After developing 150 condominium units at The Cosmopolitan on the Park in the Pearl District, Hoyt Street Properties didn’t hesitate before making plans for 148 units on Block 20, also in the Pearl.

The as-yet-unnamed Block 20 project builds on the success of The Cosmopolitan, the first major condo building constructed in Portland since the Great Recession ended.

The Cosmopolitan is nearly sold out, and commanding prices not seen for condos since the previous boom. The units, ranging from 700 to 3,400 square feet, have sold for $700 per square foot on average, Hoyt Street Properties President Tiffany Sweitzer said.

Block 20, meanwhile, went before the Portland Design Commission last week and will return for a second review June 30.

Hoyt Street Properties is developing condos at a time when few others are. Litigation fears and tough lending standards are influencing developers’ decisions.

But the success of The Cosmopolitan, where less than 5 percent of units remain unsold, has raised eyebrows in the industry. Unit sales have demonstrated demand for condos at a time when developers are heavily favoring multifamily rental projects.

“They’re to be commended,” Killian Pacific Vice President Noel Johnson said. “They’re achieving pricing when they’re selling condos that are higher than a lot of people thought possible.”

For now, Hoyt Street has the luxury condo market essentially to itself. Others such as Portland Development Group have projects in the pipeline, but nothing like the scale of Hoyt Street’s projects.

Portland may start to see more condo projects, Sweitzer said. After a years-long apartment construction boom in the metro area, selling condos is one way for a developer to carve out a niche.

“We’re feeling like it’s starting to get saturated with rentals,” she said. “Not that Portland’s not strong – I think it will be for a while – but I think condos will set us apart.”

At a time when some city officials and housing advocates are lobbying for greater density in Portland’s neighborhoods, the lack of condo development stands out. While many new condos come at luxury price points, some condos can be had for less than comparably sized single-family homes.

“In theory, you could build a duplex or triplex as condos and sell them, but we’re not seeing a lot of those,” said Mike Westling, who authored a recent City Club of Portland report that called for greater density and more varied housing types. “I’d like to see more of it.”

Everett Custom Homes is targeting that market. The firm plans to build 15 to 20 workforce-priced condo units this year in close-in neighborhoods of East Portland. It’s also considering building condos on lots off of North Interstate Avenue and North Williams Avenue.

The aim for those condos is for a lower price point that is in high demand. Plans for the condos call for units of approximately 900 to 1,200 square feet, and prices around $300,000.

“There’s a need for a price point out there,” Everett Custom Homes owner Vic Remmers said. “With all of the fees and the price of land for a single-family home, it’s near impossible to hit a workforce housing price point.”

Remmers said he’s pursuing permits and that his firm intends to break ground on the first condo units in about two months.

Portland’s market for single-family homes is under strong pressure from extremely low inventory. In May, Portland again had the highest price jump (12.3 percent) from May 2015 among major cities tracked by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

More condos could help relieve pressure on the housing market, Johnson said. As buyers trade up to luxury condos, they typically leave behind rentals or homes that are more affordable. But Johnson said he has no plans to build condos because of the threat of litigation and other obstacles.

Bob Ball, owner of Robert Ball Companies, developed during the boom in the early 2000s several condominium projects, including the Avenue Lofts and the Marshall-Wells Lofts in the Pearl District. Now he’s developing multifamily projects, and doesn’t expect that to change.

Combative homeowners associations and overstretched management companies make developing condos unappealing, he said.

“If you can build and achieve the same profit level for apartments, you’re more likely to do that, because you own it and control it and make sure the building is well-managed,” he said.

Ball is awaiting permits to break ground on 21 Astor, a mixed-use project at Northwest 21st Avenue and Kearney Street. Plans call for 27 multifamily units on top of 4,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space, but no condominiums.

Like many developers, Ball will continue to own 21 Astor after it’s built, and collect a steady stream of rental revenue that condo projects can’t match.

Johnson decried a long line of construction-defects litigation that he and other developers say has hobbled condo construction.

“It’s more costly to build a condo than normally it would be,” he said. “Add to that, it’s just really unpleasant to be sued. At Killian Pacific, our brand is really important to us, and we try to do projects people will really like.”

Johnson said that if Killian Pacific were to develop condos, legal costs would be incorporated into unit prices because of the near-inevitability of litigation. In essence, condo buyers would fund the developer’s legal defense in advance.

“As a developer, if you have to plan on getting sued whether the suit is justified or not, then you build that future cost of defending yourself into the budget up front, because it’s virtually a known cost,” he said.

There appears to be little prospect of change to the litigation environment, because the Oregon Legislature has stalled legislation that would guard against such lawsuits.

“Anything that looks, smells or tastes like tort reform makes one side of the political aisle nervous,” Oregon Home Builders Association CEO Jon Chandler said, in reference to Democrats who control the Legislature.

It’s unclear if condo litigation reform will stand any better chance when the Legislature reconvenes in February 2017, he said.

“We need to talk about it because the presence of those claims does tend to skew the market away from condos and towards apartments,” Chandler said. “That may be the way the market is going anyway, but it should not be nudged that way by nonmarket forces.”

Despite the downsides, some developers are beginning to revisit condos as a viable option. Portland Development Group has six condo units under development. The furthest along is a two-unit building at 4511 S.E. Madison St., off of Hawthorne Boulevard. It is the firm’s first condo project.

“My staff had been coming to me for the last year and saying, ‘Why don’t we develop condos?’ ” Portland Development Group managing partner Mike Hubbell said.

It took a while for Hubbell to be persuaded.

“Part of it was an apprehension: Is there a stigma attached to condos?” he said. “We made a decision to jump out and see how it works out for us.”

After green-lighting the first project, Portland Development Group has begun developing two more. The units are planned to be about 2,300 square feet each and cost $650,000 to $750,000.

“Sometimes you have to be willing to take a chance where no one else will,” Hubbell said.

Obtaining financing can be the greatest hurdle for big condo projects. Even for Hoyt Street Properties, securing a loan from Wells Fargo for The Cosmopolitan wasn’t easy.

“We were able to do that with The Cosmopolitan, not that it wasn’t difficult,” Sweitzer said. “We were able to do that because we’d built 12 projects prior and had a track record.”

It also helps to have access to deep pockets. Longtime developer Joe Weston is providing some of the financing for Block 20, Sweitzer said in an email.

“Without his financial strength, we would not have been able to develop either project as a condominium,” she said.

The post Condos: weighing risk versus reward appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

With Portland’s population increasing and the cost to live in the Rose City soaring, the city’s trees have become caught in the middle. The comprehensive law the city council passed to protect them, Title 11, has upset neighbors and tree boosters, some of whom have come to council to represent of old giants felled since the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2015.

“There’s nothing that can be done in arrears about those trees that were killed, wrongly,” tree advocate Sara Long told council last week, describing two trees her landlord had cut down.

Less publicized but no less sincere have been the complaints of private-side interests who say the city’s new tree code is confusing and ineffective.

“Most professionals I have spoken to have said it is one of the more difficult codes ever implemented,” said Joseph Petrina, a member of the Oregon Remodelers Association and owner of Petrina Construction.

Critics from the business and development communities shared anecdotes of absurd unintended outcomes of Title 11, like a contractor needing to fence off a tree in the backyard for a small remodeling job in the front. They say, more gravely, that Title 11 has led to more trees being cut down, and might be making housing in Portland less affordable.

The spirit of the code

Vic Remmers knows preserving the city’s urban forest is an emotional issue in Portland. The owner of Everett Custom Homes became the object of protest this past fall when three 150-year old sequoias were scheduled to come down as part of an Everett project. Protestors carrying signs like “Remmers lies, Trees die” took to the neighborhood, and the story made national news. A neighborhood group eventually came up with a crowd-funded $800,000 to save the trees in a deal brokered in part by Mayor Charlie Hales.

Remmers said a better way to save trees is to change the code.

Everett develops new single-family houses, up to eight per lot. Remmers said outcry from pro-tree Portland has gotten louder and more severe since he started the company six years ago.

“It’s getting worse because I think people see that if they make a big stink about something it leads to more changes, which makes it more and more difficult to build homes in the city of Portland,” he said. “We’re building in established neighborhoods, and folks get upset about change. They get fearful because they don’t know what’s going to happen. We deal with that all the time.”

The city passed the comprehensive tree code in 2011, but due to the recession, it wasn’t implemented until four years later. Before Title 11, rules relating to trees were scattered across various bureaus.

Title 11 of the Portland City Code sought to combine tree-related laws for full-site development and smaller, homeowner-led remodeling work, under one heading. One goal was to get developers to consider saving trees earlier in the project planning process.

Under Title 11, developers of projects involving ground-disturbing construction on properties 5,000 square feet or larger must submit a tree plan accounting for all trees 12 inches in diameter or larger. Developers must preserve at least one-third of those trees, or pay the city $1,200.

But the law hasn’t worked as intended, and numerous residents upset with what they see as a shrinking urban forest have told council to strengthen or add disincentives. According to the city, 18 trees of at least 45 inches in diameter were cut down during the first nine months the law was effective.

The council will take to devising amendments to the tree code this summer. For now, though, a smaller package of targeted, “stop-gap” measures – called “Fritz-Saltzman” for city commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman, the amendment’s two backers  – is being considered. The stop-gaps would impose in development situations a tiered fee in-lieu schedule for trees up to 50 inches in diameter, and an inch-by-inch fee for trees 50 inches in diameter or larger.

The Oregon Remodelers Association submitted several proposed changes to Title 11, including allowing use of 4-foot orange fencing to mark off trees. The code currently requires 6-foot chain link fencing, which costs more. Most contractors have been renting the fencing and passing the cost along to homeowners, Petrina said.

Petrina also suggests exempting from the full force of the code hand-dug footings and foundations as well as other smaller work. He thinks small contractors will avoid obtaining permits if the rules stay the same.

“These changes would save the homeowner unnecessary expenses, but still live by the spirit of the code,” Petrina said.

Eating the costs

For some of landscape architect Brian Bainnson‘s clients, it’s a shock to learn what they can and can’t do with their property.

Bainnson said clients of his company, Quatrefoil Inc., are often surprised to learn that in addition to hiring a landscape architect, they’ll have to spend between $800 and $1,500 to hire an arborist to help write their project’s tree preservation plan. Follow-up arborist services can run up to $1,700, plus a few hundred more in billable hours for Bainnson.

“We’ve seen projects put on hold because there’s one more layer of cost that they hadn’t anticipated,” he said. “Escalating building fees are really limiting what people can do on their property in Portland.”

Bainnson cited one project he’s working on – a retaining wall that’s costing the owners $5,000 for materials and labor, as well about $5,000 in permit costs and arborist fees. He suspects rising costs will lead more homeowners to break the law and build out of permit.

“All you have to do is spend some time at the permit center with people who’ve gotten caught for building without a permit to know that if there are people getting caught, there’s a whole more people out there who aren’t getting caught,” Bainnson said.

Deconstruction/demolition firms also are affected by the new tree preservation law.

“It’s gotten so ridiculous with the tree protection,” said John LaBarge, owner of Oregon Demolition. “It can add significant cost to taking down a house, and it’s most likely a house that needs to come down. There’s no way it can be affordable anymore.”

One of LaBarge’s project owners last year opted to pay $1,200 to remove a tree rather than fence it off and preserve it, because the area to be fenced off was so large it would have inhibited the use of an excavator. He said he’s seen that happen a lot.

He said even if there were no tree protection rules in Portland, developers would still favor them, because “curb appeal” sells houses. He rejects the argument made by affordable housing advocates who say projects can be affordable if developers try harder.

Passing along the new costs to owners is inevitable, he says.

“You start adding costs and the margins aren’t there to eat it,” LaBarge said. “I would be running a nonprofit or a company losing money if we started eating all these costs.”

To address this, Commissioner Dan Saltzman added a provision exempting certain affordable housing projects.

“I don’t want people to think of this as trees versus affordable housing,” said Paul Bello, chairman of the city’s Urban Forestry Commission.

Remmers is in favor of decreasing the “root protection zone” for trees with narrow root systems as one way of loosening. As the law is now written, an area equal to foot for every in diameter of a tree must be protected against development. Remmers and others say that many trees endemic to the Pacific Northwest don’t have such wide-ranging root systems. Many developers have been opting to cut down a tree and pay the “tree tax,” because they’re committed to developing the property, and no other option exists, Remmers said.

“A lot of the time we have to put up these crazy fences around a tree way in the back, nowhere near anything that we’re going to be doing,” he said. “Or they’ll be right up against what we’re doing, making it harder for the contractor to excavate, and things like that.”

The post Title 11: Not out of the woods yet appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

New plans are in the works for a long-vacant site in a popular North Portland corridor.

Developer Vic Remmers, via VWR Development, is under contract to purchase three adjacent lots on the northeast corner of North Vancouver Avenue and Fargo Street, where he plans to build a five-story, mixed-use building with roughly 70 to 80 apartment units. The property is currently owned by developers Loren Waxman and Jim Meakin, who paid $445,000 for it in 2005.

Remmers, owner of Everett Custom Homes, has built numerous single-family houses in the neighborhood. He learned of this opportunity about six months ago while searching for potential multifamily sites along the corridor. He said Waxman and Meakin were interested in refocusing their efforts on other locations, but also hesitant to let the land go to just anyone.

“A lot of the reason they wanted to sell it to us is we’re using Bob Thompson and TVA Architects,” Remmers said of his chosen design team. “(Waxman and Meakin) really were concerned about what was going to be built there. They wanted to make sure it was a really high-quality, nice-looking building.”

Remmers and TVA also are working together on a 68-unit development in the Overlook neighborhood, and a 36-unit project on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Ground is slated to be broken on both soon.

Remmers’ purchase of the North Vancouver Avenue property is expected to close this summer. Planning is still early – construction likely won’t begin for at least a year – so project designs are still conceptual. But given the frequency of bicycle traffic along the corridor, the development will definitely play that up.

“It’s still early on and we haven’t finalized anything, but that will be a big part of what we do there,” Remmers said.

The post Vacant North Portland property due to gain sizable development appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Basically, two options exist for residential development, according to one active developer in Northwest Portland.

“To put it very simply, you have a choice: either suburban sprawl or urban density,” said Martin Kehoe, the owner of Kehoe Northwest Properties. “I’ve always been a fan of density rather than sprawl.”

In March, Kehoe purchased two lots on Northwest 24th Avenue for $1.5 million, with plans to deconstruct the two existing homes and build seven row houses in their place. However, one of the existing buildings is a 102-year-old Victorian home, and neighbors are horrified to think it could be demolished.

Throughout Portland, infill developers are at odds with neighbors resistant to such efforts. Nevertheless, growth requires space, and only a finite amount is available.

“Part of what we’re seeing is that maybe as a region we’ve entered a new phase of evolving as a metropolitan area,” said Ted Reid, a senior regional planner at Metro. “For a long time the character of Portland and other cities in the region was a collection of neighborhoods. And we still have that, but there seems to be something new happening now where it feels like we’re becoming more of a real city, and with that comes some growing pains.”

City slickers

From 2007 to 2012, 58 percent of new, metro-area residential units were built as redevelopment or infill projects. Reid said that trend has been building for a while.

From 1998 to 2012, while more than 31,400 acres were added inside the urban growth boundary, 94 percent of new residential construction occurred within the original 1979 boundaries. Development on the fringe can present political and financial challenges, but Reid said there’s a bigger dynamic at play.

“My view is that people want to live close to shops and restaurants and businesses, and they’re voting with their feet,” he said.

Vic Remmers, the owner of Everett Custom Homes, is one of many Portland homebuilders taking notice. His company primarily redevelops single-family lots in the urban core, and last year built 40 homes. This year it plans to build 80.

Remmers prides himself on neighborhood outreach, and said residents typically support his projects because they often involve replacement of neglected houses with new, high-end homes. However, he’s not immune to the growing opposition.

“I think everybody thinks (the UGB is) an asset and a good thing,” he said. “But what that does, and what it’s doing now, is it’s just creating more density closer in, and it’s creating a lot of change in the city the last five years. I think change is hard for some folks in certain situations.”

Remmers recently purchased a 3,500-square-foot home in Eastmoreland for $529,000. He planned to deconstruct the house and build two in its place, but neighbors – worried that the project would set a precedent for increased density – rallied against him.

After extensive research, residents found a legal precedent that could have prevented Remmers from subdividing the property. Before the issue went before Portland City Council, he agreed to abandon the project and sell the property to residents.

Advantageous conditions

Robert McCullough, president of the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association, doesn’t blame Remmers for the scuffle. Instead, McCullough blames the city: He believes planners have been rezoning Portland’s neighborhoods on the sly.

“Quietly, zoning moves from R5 to R3.5,” he said of a shift that allows greater density. “That seems like a minor change unless your life savings are sitting in the house, because what you thought was a very stable neighborhood can be urbanized without your input, or knowledge, or any input about your welfare.”

But Eric Engstrom, principal planner for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, said the city hasn’t conducted large-scale zone changes in many years. Builders, he said, are only now taking advantage of zoning that has existed for 20 to 30 years.

Meanwhile, infill development activity is up proportionately, but subdivision activity isn’t. Between 2001 and 2008, landowners created approximately 740 new plats per year, according to BPS data. From 2009 to 2013, the average dropped to approximately 177. The number of partitions – lot divisions based on pre-existing plats – remained relatively flat.

High-density zoning is supposed to accommodate Portland’s population, which is expected to grow by 280,000 people by 2035. McCullough questions the accuracy of such a forecast, but added that if the region must grow, it should be in appropriate areas. Instead of focusing on well-established communities like Eastmoreland that don’t want change, he thinks municipal leaders should increase density in cash-strapped communities, like Lents, that need it.

A forum exists for those suggestions. The city of Portland is engaging citizens in its comprehensive plan update. A draft is due in July.

A potential compromise?

For John Bradley, the land use planning committee chairman of the Northwest District Association, Kehoe’s proposed project on Northwest 24th Avenue is something of an enigma.

“It is an old home, but it’s really a grand, old home, and it’s part of the fabric of our neighborhood,” Bradley said. “It’s been there for 100 years. And so you scratch your head and you think … ‘Why would someone want to tear that down?’ ”

But because of limited housing in Northwest Portland, Kehoe’s three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom units could fetch $750,000 to $1 million each.

Neighbors have initiated a 35-day delay until demolition can begin. At a recent neighborhood meeting, Kehoe explained that demolition was not his preference. He looked into the possibility of moving the house – he’s moved more than a dozen over the past 20 years – but it wasn’t financially feasible.

Nevertheless, following the somewhat contentious meeting, Kehoe decided to evaluate whether it would be economically feasible to reduce the number of units and build around the old Victorian home.

During the meeting, one resident posed another option. She asked if Kehoe would be willing to sell.

“Can I just ask you a number?” she asked. “What number would it take?”

“Loopholes” causing angst

Some stakeholders in Portland-area infill development activity say the permitting process has “loopholes.”

For instance, demolition permits are subject to a 35-day delay so that neighboring residents can be notified and potentially take action; however, if homebuilders apply for the demolition and building permits at the same time, they can proceed straight away.

Anne Dufay, executive director at the Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition, said that’s become the rule – not the exception – for infill builders. Plus, a lack of remodeling rules “has led to remodeling by bulldozer,” she said. “So they leave a stick standing and then they call it remodeling after knocking the house down.”

Dufay said neighborhood frustration has led numerous associations to coordinate a response. They’re hoping to appeal to the Development Review Advisory Committee – a group of citizens (mostly homebuilders) who advise the city about its permitting processes. Additionally, Central Northeast Neighbors on May 6 will host a meeting to raise awareness of the issues; it will take place beginning at 7 p.m. at 4415 N.E. 87th Ave.

Eric Engstrom, principal planner for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability said the mayor’s office has asked his bureau to research the problem. – Lee Fehrenbacher

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It started with a few infill projects in Portland’s close-in neighborhoods. Vic Remmers, Everett’s president, was working for Arbor Custom Homes – a company co-created by his father, Wally – when he began to notice a culture change in homebuyer preferences: They desired to live in walkable neighborhoods where grocery stores, restaurants and transit options were close.

“Those are the things we really try to hone in on,” Vic Remmers said. “It seems like that’s what’s really popular … That’s what makes Portland so cool is there are a lot of those neighborhoods available.”

Those first few homes sold quickly, and the father-and-son team hit the gas pedal. Last year, the company built 40 houses – a two-fold increase over 2012 – and this year it’s planning to build 80. Vic Remmers spends about two-thirds of his time driving Portland’s streets searching for opportunities.

Sometimes he finds it in an old, neglected home that he supplants with two new ones. Sometimes it’s preservation along with new construction, as was the case for the company’s Woodstock project.

There the company purchased an entire city block on Southeast 39th Avenue, preserved two century-old homes fronting Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, and split the remainder into five new single-family lots. Three homes have already sold; another is pending for $674,900.

Vic and Wally also are growing their multifamily division, via VWR Development. Last year, that company built a 30-unit apartment at Southeast 16th Avenue and Morrison Street. It’s nearly finished with a 46-unit apartment in the Sellwood neighborhood and a 50-unit one in the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood.

Navigating those waters has been tricky. The Beaumont-Wilshire project, for instance, has drawn significant opposition from neighbors dissatisfied with its size and design, but Vic Remmers said the project has taught him lessons about communication. In the Overlook neighborhood, he completely redesigned a 68-unit apartment development based on community input.

“Overlook is a great example where we went in with one idea and they didn’t care for it much,” he said. “They gave us some ideas, and it turned out a win-win for everybody. That’s kind of my goal for all the projects.”

Vic Remmers said he has several new apartment projects in the works for 2014.

The post 2014 Newsmakers: Vic and Wally Remmers appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

began work early this year on a new a new four-story, 30-unit apartment project at Southeast 16th Avenue and Morrison Street in Portland. The project was designed by for developer .

The post Work continues on Southeast Portland apartment project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Elaine Falbo did not go to work on Wednesday, but she wasn’t sick and she wasn’t on vacation.

Falbo stayed away from Bella Flora Studio, the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood vintage shop that she has owned for 15 years, because she was upset after recently learning of plans to raze the buildings from 4419 to 4439 N.E. Fremont St. – including her shop – to make way for a new apartment complex.

Though the plans are still preliminary, Falbo and others are concerned that the proposed four-story apartment complex would disturb the “Main Street” commercial feel of the neighborhood because it wouldn’t include ground-floor retail space and on-site parking.

“I’m feeling so sad for this neighborhood right now, and for myself – I’ve lived here my whole life and operated my business here,” Falbo said. “It’s a monstrosity.”

Other Fremont retailers that would be displaced include Nip & Tuck, Sparkle Beauty Bar and Scene Marketing Group. The project proposed by Wally Remmers and his son Victor of would not replace the lost retail space.

Wally Remmers said that a purely residential project makes sense because a growing number of Portlanders want to live near the neighborhood’s other businesses, and because the retail buildings are old and outdated.

“The best times are behind those buildings (that would be demolished),” Remmers said. “Our project will be an improvement to the block. … People want to be able to live in retail corridors where they can walk to the store or walk to coffee shops.”

Beaumont-Wilshire and several other neighborhoods in Northeast and Southeast Portland are hot residential markets, according to Remmers. In addition to the project on 44th and Fremont, he is planning five similar apartment projects throughout the east side.

None of the planned developments includes retail at this point, although he did consider it for the project at 44th Avenue and Fremont Street and one of the others. But several consultants advised him that there was no demand for more storefronts along Fremont, so Remmers decided to stick with housing only.

“It’s a flip of the coin on this one, but (retail) just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

The decision bothers developer Kevin Cavenaugh, who owns the mixed-use Ode to Roses building across the street.

“There’s nothing worse than walking along the sidewalk (next to) a building where the blinds on the ground floor will always be drawn because it’s someone’s bedroom; it’s anti-urban design,” he said.

Cavenaugh contends that ground-floor apartments are tough to rent and turn over quickly, and that at-grade residential space kills commerce in a retail village like the one along Fremont Street.

“It’s a horrible solution,” he said. “I love telling people in other cities how our development community is different, but sadly, thanks to these projects, Portland is looking more like a Phoenix or a Sacramento.”

The proposed lack of parking is generating concerns from some business owners who would not be directly impacted by the development.

Mike Mallar, co-owner of Green Dog Pet Supply at 43rd and Fremont, said parking already is in short supply in the area. In fact, the business formerly was located two blocks east on Fremont, but it relocated in part because parking was so strained there. A new apartment complex with no on-site spaces could again present a challenge for his customers, who often tote heavy bags out to their cars, Mallar said.

However, the storefront commercial zoning does not require off-street parking, and its inclusion could bump up rent prices. Remmers said most tenants would likely reach destinations by walking, bicycling or taking transit, although he acknowledged that bus service to the area is spotty.

After participating in an initial meeting with three neighborhood representatives last week, the developers agreed to change the project’s design, which is being completed by . Previously, the plan was to provide 68 one-bedroom apartments, but Remmers said that now some two-bedroom units are planned.

Dan Johnson, president of the Beaumont Business Association, hopes the developers will continue to compromise. He would like to see the community influence plans for retail space and parking.

“We’re not opposed; we’re just not OK with it yet,” he said.

Johnson is expecting a large turnout June 7 for the first public meeting about the project. It’s set to start at 6:30 p.m., at Bethany Lutheran Church.

The post No parking, no retail, no love for planned Northeast Portland apartments appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.