The project team behind a proposal for a mixed-use tower in Portland’s inner eastside will return to the drawing board after the Historic Landmarks Commission, in a design advice hearing held Monday, recommended changes to the building’s massing, materials and height.

Members of the Seattle-based team, which includes developer Unico Properties and architect Perkins+Will, presented plans for a 12-story building on the southern portion of a block bounded by Southeast Grand and Sixth avenues and Morrison and Belmont streets. The block’s northern portion is occupied by the Weatherly Building – a 12-story office tower completed in 1928 and a contributing structure in the East Portland Grand Avenue Historic District.

Two massing schemes were presented for the development. Both include a 12-story office building with ground-floor retail space, three levels of below-grade parking and a mid-block woonerf connecting Southeast Grand and Sixth avenues.

The first scheme would feature the mass of the office tower at the southeast corner of the site, with a two-story base on the western and southern portions of the block wrapping around an existing two-story commercial building on the block’s southwest corner. The second scheme assumes that the existing building’s footprint will be incorporated, in which case the proposed tower would extend the full width of the southern portion of the block.

The difference in the two schemes hinges on whether the developer is able to add the existing building’s property to the developable parcel.

“We’re interested in that site. We don’t own it currently, so it really comes down to our ability to acquire it, and we’re in efforts to do that right now, but haven’t done so,” explained Brett Phillips, a vice president with Unico, when questioned about the property.

Commissioners and Bureau of Development Services staffers took issue with the modern materials proposed for the building, which include a prominent glass curtainwall and metal paneling. The transparent glazing would expose the building’s interior, which would contain cross-laminated timber framing and concrete cores. Commissioners agreed that the building ought to incorporate the masonry and punched openings prominent among buildings in the district, and that a glass box would neither meet district design guidelines nor fit within the context of the area.

“I don’t see any relationship between this building and the one next door,” Commissioner Ernestina Fuenmayor said. “They don’t seem to be connecting yet.”

Also at issue was the massing of both proposed design schemes, neither of which would defer enough to the adjacent Weatherly Building. Commissioner Matthew Roman argued that both proposed schemes are overwhelming in context with the 91-year-old structure.

“I’m not against a larger building or a counterpoint tower of some kind, but to me neither of the proposals … defer to the Weatherly Building,” he said. “It’s got to do more to be deferential to what is arguably one of the more important buildings of the era it represents.”

Commissioner Andrew Smith agreed, stating that one solution could be to put a four- or five-story mass on the property’s west side, bulking up the base while lowering the structure’s overall height.

“If it’s this tall, it can’t be this tall all the way out to Grand, because I think that really does kind of obliterate the presence of the Weatherly Building that you get from anywhere within the district,” he said. “It feels like more of a big brother compared to the Weatherly than it probably should.”

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A pre-application conference has been scheduled with Portland’s Bureau of Development Services to discuss a proposed 12-story office tower that would be built in the city’s inner east side.

The site of the proposed development is a block bounded by Southeast Morrison and Belmont streets and Grand and Sixth avenues. A northern portion of the block is home to the Weatherly Building, a 12-story, 64,000 square foot office building built in 1928 by ice cream baron George Warren Weatherly. It was one of the first high-rise developments on the east bank of the Willamette River and is part of a growing Portland portfolio for Seattle-based owner and developer Unico Properties, which purchased the site last August for $20 million.

The applicants are Peter Meijer Architect and Unico Properties, which last month jointly applied for a pre-application conference to discuss seismic upgrades to the Weatherly Building. The following week, the Seattle office of Chicago-based architecture firm Perkins+Will applied for design advice for the new twelve-story building.

Brian Pearce, Unico Properties’ senior vice president of real estate services, declined to divulge project details.

“It’s too premature in our planning stages to define any plans for the Weatherly at this time,” Pearce said via email. “We will share our vision for the property once we have determined our plan.”

Kate Kearney, a spokesperson for Peter Meijer Architect, also said the firm could not discuss the project at this time.

A produced by Perkins+Will depicts the new office tower occupying the entire southern portion of the block, which currently includes surface parking and a two-story commercial structure built in 1905 and occupied by a sports bar and Bolliger & Sons Insurance, the building’s owner.

Because the block is within the East Portland/Grand Avenue Historic District, the entire development will undergo a Type III historic resource review and will be reviewed by the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission. The commission is chaired by Kristen Minor, an associate with Peter Meijer Architect.

The pre-application conference is set for 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 19 at BDS offices on Southwest Fourth Avenue. It is meant to allow discussion of seismic upgrades to the Weatherly Building and construction of the new 12-story office tower, which would be approximately 153 feet tall and would contain roughly 198,000 square feet of floor area. Plans also call for a 20-foot wide pedestrian connection running east to west between the new building and the Weatherly Building.

The new building would have structured parking and on-site loading accessed from Southeast Sixth Avenue.

The proposed development will also appear before the Historic Landmarks Commission for design advice, for which a date has not yet been scheduled.

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Portland State University held a grand opening last week for its new athletics and events center, Viking Pavilion at the Peter W. Stott Center. The $52.1 million building features a 3,000-seat arena that will host Vikings basketball and volleyball games, as well as concerts, graduation ceremonies and other public events.

Fortis Construction served as project’s construction manager-general contractor. The building was designed by Woofter Architecture and Denver-based Sink Combs Dethlefs, which has since merged with Perkins+Will. The two-year project included construction of the new Viking Pavilion arena and the renovation of the existing Peter W. Stott Center, a 1960s-era facility that now houses the university’s athletics offices, a weight room, locker rooms, an OHSU Sports Medicine Center, and five classrooms.

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