A proposal for an 11-story boutique hotel continued its journey on Thursday, when the Portland Design Commission gave the project team some advice.

Plans call for building the hotel at 539 S.W. 10th Ave., at the northwest corner of Southwest 10th Avenue and Alder Street. The new structure would replace existing food carts and a parking lot.

The proposed 120-foot-tall hotel would have 71,232 square feet, including 7,500 on the first floor. Each of the 10 floors of guest rooms would have 5,784 square feet.

“This is a huge improvement from my perspective,” Commissioner Jessica Molinar said.

Commissioners praised DLR Group‘s response to comments they gave previously concerning the structure’s facade. The architects now propose using alternating colored bricks to tie the facility to the color of the natural environment. Also, the bricks’ textures would alternate between smooth and rough.

Windows would be positioned to give a feeling of rain coming down the building’s sides.

“It is nicely done,” Molinar said. “It has a lot of scale, lot of texture, material elegance. Well done.”

One area of concern for the commissioners surrounded designers’ efforts to incorporate four food carts inside the structure. The team is seeking to activate the ground floor and tie the area’s history to the building. The problem is that the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) requires two loading bays for a building as large as proposed. Developer Graves Hospitality hopes to get a modification from PBOT, but if the bureau refuses, the area now occupied by food carts would have to become a loading ramp.

The food carts’ long-term subsistence also was raised as a concern.

“These (food carts) may or may not pan out,” Molinar said. “They seem to be driving this entire floor play, so if these go away at some point in the future, what happens?”

The hotel’s planners were hopeful that the food carts would be incorporated into the design, but believed the layout would work with or without them.

“If it did go away, it would be used as space within the hotel – probably lounge space,” said Ben Graves, president and chief operating officer of Graves Hospitality. “The driving factor is more circulation of active zones within the hotel.”

Some commissioners were nevertheless skeptical.

“I think it’s a great aspiration,” Commissioner Samuel Rodriguez said. “I am not sure it’s a phenomenal idea. I am not sure how compatible it is.”

Another concern for commissioners was the possibility that the grade on Southwest 10th Avenue would create too tall a wall for the proposed active use. To facilitate a Southwest Alder Street entrance, the height of the ground floor was raised approximately 3 feet above the sidewalk.

Designers hope to include large operable windows that allow patrons to engage with the streetscape.

“I don’t want pedestrians to be staring at people’s ankles,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said.

Another hearing before the Design Commission has not been scheduled yet for the project.

Also on Thursday:

1732 N.E. Second Ave.

A prefabricated, modular project designed by Works Progress Architecture was approved by the Design Commission with a 4-0 vote. Parker McNulty’s limited liability company, ENT Ventures VI, is planning a six-story mixed-use building with 10,475 square feet of retail space, a residential lobby and an outdoor plaza. The structure will also have 74 market-rate apartments and 50 parking spaces.

1126-1134 N.W. 18th Ave.

The Design Commission needed just 25 minutes to approve GBD Architects‘ plans for North 18 – a six-story mixed-use building on a half-block site – with a 4-0 vote. The structure, which is being developed by Hirschberger Family LLC, will include 107 market-rate units over ground-level retail space, one live-work unit, five townhomes and 50 parking spaces.

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Despite changing architects, gaining a recommendation for approval from city staff and engaging in more than two hours of debate, the North 18 project team failed to gain the Portland Design Commission‘s OK on Thursday.

Most of the design commissioners believe the design – a combination of early ideas by YBA Architects and later ones by GBD Architects – lacks coherency.

“The project was brought to us about a month ago to wrap it up,” GBD Architects principal Agustin Enriquez said. “The bulk of the work, I’d say well over 90 percent, was produced by YBA. We spent the last month really revising the ground floor.”

The project, which is owned and being developed by Hirschberger Family LLC, has gone through several iterations since its first design advice hearing in January 2016. The commission has provided advice for both a six-story and an 11-story version mixed-use building.

The design that the owners settled on for Thursday’s hearing was a u-shaped, six-story, half-block structure that would sit at 1126-1134 N.W. 18th Ave. The building would stand 75 feet tall and include 107 market-rate apartments and five townhomes. It also would include 2,220 square feet of retail space and 50 ground-level parking stalls. The floor area ratio would be 4.97:1.

The problem, according to most design commissioners, is that the upper floors wouldn’t tie in well with the ground level.

“The upper stories lack coherency for me,” Commission Vice Chairman Tad Savinar said. “The first floor is actually quite good. I am concerned about the lack of balconies. I don’t think the vertical breaks do enough to reduce the sense of the overpowering quality of this (building).”

The owners decided to eliminate balconies for financial reasons, Enriquez said. The commissioners suggested using juliet balconies instead, and said they would like to see in another hearing what effect that would have on the design.

Concerns also were expressed that a ground floor dominated by townhomes would not leave enough space for active uses. Current market conditions, according to Enriquez, would not support more retail space than the amount proposed for the corner of Northwest 18th Avenue and Northrup Street and a single live-work unit on the corner of Northwest 17th Avenue and Northrup Street.

Commissioners said they believe the building needs to be designed by accounting for the updated Central City 2035 plan. To that end, they suggested the townhomes could become live-work units.

“So much of the testimony we hear is about ground-floor retail and how the ground floor performs,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “We are trying to create those streets for 20, 25, 50 years from now. A blanket acceptance that the retail conditions are what they are and that’s what we respond to does not move forward.”

Commissioners also suggested swapping a bike storage currently on Northwest 17th Avenue with a townhome currently on Northwest 18th Avenue as a way to bring more people onto the latter street.

“The key point is accessibility to the street,” Commissioner David Wark said.

The project is scheduled to return before the Design Commission on Oct. 5.

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