Furniture ownership decided the trouble of running a hotel wasn’t worthwhile in the once-rough neighborhood.

Beam and UDP plan to transform the 36,000-square-foot property into a modern boutique hotel with about 60 guest rooms. The ground floor will become a hotel reception area, a lobby and a restaurant or coffee shop.

Features added by Shleifer Furniture over the years, such as a mezzanine and sidewalk-facing display windows, will be removed.

“Taking it back to the original storefront will bring in an amazing amount of natural light and really engage the street,” Bass said.

The developers are working closely with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office to retain the 110-year-old building’s historic characteristics. The renovation will require a full seismic upgrade.

“We’re going to preserve this as a gem,” Bass said.

It’s the first hotel development project for both firms, although UDP owns a hotel in another market. Emerick Architects is designing the hotel.

Hotel and apartments

Beam and UDP plan to build a 13-story mixed-use development with hotel space, multifamily units and ground-floor retail space at 550 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., a half-block slightly west of Hotel Chamberlain where a parking lot sits currently. Two floors of underground parking are planned, along with a rooftop deck.

The mix of uses has not been finalized, Jonathan Malsin said.

“We’re still determining that,” he said. “We anticipate having a hospitality component and multifamily.”

Works Partnership Architecture is designing the project.

Creative offices

At 531 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., the developers plan a mid-rise creative office building of approximately six stories on a parking lot now used by Portland Music Co. Retail space will occupy the ground floor. The developers are working within the restriction of an 80-foot height limit.

Beam and UDP are pursuing the creative office market that has proved lucrative for other Central Eastside projects such as Eastside Exchange.

“We will be targeting the same type of tenant, but every project is so different, especially if it’s adaptive reuse versus new construction,” Malsin said. “We try to deliver a similarly high quality, unique product.”

Portland architecture firm Hacker is designing the office project.

Beam and UDP hope to break ground on all three projects next year, Malsin said. He declined to reveal a total project cost for all three developments, but it will be substantial.

“It’s going to be quite the node of activity here with the three sites,” he said.

Hotel construction has boomed in Portland, but Malsin said Hotel Chamberlain and the hospitality project next door will differentiate themselves in the market.

“There’s definitely a lot of supply coming online,” he said. “It’s definitely something we’re cognizant of. But I don’t lump together the (Central Business District) and the Pearl (District) and the Central Eastside. A cool boutique hotel on the Central Eastside? Yeah, there’s a market for that.”

A potential expansion of the Jupiter Hotel is the only competing project in view, Malsin said.

For Beam, it makes sense to continue investing in the Central Eastside on the heels of the firm’s earlier projects in the area, Malsin said.

“We’ve had a lot of holdings down here for years, so all of our projects are bolstered, and it’s a phenomenal neighborhood,” he said. “We love the grittiness. We love the character.”

The developments by Beam and UDP fit the city’s long-term plans for the Central Eastside, said Debbie Kitchin, who served as co-chairwoman of the stakeholder advisory committee for Southeast Portland.

The neighborhood’s future is guided by the city’s Southeast Quadrant plan, part of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The plan calls for activating the area’s major corridors, while preserving the rest for industrial uses.

“We focused on keeping mixed-use development in the corridor and on the bridgehead streets,” said Kitchin, who is also past president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council and principal of general contractor InterWorks LLC. “That’s been allowed for 30 years, and it’s just now coming to fruition. I think activating those corridors is great.”

These projects started with a relationship that Beam founder Brad Malsin developed with Shleifer Furniture owner Stuart Shleifer. Malsin told Shleifer that if he were ever interested in selling, Beam would be interested in buying.

“This is where we have our network,” Jonathan Malsin said of the Central Eastside. “We’re able to identify properties off-market.”
For a clue as to what Beam and UDP will do together, look at what they’ve done. Slate has a distinctive 10-story design. There are 1.5 floors of retail space and 2.5 floors of office space topped by six floors of apartments. In addition, there is one level of underground parking.

Tenants include surfboard and coffee shop Cosube as well as a restaurant that has inked a letter of intent. CENTRL Office, a co-working company, has taken a space. Two more retail spaces along Third Avenue have not yet been leased.

Slate’s apartment units primarily have two bedrooms, “mostly as a way of differentiating our product,” Malsin said.

The interior has concrete floors, an approach favored by UDP. Bass said the polished concrete blends beauty and durability, is friendly to pets and allergy sufferers, and is resistant to flooding.

“We really won’t build anything that doesn’t have a concrete floor in a residential building like this,” Bass said.

Slate is a linchpin for a fast-developing area; it’s neighbored by Yard and the under-construction Fair-Haired Dumbbell from Kevin Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development. Gerding Edlen is developing a 17-story mixed-use building at the Burnside bridgehead.

Slate’s distinctive design by Works Partnership Architecture (now Works Progress Architecture) and built by Yorke & Curtis is reminiscent of stacked boxes, with apertures protruding from the building.

“It was an aesthetic decision,” Malsin said. “We first started looking at this building as an expression of an industrial neighborhood. We were enamored of the idea. It’s not the easiest detail to construct, but we’re really pleased. I think the design has been really well received.”

The post Developers team up in Central Eastside appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.