A proposal for a new eight-story office building in the Pearl District received unanimous approval from the Portland Design Commission last week at its first design review.

Lot 5 Station Place will be located at the northwest corner of Northwest Ninth Avenue and Northrup Street. Plans call for ground-floor retail space as well as lobby, loading and support space and two short stories of structured parking for 56 vehicles.

City planner Benjamin Nielsen said it was “a really fast hearing” – the commission took only an hour to give its full approval. The project had previously received only one design advice hearing.

Approval is contingent on several conditions, Nielsen said.

“They kept the conditions that staff recommended, but altered one of them to have translucent glazing on the south façade of Northwest Northrup,” he said. “It looks into a utility room and you can’t see in, but light can still filter through.”

Another condition was to paint weathering steel used on the building’s interior rather than pre-weathering it, which is planned on the building’s exterior.

Approval will allow floor area ratio (FAR) to be transferred from Lot 4 to Lot 5; that was previously approved through an amendment to the Central City Master Plan.

“A final condition was to paint the concrete masonry units provided in the structured parking area behind perforated metal panels,” Nielsen said. “They will be painted to match the brick so the CMU material and grout lines are not so visible.”

Hacker is the lead designer for the project and Williams & Dame is the developer. Williams & Dame’s chairman, Homer Williams, said in a statement that the building is “a great design with large, flexible floor plates and amenities that will appeal to creative enterprises and other businesses.”

Williams indicated that the development team will submit construction permit applications next week.

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