Noel Johnson’s proposal for a subdivision of attached homes in Northwest Portland has run headlong into city code limiting buildings in residential zones to 100 feet in length.

Johnson proposes to build 14 row houses, a type of residential development common in many American cities but unusual in Portland. To do that, he needs to subdivide the approximately 30,000-square-foot property on Northwest Wilson Street between 29th and 30th avenues into 14 lots.

A staff report from the Bureau of Development Services recommends denial of the proposal from Johnson, a principal at local developer Cairn Pacific. On Monday, the proposal went before a hearings officer, Gregory J. Frank, who seemed unpersuaded to grant an exception to the 100-foot length rule.

“Hearings officers don’t make rulings based on great policy aspirations,” Frank said. Frank told Johnson that if he didn’t like the 100-foot rule, he should ask the City Council to change it.

The proposal offers a case study in the tension between the city’s goals to encourage housing and density, while hewing to rules that often act to restrict development.

“As (Frank) suggested, this might go to City Council ultimately,” Johnson said after the hearing. “I hope not.”

The proposed three- and four-story row houses would be built in two sections, at 120 feet and 160 feet in length. The applicable city code states that in the residential zone, “the maximum building length for the portion of buildings located within 30 feet of a street lot line is 100 feet.”

The architect designing the project, Richard Potestio of Potestio Studio, said the city’s 100-foot length limit is arbitrary. “It’s a nice even number, but there’s no precedent for that,” he said.

The development needs to be longer to accommodate 20-foot widths, Potestio said, so that each unit could potentially have all bedrooms on one floor. Frank replied that the code isn’t concerned with the interior design of homes, just their envelope.

Frank was also unpersuaded by Potestio’s testimony that much longer row house facades are accepted in other cities. “I don’t care about New York, I don’t care about San Francisco,” Frank said. “I care about city code in the city of Portland.”

Johnson has lined up support from adjacent neighbors and the Northwest District Association. In a letter to BDS staffer Sean Williams, the neighborhood group wrote that breaking up the townhome facades with a pedestrian walkway “creates both an unnecessary interruption of the sidewalk and street envelope as well as creating an undesirable 10-foot-wide space flanked by 30-foot-tall sidewalls that would be awkward to be in, and likely to be gated and unused.”

Caitlin Ranson, who lives in a nearby 500-square-foot condo, said the planned row houses fill a need for growing families between small condos and apartments, and expensive single-family homes.

“We see this project as filling that gap and were excited to hear of it,” said Ranson, an associate at Hacker Architects.

The property, currently an undeveloped lot, was rezoned as residential as part of the city’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The site is near Forest Park and single-family homes, but an industrial sanctuary lies only two blocks to the north.

Tonkon Torp attorney David Petersen, representing the Northwest Industrial Business Association, suggested future residents sign a covenant that would hold harmless nearby businesses from engaging in industrial activity.

Johnson said he would be open to the idea. “We’re very happy to consider some kind of good neighbor acknowledgement or covenant,” he said.

At the request of Johnson’s lawyer, Renee France, Frank set an unusually long 90-day open record period as the development works through a number of sewer and utility issues. The public record will remain open until July 1 for new evidence and submittals. Then the applicants will have until July 8 to offer a response or rebuttal to any new information, and then a July 15 deadline for a final rebuttal. Frank has 17 days after that to issue a decision, which can be appealed to the City Council.

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A veteran Portland office and multifamily developer is doing something different.

Noel Johnson, a principal at Cairn Pacific, is in the early stages of developing a 14-unit single-family subdivision in Northwest Portland. The homes will be attached, East Coast-style row houses. And they will feature cross-laminated timber in an unusual and potentially influential example of the material’s use in a residential context.

Johnson said he saw an opportunity to fulfill a need for single-family housing for millennial professionals who have outgrown apartments.

“They’re all getting older,” Johnson said. “They’re all having families. They want walkable neighborhoods. There’s not much being built for them in Northwest Portland.”

The homes would be built on a vacant lot near Forest Park. The property, slightly more than one block, is roughly bounded by Northwest Wilson and Roosevelt streets and 29th and 30th avenues. The property borders an industrial area to the north and a residential neighborhood to the south and west.

“There’s a need in the neighborhood,” Johnson said, adding that the homes are intended for people like his sister, who works for Adidas, and his brother-in-law, who works for Nike. “They can’t find anything they want that’s walkable.”

The homes are a small part of a larger mixed-use redevelopment of the area planned by Cairn Pacific, a local developer that has helped transform the Slabtown area of Northwest Portland.

The project will be phased, but at full build-out, the master plan for the approximately 1.5-acre area south of Northwest Nicolai Street includes approximately 300 multifamily units and 20,000 square feet of office and retail space, with a restaurant and shops.

Johnson has enlisted Portland architect Richard Potestio of Potestio Studio to design the row houses. (The pair previously worked together on 120 Clay, the Southeast Portland office development where the online bank Simple is the anchor tenant. Potestio consulted with Ankrom Moisan Architects on 120 Clay’s design). He has not yet selected a builder.

Plans call for the row houses to be either three-bedroom units with about 2,200 square feet or four-bedroom units with about 3,000 square feet – larger than many Portland row houses. These new ones will likely be built in two blocks, with a passageway separating them.

Johnson and Potestio are considering building ground-floor accessory dwelling units (ADUs) inspired by row houses in Boston, Philadelphia and other cities. In that scenario, an owner could rent out the ground-floor unit to help pay the mortgage.

“It’s a very logical way to build in affordability and equity in properties,” Potestio said.

Ground-floor ADUs are far more efficient than the typical backyard ADUs built in Portland, Potestio said.

“It’s a better way to do things,” he said.

Cairn Pacific has applied for a Type III land use review to subdivide the property into 14 lots. Johnson expects the subdivision and permitting process to take as long as his large commercial projects.

Johnson is leaning into the residential market at a time when analysts believe it can support many more homes. In a report released in October, ECONorthwest found Oregon under-produced housing relative to need by about 155,000 units from 2000 to 2015, leading to an affordability crisis and rising homelessness in the state.

In the Portland-metro area, real estate prices have leveled off after a dramatic rise in recent years. The median sale price fell 0.9 percent to $391,400 in November, according to RMLS – a real estate listing and data service. Inventory grew slightly to 2.8 months.

Johnson said his choice to develop a for-sale residential project does not mean he’s giving up on other development types.

“That’s not what’s motivating me,” he said.

New multifamily projects have slowed to a trickle, and developers have blamed Portland’s inclusionary housing program.

“The apartment market is totally done from inclusionary zoning,” Johnson said. “That’ll be recovering – I don’t know when.”

Johnson said now, when few other urban single-family projects are being built, is a good time for the row houses to go forward.

“When everyone starts to run for the hills is when I sort of wake up,” he said. “And when everyone thinks it’s sure money, that’s when I go skiing.”

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