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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