By all rights, Julie Livingston shouldn’t have ended up in the lead seat of the Portland Design Commission – at least, not yet.

When then-Chairman David Wark announced he would step down from the design panel in July, the reins of the commission should have gone next to Tad Savinar, vice president of the group and the commissioner with the longest tenure after Wark.

But Savinar said he felt the position he was already in was the best fit with his schedule, which contains a high amount of travel. That meant that Livingston, who is third in terms of duration on the commission, was next in line.

“I went for drinks one night with David and Tad, and they both looked at me and said, ‘You know it’s you, right?’” Livingston said. “It’s just the way the cards fell.”

Livingston comes to the chairwoman role having previously worked as an architect in her own private practice as well as at Bora Architects. She is currently working with Home Forward, where she serves as an owner’s representative on affordable housing projects. She steps into the Design Commission’s leadership position at a time when the city is seeing some of its most explosive growth.

“It has just been crazy since the day I started, which means it was crazy before I got here,” Livingston said.

While the commission chair position has limited power, the person in that seat can lead commission discussion and form talking points about a project during hearing discussions.  Some who attend Design Commission meetings regularly have noted that the first couple of meetings under Livingston’s leadership have had a more structured format than the freewheeling style of her predecessor.

Wark isn’t surprised that Livingston’s style differs from his. While pace was a concern when he led the group, making sure everyone’s opinion was heard was always his priority.

“My role was to give everyone a voice,” Wark said. “It made for some long commission meetings, but time shouldn’t be the primary concern.

“As chair, it’s a balancing act to give concise feedback but make sure it’s beneficial,” he added. “Every commissioner has their own opinion. It’s like herding the proverbial cats.”

A few of the changes Livingston has already implemented include a clock for those testifying, and breaking discussions into various subjects in an effort to give more structured feedback and speed up hearings.  Structure is one of the most prized aspects applicants say they want in a commission leader.

“I like a chair that can manage the commission to stay on track and adequately give the applicant clear direction, as well get through their docket in a reasonable timeline,” Greg Mitchell, an LRS Architects senior associate, said.

One goal of the city’s Design Overlay Zone Assessment (DOZA) process, aimed at streamlining design review, is speeding up the process while still making sure everyone has their say. One of Livingston’s biggest challenges will be balancing those competing interests.

“It’s a little influence from DOZA,” Livingston said. “We are working to get to a time-certain agenda. I don’t think we will ever get there because of the nature of the beast.”

In addition to applicant and staff testimony, commissioners also hear from local stakeholders such as residents or neighborhood associations during meetings. Then there is time added for rebuttals, and discussions from the commissioners before any decision is ever made. It’s not uncommon for hearings to last more than three hours for large or controversial projects.

“There are a lot of people in the hearing room that are not familiar with the process and they show up at 1:30 and don’t realize their chance of testifying will not happen until 6,” Livingston said. “People just sit there and get more and more frustrated.”

Part of lessening that frustration begins with more public outreach and advocating for the process, Livingston said. Better communication with those new to an intricate process is a big part of trying to lessen frustration.

For the first time, the leader of the Design Commission has a twitter handle – @PortlandDCchair. It’s a sign of the times that the commission is leaning on social media to get its message out.

Livingston’s hope is that using new methods of communication will increase awareness of a process that could reshape many neighborhoods. She takes over as chairwoman at a time when many parts of Portland are changing, leading to more public interest in what the Design Commission does – and how it does it – than ever before.

At the same time the DOZA process, which has been under way for more than two years, will be making revisions to the design guidelines that oversee how buildings in the city will look.

“Rolling out new community design guidelines is going to be a big thing,” Livingston said.

Her hope is that the process will lead to guidelines that will be easier for developers to understand and the Design Commission to enforce. Livingston said the changes the city has gone through in recent years require refreshing guidelines that were written 35 years ago for a city that bears little resemblance to the metro area of today.

Getting those new guidelines right will be a major part of creating a process that is more effective.

“Not everyone gets it the way that people who created it 35 years ago did,” Livingston said. “People who move here say it’s a fantastic city. Why do I need people looking over my shoulder? The guidelines are the most basic building blocks of good urban design.”

She credited those guidelines for creating the urban experience that makes people want to live in Portland.

“The process works, it’s why people want to move here,” Livingston said.

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This year is already shaping up to be one of the busiest for post-recession development in Portland, according to city planners, and the glut of proposed projects is overwhelming the land use and design review processes.

The hectic pace of development has spawned a series of efforts to streamline the city’s land use procedures so that officials can respond to increased demand for project reviews more efficiently, said Rebecca Esau, manager of the Portland Bureau of Development Services’ Land Use Services Division.

All department facets are being affected, Esau said. That is why six staffers were added this past fall, and a proposal exists to hire eight more in the coming fiscal year, she said. Also, more clerical staffers have joined BDS to help with administrative tasks and free up planners to focus on project reviews. Meanwhile, officials are considering whether to hire interns through Portland State University’s urban planning program to help with the workload, Esau said.

“Everybody is really busy,” she said. “We’re in the process of hiring for a whole number of positions.”

City planners are not the only ones who have been slammed. Increased development has also affected the Portland Design Commission. The seven-member volunteer committee of design and development professionals is tasked with reviewing major developments within city design districts. Commissioners typically meet twice a month, but have stepped up to do so three times to keep pace with the number of requests for design advice or design review approval.

City staffers and design commissioners are working to accelerate notoriously long hearings. For instance, a timer may be used to limit project team presentations and public testimony. At a Design Commission meeting earlier this month, city planner Tim Heron proposed starting the hearings earlier than 1:30 p.m.

“The goal behind that would be to set (a) six-hour time limit,” he told the commission.

Currently, meetings often drag on late into the evening, challenging city staffers to give design teams accurate times for when their scheduled hearing will start or when the public will have opportunity to testify on a proposed project, Heron said.

“We need to be more predictable,” he said. “It’s better for the commissioners, it’s better for the public, it’s better for staff.”

Heron said he doesn’t foresee the volume of cases coming before the Design Commission slowing any time soon and suggested members further discuss ways to streamline hearings when they convene for a retreat next month. Commission Chairman David Wark and Vice Chairman Ben Kaiser plan to also meet with Esau this week to address ways to make commission meetings more efficient.

Esau said a big concern is burnout among the commissioners, who dedicate a significant amount of unpaid time to review project designs.

“We’re creating a bit more structure than we had before,” she said. “We’re working with the commission and staff on hearings management. We know these hearings have been going late into the night and we really need to get moving to get through the volume of work that’s coming in.”

The significant time required to serve on the Design Commission may be why it’s been a struggle to fill a vacancy created when Jane Hansen left last September, Wark said. City staffers are also seeking applicants to replace Commissioner Guenevere Millius. Her term ended in December, but she is continuing to serve on the commission because it’s already short one person.

Many of the potential candidates that Wark said he and other commissioners have approached are leaders at architecture, development and urban planning firms already stretched professionally by Portland’s building boom.

“I think a lot of people are very wary of the time commitment,” he said.

Wark said he’s suggested cutting out redundancy in planner and project team presentations to the commission and worked to focus hearing deliberations. But this can be tricky with complex projects, such as superblock developments, he said.

“There are some enormous projects,” he said. “Just the scale of the project might require its own (design advice request) or hearing. The owners are under enormous pressure to get their projects through. Our task is to expedite the process while still maintaining the same level of quality of Portland’s built environment.”

Other cities with a design review process don’t offer the design advice request hearings that are typical for the Portland Design Commission. Wark said he’d never suggest cutting out that chance for design teams to gauge where the commission stands on initial project plans.

“It is a process that is more fair than just coming in with your complete (design),” Wark said. “You do have an opportunity for early feedback and (to) set the course or reset the course of your design.”

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A long-sought Northeast Portland affordable housing development that has undergone multiple redesigns has gained the Portland Design Commission‘s permission to move ahead.

Commissioners on Thursday unanimously approved plans for Hazelwood Plaza. The 62-unit complex, at 312 N.E. 102nd Ave., will consist of two five-story buildings with a central entry plaza, three ground-floor retail spaces and 44 tuck-under parking spaces.

Construction is scheduled to begin this summer and require 18 months to complete, said project architect Alberto Rinkevich of Portland-based ARDesign LLC. A general contractor has not been hired yet; several companies are still being considered, he said.

Portland developer Ricardo Berdichevsky since 2012 has sought to build the approximately $6 million Hazelwood Plaza, but the effort stalled during the city design review process. In response to commissioners’ feedback offered during four design advice hearings for the project, Rinkevich made multiple revisions.

“We are here for the fifth time and we changed a lot during the process,” he told the commission on Thursday.

Design revisions included changing materials planned for the facade of the 59,018-square-foot development and sticking to a more neutral color palette instead of original plans for highlights of bright red and blue.

“We tried to articulate the facade in a rhythm of different colors and materials on both sides (and) two different colors of cement board lap siding,” Rinkevich said.

Plans to build one long building with an enclosed tenant amenity space in the middle were also nixed in favor of two separate buildings that share a central ground-floor entry plaza and second-floor terrace.

Design Commission Chairman David Wark said he appreciated this move.

“I think the break is way more successful now,” he said. “It’s a total break in the building.”

Hazelwood Plaza will be the fourth affordable housing complex in the Portland area owned by Berdichevsky’s company, Quail Court Management. In October 2013, the project received the Portland Housing Bureau’s approval for a 10-year tax abatement via the Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption program.

After voting to approve the project, Commissioner Tad Savinar commended the Hazelwood Plaza project team for sticking with the lengthy revision process.

“I really appreciate your patience,” he said. “I know you’ve come in here a few times and thought we were all nuts … You’ve found a way to design a building that I’m proud to have in the city. I really appreciate your time.”

Also on Thursday, commissioners offered feedback on Mill Creek Residential Trust‘s Modera Belmont, which is being designed by Portland-based SERA Architects. The mixed-use development is expected to replace the Oregon Ballet Theatre building in Southeast Portland.

Plans call for a six-story, 230,000-square-foot building, at 818 S.E. Sixth Ave., with approximately 214 residential units and 105 spaces of below-grade parking. The ground floor of the U-shaped building would include 7,000 square feet of retail space facing Southeast Morrison Street, live-work units facing Southeast Belmont Street and an at-grade courtyard facing Southeast Sixth Avenue with apartment patios and large stormwater planters.

Commissioners suggested reducing the number of materials used on the facade, which includes fiber cement board and four types of metal panels, and widening the ground-floor courtyard.

The planned courtyard would be too narrow, and stormwater planters would diminish it further, Commissioner Guenevere Millius said.

“I would like to see a courtyard that was a little more generous,” she said. “The slot courtyards – they’re just not very meaningful courtyards.”

Wark pointed out that a larger design issue was the lack of cohesion. He said that facades appeared too busy.

“There needs to be one clear concept,” he said. “Right now, there’s a lot of conflict … I don’t see the need to get too acrobatic with the massing.”

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Portland Design Commission member David Keltner has high expectations for Oregon Square, the second phase of a massive development expected to draw thousands of new residents to the Lloyd District.

GBD Architects‘ designs for the first phase, American Assets Trust‘s $192 million Hassalo on Eighth superblock project scheduled to finish this summer, could have gone further to reinvent a part of the city that is notoriously harsh for pedestrians and populated by anonymous office towers, Keltner said.

“I just feel like the last project didn’t do that,” he said. “I would love for it to go beyond that and have some sort of meaningful connection to the place.”

Keltner on Thursday joined other design commissioners who offered extensive feedback to the GBD team during a design advice hearing for American Assets Trust’s next superblock project. Oregon Square will be located across Northeast Holladay Street from Hassalo on Eighth.

The hearing was the first of several planned meetings to discuss schematic designs for Oregon Square, bounded by Northeast Seventh and Ninth avenues and Northeast Holladay and Oregon streets. The next hearing is scheduled for Feb. 26.

Plans for the development that will encompass four typical city blocks call for four new mixed-use buildings that combined contain more than 900 apartments over ground-floor retail space and 800 below-grade parking spaces. Two buildings will be 11 stories, one will be 21 stories and one will be 29 stories.

The four L-shaped buildings are planned to surround a central plaza that can be accessed from the sidewalk through four mid-block entrances – one on each side of the development. At Thursday’s hearing, the design team sought advice on creating a large-scale plaza that will take up much of the 104,360 square feet of the site’s outdoor space.

“We realize the plaza itself is an asset, but it has a lot of challenges as far as activating it,” GBD principal Kyle Andersen told the commission. “We thought this project deserved an open space that would be compatible with other open spaces in the area.”

Most of the discussion during the nearly four-hour hearing centered on the design of the plaza with several commissioners expressing doubts that the space as designed would be as successful as hoped. Among commissioners’ concerns were the plaza’s lack of green spaces where people could relax under a tree or on a lawn. They also wondered whether placing a plaza in the center of buildings would work as well in Portland as they do in Europe.

“It’s kind of a leap of faith,” Commission Chairman David Wark said. “How do you know this is going to work? That’s what we’re looking for.”

The design team studied various concepts for where to place a plaza on the site, but ultimately fell in love with the idea of building a large central courtyard in an area that with the exception of nearby Holladay Park has few public outdoor spaces, Andersen said.

“We think that in the end, through the design of that space, it can be a very nice complement to Holladay Park,” he said.

GBD Architects’ designs, in collaboration with landscape architecture firm PLACE, call for a plaza geared toward hosting events, such as craft or food markets and outdoor concerts, said Mauricio Villarreal, a principal with PLACE. The plaza will feature stormwater planters, a large water feature, a covered pavilion and ample seating, he said. It will be ringed by retail spaces, such as a café or a brewpub, that spill out onto the plaza.

“We’ve been dreaming about having this large, open space that opens up the opportunity for all kinds of activities,” he said. “On Saturday, this is a food market (with) children playing in the fountain. This is just one of many different ways we think of this square being special and unique.”

Wark joined other design commissioners who noted that confining the landscaping in planters would detract from the plaza’s success.

“It seems like it’s aching for people to be involved in the landscape rather than separated from it,” he said.

Commissioner Tad Savinar praised the design team’s concept of a tilted square plaza within the frame of the four buildings, but said he was seeking a bolder look and encouraged installing a large public art piece.

“I think this is an opportunity for a signature,” Savinar said. “I love the tilted square in a square. It’s killer. I’d encourage you to think about this space to make a singular, dynamic proud-of-itself statement and not chop it up.”

Keltner reminded the design team to consider how the neighborhood will change with an influx of so many new residents from American Assets Trust’s two superblock developments.

“I think what you’re creating in this open space is a whole new identity for what this neighborhood is,” he said. “If it’s just a big, open space, it fails.”

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Hennebery Eddy Architects principal David Wark on Jan. 15 became the new chairman of the Portland Design Commission.

Commissioners appointed Wark, previously the commission’s vice chairman, to replace Guenevere Millius, owner and founder of Portland-based marketing and planning firm Parachute Strategies. Also, Commissioner Ben Kaiser was appointed to replace Wark as the vice chairman. Kaiser is the owner and principal of Portland-based PATH Architecture.

Millius’ term ended in December, but she is continuing to serve on the commission because it’s already short one person.

The Portland Bureau of Development Services is seeking to fill a commission vacancy created when Jane Hansen left in September 2014. Candidates should have experience in design, engineering, financing or development of buildings. The commission must also include one representative from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Those interested in applying to serve on the commission can contact city planner Tim Heron at 503-823-7726 or tim.heron@portlandoregon.gov.

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An 11-story, mixed-use building proposed for the corner of Northwest Ninth Avenue and Couch Street would feature floor-to-ceiling windows, matte silver zinc vertical and horizontal siding panels, perforated metal balconies and sliding sunshades in gradient colors.

Chris Jones, a project designer with Portland-based Vallaster Corl Architects, on Thursday asked the Portland Design Commission for preliminary design advice on Couch Nine.

The high-rise would feature one-, two- and three-bedroom units and studios (145 total) and approximately 7,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. The plans also call for 80 underground parking spaces.

The commissioners considered the overall design excellent, and they liked the materials the firm proposed using. However, each commissioner expressed dissatisfaction with the west-facing facade, which would feature recessed balconies in a grid pattern. Each west-facing balcony would have a moving sunshade – between four and five feet wide – able to slide along the length of the railing.

“The other elevations are fixed, and this creates a dark hole,” Commissioner Tad Savinar said. “It feels unconnected to the elegance of the other sides.”

Commission Chairwoman Guenevere Millius said that the west facade gave her some “ill-defined heartburn,” but liked the rest of the design.

“It’s a good thing that the other sides are that good,” Commissioner David Wark said. “You have something to work on.”

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