A Pearl District group on Thursday continued to fight plans for a 23-story hotel and residential building that would dwarf others nearby. Pearl Neighbors for Integrity in Design pleaded its case to the Portland City Council in a three-hour hearing.

Plans for the 197,118-square-foot Hyatt Place and Allison Residences have elicited substantial opposition. The building, residents say, would interfere with motor vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian traffic, provide no on-site parking and ruin the character of the South Pearl, where low-slung warehouses mix with modern condo buildings.

The proposal, approved by the Portland Design Commission earlier this year, calls for a structure that would be the tallest in the Pearl since implementation of the Central City 2035 plan. The zoning reform raised allowable building heights around the city in a bid to accommodate more housing and growth. But the bigger buildings have sparked backlash from residents who say their neighborhoods’ character is being threatened.

PNID’s appeal was presented by Bateman Seidel land-use attorney Carrie Richter. She said the project “turns its back” on the Flanders Greenway – a future bicyclist- and pedestrian-friendly route planned by the Portland Bureau of Transportation – and introduces a “pinch point” on Northwest 12th Avenue where neighborhood traffic would encounter a loading zone for the proposed building.

The project is planned for 350 N.W. 12th Ave., on the southeast corner of 12th Avenue and Flanders Street. The property currently holds a surface parking lot.

PNID also presented a slickly produced video illustrating the evolution of the Pearl from an “industrial wasteland” into a desirable modern neighborhood. The project is “an example of extracting all of the potential development rights while sacrificing all of the adjacent area,” PNID President Patricia Cliff said in recorded testimony.

The Central City 2035 plan raised allowable building height on the site, with bonuses, from 175 feet to 250 feet.

The project is planned by a joint venture of Seattle multifamily developer Vibrant Cities and hotelier The Sunray Companies of Madison, Mississippi. A lawyer for the developers, Renee France, said the project conforms to design guidelines, making other objections irrelevant.

“Most of the arguments made by the appellants attempt to either ignore that criterion or impermissibly expand or mischaracterize the applicable guidelines,” she said.

France added: “This building, and this project, is exactly what Central City 2035 intended.”

Cliff, in her video narration, invoked historical racial displacement in the neighborhood and tied PNID’s appeal to the Black Lives Matter movement. That brought a sharp response from David Dysert, who serves as co-chairman of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association‘s Planning and Transportation Committee (Dysert said he was speaking as an individual).

“We can have honest disagreements about development and design, context and code, but it is disingenuous and cynical to use the argument of racial displacement for personal concerns over height, density or use,” Dysert said. “Requiring all future buildings remain below one’s own 15th-story penthouse view has nothing to do with racial equity or honoring a people’s history.”

The appeal was filed by PNID, a 501(c)(3) group that is not affiliated with the city-sanctioned Pearl District Neighborhood Association.

City commissioners did not deliberate Thursday, and chose to hold their opinions on the appeal for another day.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz grilled Gary Larson, a consulting architect with Otak, about how the building would complement the context of existing buildings – a design guideline. Larson responded that nearby buildings have materials similar to ones planned for the tower, including concrete bases.

The Design Commission unanimously approved Otak’s design in January after a series of design advice meetings.

The City Council is tentatively scheduled to vote on the appeal on Sept. 16. The record will remain open for new submissions until 5 p.m. on Thursday.

The council could uphold, deny or remand the appeal to the Design Commission. Either side could then appeal the council’s decision to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.

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They couldn’t figure out where to put the valet parking.

If valet parking for a 23-story hotel and apartment building in the Pearl District were placed on Northwest 12th Avenue, it could cause conflicts with residential buildings including The Casey and street traffic.

Yet if it were placed on Northwest Flanders Street, it would interfere with a plan to turn the street into a bikeway that would run from Waterfront Park to Flanders Crossing – a bridge over Interstate 405 that crews are slated to begin building this year.

The design problems for the Hyatt Place and Allison Residences were thorny. The project from a partnership of two out-of-state developers called for a dense building on a quarter-block property in a busy part of the Pearl District.

It was the first project in the south Pearl to take advantage of several provisions of the Central City 2035 plan, including a greater height limit of 250 feet, up from 175 feet. The building will have no parking – another change from old requirements that rankled some nearby residents.

Throughout the design process, the Pearl District Neighborhood Association was involved, prodding and pushing details to be more in keeping with the neighborhood and acceptable to residents. Leaders of the group’s Planning and Transportation Committee met at least three times with architects from Otak Inc., the local design firm engaged by developers Vibrant Cities of Seattle and The Sunray Companies of Madison, Mississippi. They wrote letters. They attended hourslong Portland Design Commission hearings, which culminated in the project’s approval on Jan. 16.

“Our whole focus is to make things better,” said David Dysert, co-chairman of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association Planning and Transportation Committee. “We have a very positive relationship with the city and with the Design Commission because they respect what we’re trying to do.”

The city’s 94 officially recognized neighborhood associations are under scrutiny like never before, receiving blame from some parties for stalling projects that would bring needed housing. A code change proposed by the Office of Community and Civic Life threatened to reduce associations’ role in the city’s public process. For now, those changes have been shelved, with Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s office establishing a work group to consider the future of public involvement.

Dysert said the Pearl District Neighborhood Association is more diverse than detractors give it credit for, and does not seek to stop projects, but rather to shape them.

“We’re pro-development,” he said. “We’re pro-density.”

The Hyatt Place and Allison Residences offer a case study in how neighborhood associations work with designers and the city’s Bureau of Development Services.

Otak’s Casey McKenna is the project manager for the Hyatt Place and Allison Residences. He worked closely with Pearl District representatives in finalizing the design.

“It was a very collaborative experience,” he said. “We presented to them three times. The third time, they were beginning to really feel like they were part of the process.”

The neighborhood association representatives also went to Otak’s offices to puzzle over models. The group’s input helped inform the building’s massing and upper-floor step-backs, materials and ground-floor elements that will be part of the pedestrian experience, including a water feature evoking Tanner Creek that is required by design guidelines.

“It was a working meeting,” McKenna said.

Early on, Otak made the decision to move the valet parking and loading to 12th Avenue. Having trucks backing onto the Northwest Flanders Bikeway could have been managed, but was best avoided, McKenna said.

“(The Portland Bureau of Transportation) didn’t want it; the neighborhood didn’t want it,” he said. “We moved the loading dock.”

Conversations between Otak’s architects and the neighborhood association leaders required some give and take, McKenna said.

“Overall, I think we would see it as a pretty positive experience,” he said. “There was some contention, certainly, in some of the earlier meetings. As an architect, sometimes you have to listen, and let them talk and listen to what they have to say.”

At times, neighborhood association leaders had to be told certain design changes would be impossible under city codes, McKenna said.

“There are just so many competing elements with a complex project like this,” he said. “Often the public doesn’t understand why things are the way they need to be. There are times where you have to say, ‘yeah, the code doesn’t allow that to happen.’”

Moving the dock and valet parking was eased by the building’s design, which places the main entrance at the corner. Some building systems could simply be swapped to the other side.

Otak also worked closely with Bureau of Development Services staffers Art Graves and Tim Heron.

Throughout, the project was challenged by another group of Pearl District residents: the Pearl Neighbors for Integrity in Design. The nonprofit group, led by Patricia Cliff as president, fought the project for months with the help of a land-use attorney.

At one early Design Commission meeting, Cliff called the project “vertical sprawl,” and the group paraded around the room with hand-drawn pictures of a maple tree at the corner of 12th Avenue and Flanders Street that will be axed to make way for the building.

The competing priorities of Cliff’s group and the city-recognized neighborhood association have led to much consternation in the Pearl District. Adding to the issues, Cliff also serves on the neighborhood association’s Planning and Transportation Committee led by Dysert and Reza Farhoodi as co-chairmen.

“We’re kind of dealing with it,” Dysert said. “We haven’t had this before where someone has built a separate organization that is in some way parallel to what we do.”

Cliff could not be reached for comment Friday. But she said in the aftermath of the Jan. 16 approval that she still has concerns about the Hyatt Place and Allison Residences.

“It is not a user-friendly building, and it could be potentially very dangerous for pedestrians, drivers and bicyclists,” Cliff said.

The project team hopes to break ground in the fourth quarter of 2020, McKenna said.

The building will have approximately 160 hotel rooms on floors two through 11, and 113 studio and one-bedroom apartments on floors 12 through 23. The developers have opted to satisfy Portland’s inclusionary housing requirements with affordable units on site, rather than pay a fee in lieu, McKenna said. The precise number of affordable units is still to be determined.

“It’s certainly something that we’re super proud of,” McKenna said of the project. “We’re blazing a new trail.”

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The Portland Design Commission has delayed making a decision on a proposal for a 23-story hotel and multifamily project that has raised opposition from neighbors in the Pearl District.

The design by Otak Inc. has improved from earlier iterations, design commissioners said. But they opted not to take a vote at a Thursday hearing, leaving the record open for more written testimony.

The proposed tower would be the first in the Pearl District under Central City 2035 zoning that raised height limits. The developers plan to use the full height limit, with bonuses, of 250 feet – an increase from the previous limit of 175 feet.

Neighbors have objected to the height and bulk of the Hyatt Place design. The building would be constructed on a quarter-block lot at Northwest 12th Avenue and Flanders Street.

“The central problem here is there is too much mass and too much height and it is not contextually appropriate,” said Carrie Richter, a land use attorney representing the Pearl Neighbors for Integrity in Design, a community group that has challenged tall building projects in the area. PNID is distinct from the city-recognized neighborhood association.

The Hyatt Place project comes from a development team of Seattle developer Vibrant Cities and The Sunray Companies of Madison, Mississippi.

The 197,118-square-foot building would hold 160 hotel rooms on floors two through 11, and 113 studio and one-bedroom units on floors 12 through 23. The project was valued at $66 million by the city’s Bureau of Development Services.

Otak’s Gary Larson said the design team had used setbacks and other architectural moves to reduce the apparent mass.

“We have created a dynamism here with also the goal of bringing the height of the building into the context of the neighborhood,” he said.

Richter told design commissioners that they should follow the previous zoning rules because the Central City 2035 plan was remanded in August by the state Land Use Board of Appeals. The city lacked a factual basis for the height limits, LUBA said.

“The tallest building that you can approve is 175 feet,” Richter said.

City officials said they would follow the 250-foot height limit, which has been declared effective but not formally “acknowledged” – the final step of approval by the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development.

Architectural changes made since previous meetings with design commissioners won praise. Reza Farhoodi, a resident representing the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, said the design appeared “more cohesive.”

“This project will set a precedent for height in the Pearl District neighborhood, so it’s important to get the design details right,” he said.

Design commissioners said a required water feature was better integrated into the ground floor façade. They also praised the stouter appearance of the building’s base, which was criticized in earlier designs as too weak.

“The base-middle-top expression is a clear improvement over earlier expressions,” Commissioner Brian McCarter said.

McCarter, however, voiced one significant concern.

“My one disappointment is urban street trees,” he said. “It really bothers me in a quarter-block building that we’ve set a precedent for one street tree in a hundred feet. … To have a single tree in a hundred feet, it seems like we’ve got to do better than that.”

The project team will return before the Design Commission for final deliberations and a decision on Jan. 9.

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The design of the proposed Portland Proper hotel is on the right track, but a few details need to be worked out.

That was the gist of the advice delivered by the Portland Design Commission Thursday to the ZGF Architects team making its initial presentation for a nine-story, 170,000-square-foot building in the Pearl District.

“You still have some work to do in terms of coherency,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “But in my view you’re 75 percent there, so you can get there pretty soon.”

The hotel project is being developed by Proper Hospitality, which operates luxury hotels in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Monica, California, and Austin, Texas. Proper Hospitality is an offshoot of LA-based The Kor Group.

Portland Proper will be built on a half-block site fronting Northwest Irving Street and stretching between Northwest 12th and 13th avenues. Along with hospitality space, it will have a ground-floor lobby and back-of-house spaces. There will also be rooftop amenity spaces and an eco-roof, along with one story of below-grade valet parking.

The hotel’s exterior will be clad almost exclusively in real brick – an aspect that drew praise from commissioners.

“You’re using brick in the way it can be used to make something special,” Commissioner Chandra Robinson said.

On the ground floor, large archways will highlight the hotel entrance and wrap around the corners to highlight ground-floor amenity spaces and activate the pedestrian environment.

While there appears to be little in the way of the design ultimately gaining approval, commissioners did ask for revisions to several areas prior to formal design review. These included greater consistency between proposed ground-floor arches when contrasted with rectilinear cutouts that would adorn the east and west building facades. Commissioners also want greater canopy coverage at ground level, consistency with surrounding buildings with regard to the height of an elevated loading dock running along Northwest 13th Avenue, and inclusion of a water feature or public art as required by the city’s River District guidelines.

While commissioners approved of the proposed material palette, some objected to the proposed archway framing the building entrance failing to line up with the piers on the floors above.

“In general, the context feels pretty comfortable with what’s going on around it; I think it’s entirely supportable,” Commissioner Don Vallaster said. “The arches I’m having a little more difficulty with.”

Also, the outline of a proposed ninth-story penthouse and mechanical suite will need to be revised to make them more consistent with the rest of the building. In addition, there were objections over the manner in which the valet parking ramp and loading dock dominate the façade along Northwest 12th Avenue.

Those details, however, are not expected to significantly delay the project.

“I’m really excited about the materials; they’re really simple and they look nice,” Robinson said. “The design in itself is coherent. It just needs resolution at the penthouse level and the arches we were discussing. But overall it’s really nice and it will be a nice building in the neighborhood.”

And unlike other hotel projects proposed recently for the Pearl District, Portland Proper also received backing from local residents.

“The siting of this development on a half block is well suited to absorb the traffic caused by a 226-room hotel,” said Patricia Cliff, president of the Pearl Neighbors for Integrity and Design. “This development should serve as a model of development and contrast with the siting of other hotels being proposed.”

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A wave of protestations by neighboring residents on Thursday greeted the design team of a hotel planned in Portland’s Pearl District. That reception came during the team’s first advice hearing before the Portland Design Commission, which offered a number of criticisms on the initial proposal.

Minneapolis-based ESG Architecture & Design presented its plans for a 13-story, 131-foot-tall hotel, which would sit on a quarter block at the corner of Northwest 14th Avenue and Everett Street. Local firms make up the rest of the team, with DCI Engineers serving as structural engineer, Humber Design Group serving as civil engineer, and Mortenson Construction acting as owner, developer and general contractor.

The brand of the hotel has not yet been disclosed.

Plans call for a 105,000-square-foot building with 221 guest rooms, a fitness room on the top floor and a ground floor occupied by bar, lounge, market and meeting spaces. The entrance, lobby, lounge and only loading zone would be on Everett Street.

In taking cues from the Pearl District’s industrial past, a metal frame would wrap around the building’s exterior. It would also have metal panels, a healthy portion of glass windows, and smaller bits of metal and brick veneer.

The design was only partially responsible for the influx of Pearl District residents who came to voice their disapproval. Besides a few comments about the proposed dark color, opponents mostly took aim at the prospect of such a large building in the particular location, as well as possible traffic issues, because 14th Avenue essentially serves as an off-ramp for Interstate 405.

“Its appearance and proposed height overwhelm this corner of the south Pearl,” said Patricia Cliff, president of the Pearl Neighbors for Integrity in Design.

Cliff went on to say the area is gaining too many hotels, which are designed to maximize owners’ profits, and not serve the community’s interests.

Resident Glen Traeger similarly said the proposed building would be too dark and should better represent the neighborhood’s history. He also proposed conducting a traffic study to determine the potential ramifications of building a hotel in such a car-crowded area.

Commissioners for the most part did not address the points brought up by the public, but rather the design’s more nuanced elements – including the overall massing, the shape and the use of materials.

Much was made of a need for a setback in the building’s middle floors, to give more of a shape. Commissioners said the current design looks too much like a box. While a decrease in the upper massing was offered as a solution, there was also a suggestion by Commissioner Jessica Molinar to cave in the windows, which are currently flat against the exterior walls.

In the same vein, Commissioner Don Vallaster and others said the metal frame would be too flat and needs to be more distinguished. As designed, the building wouldn’t have the industrial look being pursued, they said, but it could if it were more protruded. The design team provided examples of other hotels with this aesthetic in locations outside of Portland.

Commissioners also said the materials used would be too various and cluttered. They said there was too much color, and the aesthetics would clash when combined.

“It needs to be simplified,” Commissioner Samuel Rodriguez said. “I don’t have a problem with the material; it’s how you’re using (it), how you’re putting it all together.”

The Design Commission will schedule a follow-up hearing for the hotel project.

Also on Thursday:

Parking garage office addition approved

The Design Commission OK’d plans for a nine-story office building addition to an existing six-story parking garage being built in Lloyd. The 100 NE Multnomah Office Building will be built across Northeast Holladay Street from the Oregon Convention Center.

The project was designed by ZGF Architects for owner and developer Prosper Portland. Mortenson Construction will serve as the general contractor.

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