The city of Portland is trying to attract developers to the U.S. Postal Service site by allowing them to build to the sky.

The City Council is expected to later this month approve raising maximum buildable heights in the area to 400 feet north of Northwest Johnson Street and 250 feet south of it.

The council is also poised to raise the floor area ratio (FAR) to a maximum of 10-to-1 with bonuses, with a base of 7-to-1. That’s up from 4-to-1 under the old rules. The higher FARs allow developers to plan much taller buildings.

The 24-acre Broadway Corridor, including the 14-acre Postal Service property, is essentially a blank slate for city officials and developers. Affordable-housing advocates, equity activists and transportation watchdogs all want a say in how this keystone parcel bordering the Pearl District and Old Town Chinatown is built out.

Prosper Portland plans to seek a master developer for the project with a request for qualifications in mid-November that would remain open until mid-January. The developer would serve as a consultant for a year or so of planning.

“Should that partnership work well, they would have exclusive rights to develop the post office site, but not adjacent sites,” said Sarah Harpole, project manager at Prosper Portland.

A member of the Broadway Corridor steering committee told the City Council it’s crucial that the broad rules for building on the property are clarified before a request for qualifications is issued.

“We’re working to get the RFQ finalized so we can get it out to developers,” said Sarah Stevenson, a committee member and executive director of Innovative Housing Inc., a developer of affordable housing. “But it’s critical we have clarity on the heights and the FAR before we can fairly ask a developer to respond to a solicitation. That’s why early implementation of the height and FAR recommendations that have been developed throughout this prior public process are important.”

The City Council did not vote on the agenda item last week. It is tentatively scheduled to reconsider that matter at a Sept. 28 meeting.

At 400 feet, certain blocks of the Broadway Corridor would have height limits comparable to some of the tallest in Portland. It would represent a spike in height next to lower heights permitted in much of Old Town Chinatown and taller heights south of Burnside Street and the West End.

Prosper Portland and a stakeholder advisory committee, along with a long roster of consultants, are evaluating the possibilities for the Postal Service site and the larger Broadway Corridor. Among the issues are whether the property can or should be used as a massive corporate campus, whether the existing postal facility should be preserved and possibly used as office space, and how to incorporate open space.

The Broadway Corridor is projected to absorb 10 percent of Portland’s population growth by 2035, Harpole said.

With greater building heights comes the possibility of increased property tax revenues, jobs and residences.

“The only way to meet our future demand in a sustainable way is to use the density,” said Sam Rodriguez, a member of the stakeholder advisory committee and senior managing director of Mill Creek Residential Trust, a prolific apartment developer. “The more flexibility the better.”

In broad strokes, the city’s , published last year, sketched a future for the area. That plan envisioned 3.8 million square feet of development along with parks, open space and transportation infrastructure.

The plan calls for developing nearly 2.1 million square feet of residential space, including a substantial complement of affordable housing.

“That neighborhood is ripe for mixed-use overall development, and I think housing would be fantastic,” Rodriguez said.

Portland “has had some really good, successful test cases with a mix of affordable-housing buildings and mixed-income buildings,” he said.

Prosper Portland officials also see the property as a good place for jobs as they seek to preserve room for companies to operate amid the ever-present crush of housing needs.

“We’ve long recognized the site as a significant opportunity for employment,” Harpole said.

Plans call for Johnson Street to be extended to the east across the property. It would meet Park Avenue, which would be extended northward into the site along with three additional park blocks.

The Broadway Corridor is large enough to encompass anyone’s hopes and dreams. That’s a problem for officials planning the site – not everyone is going to get what they want out of the property.

“The city wants a lot of things to happen there, and there’s a lot of competing interests,” Rodriguez said. “What will make it really hard is you won’t be able to meet all of those goals, and what are the decisions that need to be made? There’s just a lot of forces pulling on the options, so it’s going to be tough, and there’s going to be some tough decisions that need to be made and not everyone is going to be happy.”

Planning for development is a long process. The Postal Service is not expected to vacate its building for another site near Portland International Airport until late 2018. Prosper Portland also agreed to allow the Postal Service to maintain retail uses at the Northwest Portland location indefinitely.

The city of Portland agreed in May 2016 to buy the Postal Service site for $88 million.

Building out the site will occur in phases. Consultants and committee members have discussed retaining the existing Postal Service building as an interim measure. That would allow for lower rents than would be possible in a newly constructed building.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation, TriMet and Portland Streetcar have also been involved in planning for the site to ensure transportation access.

Prosper Portland intends to guide the Broadway Corridor throughout the process, holding the development contract with the Bureau of Development Services.

“We ultimately are hosting the table and contracting the work,” Harpole said.

The Postal Service site itself will have a master plan that will be subject to a Type III land use review by the Portland Design Commission.

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A 19-story mixed-use building is planned for 1455 S.W. Broadway; however, its design isn’t quite ready yet, according to the Portland Design Commission. The project is set to return before the commission on April 21.

Plans for the building, designed by GBD Architects for Generations Columbia Property LLC, call for 180 hotel rooms on six floors and 175,000 square feet of open office space on 10 floors. The ground floor is expected to hold a restaurant, a lobby and retail space. A below-grade garage will provide parking for 210 motor vehicles and 132 bicycles. Plans also call for a glass curtain wall with terra cotta and composite metal panels incorporated.

One main topic of discussion during Thursday’s Design Commission meeting was how the three-quarters-block development’s floor-to-area ratio will be increased through bonus allowances. Two methods were discussed. One would be for the owner to make a $1 million donation to be divided between the city’s affordable housing fund and Portland Parks & Recreation. The second method would be to designate about 30 percent of the total units as affordable housing, which was preferred by staff and the commission.

If money were to go to the parks bureau, it would be used for master planning for improvements to the South Park Blocks. Commissioner Tad Savinar said he would like to see just one of the adjacent South Park Blocks be improved in the near future as an example of what is to come.

But Brett Horner, planning and design manager for Portland Parks & Recreation, said improvements and needed maintenance of all 12 South Park Blocks should be planned at the same time and that the process could take up to two years. He said implementation would then be done in phases.

Kurt Creager, director of the Portland Housing Bureau, said he would rather see affordable housing added to the project rather than a contribution to the affordable housing fund.

“It’s better for us to get the units than to get the money,” he said. “And there could be potential for the city to invest in a later date.”

Michael Marcus, GBD’s lead designer for the new building, told commissioners that one existing building on the property would be salvaged and that 30,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil would be removed at a cost to the developer of more than $3.4 million.

Since the project’s previous review in November, Marcus said the lobby entrance was expanded to two stories high, hearkening back to the city’s old theater district days. The second floor will include a lounge and conference space.

Marcus said he couldn’t reveal the name of the hotel yet, but said it will have a “branded entry” in red.

GBD principal Phil Beyl told the commission that the project will have “significant economic benefits” to the city and create more than 1,700 new jobs, including 250 temporary construction jobs.

Plans call for project completion in June 2020.

During the public comment period, several citizens concerned about possible increased traffic voiced objections to the planned loading dock’s location on Southwest Clay Street.

“With all the cars on Clay and the loading docks, it will stop traffic,” Marian McNamara said. “A more logical place for the loading dock is on Columbia (Street).”

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