A proposal for a CVS pharmacy, with a drive-thru window, in Portland’s Central Eastside faces a steep climb to meet city guidelines, according to design commissioners.

The team planning the project at 1525 S.E. Grand Ave. received design advice from the Portland Design Commission on Thursday. The proposal does not meet several design guidelines, design commissioners said. Also, they expressed disfavor with seven modifications requested by CVS.

“The public realm is so important in this area, in this district,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “I looked very hard (at the proposal) to find something that was good about it.”

The single-story building would have 12,450 square feet of space on a full block bounded by Grand Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Clay Street and Hawthorne Boulevard. The property, which has a dilapidated former Burger King restaurant that has attracted graffiti, is now fenced off.

The restaurant closed after a fire, and its operator chose not to reopen, said the property’s owner, Joe Angel. He operated the Burger King until 1993, when he began leasing it to another operator.

CVS has expanded aggressively in Portland. New outposts of the pharmacy chain have popped up at Southwest Fourth Avenue and Harrison Street near Portland State University, and at Southeast 17th Avenue and Tacoma Street in Sellwood.

The proposed Grand Avenue location would have something the others lack: a drive-thru. Construction of new drive-thrus is prohibited in Portland. That reality has made properties with existing drive-thrus, which are grandfathered, more attractive to certain developers.

“We looked at this as an opportunity to provide drive-thru service that is not provided elsewhere by CVS in the city of Portland,” said Nick Wecker, a senior planner with Barghausen Consulting Engineers Inc. in Kent, Washington.

The proposal calls for using only a small portion of the site’s zoned density. A floor-area ratio of 9-to-1 is allowed, but the pharmacy building’s FAR would come in at less than 1-to-1.

The project team has applied for a Type II design review with city staff. The Design Commission would vote on the proposal only if staff were to deny it, and the applicant chose to appeal.

The proposed building would have red brick on the exterior, said Terri Douglas, an architect with NORR in Detroit.

The project team will try to preserve three large sequoia trees on the property, Angel said.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation, after months of discussions with the developer, has not signed off on the project.

“Consistently we’ve been informing the developer of significant concerns we have with access to the site,” said Fabio de Freitas, a PBOT development reviewer.

CVS’ application should not be considered complete, he said.

An auto-focused project with no ground-floor windows on certain frontages would not fit well in the Central City pedestrian district, Commissioner Chandra Robinson said.

“I do not think any of these modifications are approvable in any way because they are detrimental to the public realm,” she said. “The reason the neighborhood has issues is because there are no eyes on the street. … We can’t allow that to happen with any new buildings that come into the area.”

The project could be changed to better meet design guidelines, Wecker said.

“Architecturally we can take our best shot at putting something together that meets the guidelines,” he said.

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