Fremont Place won preliminary approval after design changes satisfied earlier objections from Pearl District residents and the Portland City Council.

The council voted 4-0 Thursday to reject an appeal from the Pearl District Neighborhood Association of prior Design Commission approval.

In response to earlier council opposition, TVA Architects and the developer, Lincoln Property Co. of Dallas, reworked the design of the 275-unit mixed-use building. The redesign pushes back the building façade an additional 15 feet from the seawall, to 32 feet, 9 inches away.

The additional space allows for a wider (now 20 feet) Willamette River Greenway between the building and the river. The revised design reduces bike parking from 206 spaces to 140. It does not change the number of residential units.

The 17-story building reaches 175 feet in height, includes 305,936 square feet and uses 84 percent of the allowable floor area ratio. Designers worked to preserve neighbors’ views as much as possible, said Tim Wybenga, principal at TVA Architects.

“Although the council has made it quite clear that views are not a consideration, they were a design factor,” he said. “And so a lot of the massing of this building and the way it’s pushed has to do with consideration of views and sight lines of Pearl District neighbors.”

Fremont Place will not include any affordable apartments; the project entered into the city’s approval process before inclusionary housing rules took effect.

Commissioners praised the redesign.

“The revised plan feels less cramped,” Nick Fish said. “It’s more open, more airy.”

The changes “have satisfactorily addressed the concerns of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association,” said Stanley Penkin, president of the group.

“The applicant has made significant improvements to the greenway, which now better serves the neighborhood and the city,” he said.

Commissioners, responding to criticism from one Pearl District resident, defended their role providing a final check on the Design Commission’s decisions.

“I don’t think this is the right forum to constantly second-guess the Design Commission,” Fish said. “But in the rare instances we’ve done that, I actually think those conversations were quite principled.”

Fish suggested the City Council should raise the bar for appeals of Design Commission decisions. The council could change city rules to choose which appeals to take up, much like the U.S. Supreme Court does, instead of automatically taking each appeal, he said.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz objected to that idea.

“If we narrow who gets to appeal, or how those appeals happen, that means that some people are left out, and the whole process here in Portland is about having people have their say to their elected officials,” Fritz said.

Thursday’s vote was preliminary; a final vote is scheduled for May 31. Commissioner Dan Saltzman was absent from Thursday’s hearing.

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The Portland Design Commission got a chance Thursday to review progress being made toward refinement of the South Waterfront Greenway concept plan.

The greenway project has been in the works since 2004. The current 6.2-acre phase would create separated bicycling and walking paths that would run along the Willamette River between the spillway near Heritage Park and the Marquam Bridge. The section would connect existing greenways along the river through the Central City and South Waterfront districts and a greenway that runs north of the Marquam Bridge.

Multiple, small “bursts” in the paths would serve as gathering spots to allow visitors views of the river and surrounding scenery. Also, a small amphitheater would be built near Meadow Park.

The current design was the most popular of the possible layouts in public surveys.

Gathering points would be near the Ross Island Bridge, Meadow Park and OHSU Commons. The river would also be accessible near the spillway at Heritage Park and north of the Marquam Bridge. Design commissioners still had concerns about the design and whether visitors would have enough access to the water and places to enjoy nature.

“Although our city is divided by a river, we have no place to enjoy the river from a meditative standpoint,” Vice Chairman Tad Savinar said. “We have jogging and biking paths on both sides of the river. We are sorely in need of non-programmed, intimate places that allow lots of people to experience the river without impinging on each other.”

Savinar said that people need more accessibility points to the river than provided in the current plan.

“To me this is a biking path and jogging path,” he said.

Commissioners also expressed concerns with the concept that walking and biking paths would cross at certain points to allow access to gathering spaces and the river.

“I like the idea of the two separate bike and pedestrian paths, but at the same time I see a problem with (bikers) racing through this,” Commissioner Samuel Rodriguez said. “Maybe if they were closer together, (bikers) would slow down just by the fact that pedestrians are there all the time. That way, this isn’t a race track any longer.”

The plan will be revised more before being presented to the commission again.

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The design for a six-story mixed-use building planned in the South Waterfront District deviates from a string of nearby towers, and that bothers neighbors.

South Waterfront residents and business owners attended a Portland Design Commission hearing Thursday to express concerns about Mack Urban‘s $36 million project for Block 37, near the intersection of Southwest Gaines Street and River Parkway. The building, as designed by GBD Architects, would crowd a riverfront bicycle and pedestrian path, and block Southwest Portland residents’ views of the Willamette River and Ross Island, critics said.

GBD Architects staffers sought design review for the 278-unit building, which would include 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 225 parking spaces. Commissioners did not vote, but instead scheduled another hearing for June 19 to further review plans and hear more public testimony.

Commissioners agreed with some of the neighbors’ concerns, including the building’s proximity to the Willamette River Greenway trail. Block 37 should step farther back from the trail and provide a smoother transition between private development and public space, Commissioner David Wark said.

“I don’t think a sliver of landscaping that’s two to five feet meets the spirit of this,” he said.

GBD Architects principal Katherine Schultz told commissioners that the Block 37 design takes into account both the trail and river east of the property.

“We are allowed by code to be on the property line,” she said. “Remember, we are not a tower. We sit more gently on the greenway.”

In response to commissioners’ advice given this past summer, GBD Architects redesigned the building’s eastern facade to gradually step away from the river.

“I think it does provide connections,” Schultz said. “We feel we’re achieving that by how we erode the building as well as providing stoops. There’s a transition of not only the trail, but the landscaping and the street.”

Another connection to the greenway, GBD Architects designer Craig Mendenhall said, is a lobby near the cul-de-sac on Gaines Street adjacent to the riverfront path.

“We wanted that ability of the lobby to spill out onto the greenway,” he said.

The building will be too close to the greenway, said George Crandall, principal of urban design firm Crandall Arambula. He addressed the commission on behalf of a group of South Waterfront residents and business owners who reviewed the Block 37 design.

“The amount of time the architect spent talking about that tells you that is a problem,” he said. “We say they’re crowding the greenway and we say it doesn’t really step down to the greenway.”

The development also would deviate from a view corridor established along Gaines Street where all buildings line up to preserve a view to the river, Crandall said.

“The promise was made to the people of the west hills that there would be view corridors,” he said. “I think this project sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Commissioner David Keltner agreed.

“It’s not fair to the other buildings that were built anticipating other buildings having that setback,” he said.

Commission Chairwoman Guenevere Millius said she didn’t mind that Block 37 would look different than other South Waterfront developments.

“I’m OK with varying the design,” she said. “I think a little difference in palette down there is OK.”

Commissioner Tad Savinar said he had an overarching concern with the design.

“Why design this building in this place?” he asked. “I feel like everything is compromised a little bit. Those things are a symptom of a larger approach to the project.”

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