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Back to the drawing board for Hazelwood Plaza developers

LINDA CARGILL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Hazelwood Plaza, the proposed 61-unit, 300-foot building at 222 N.E. 102nd Ave., between Northeast Glisan and East Burnside streets has a tucked under parking lot for 50 vehicles and one loading truck.
Courtesy Alberto Rinkevich Intl. Assoc. AIA ARDesign, LLC
Painting with more variety, using brick in place of metal, and locating courtyard areas in the front instead of the back: these were just some of the suggestions offered to improve the proposed Hazelwood Plaza apartment complex.

The 61-unit, 300-foot building, with a tucked under parking lot for 50 vehicles and one loading truck, would be built at 222 N.E. 102nd Ave., between Northeast Glisan and East Burnside streets.

The building's architect, Alberto Rinkevich, presented the updated plans to the Portland Design Commission at a Design Advice Request meeting Oct. 24. A Design Advice Request is an informal discussion between developers and the commission prior to a request for formal approval.

Rinkevich showed brightly colored slide images of the giant 59,018-square-foot building that rests on an incline, with four stories on the east side and five on the west. The roof would slope down toward houses to the east. Hazelwood developer Ricardo Berdichevsky told the commission the building's exterior would be corrugated metal and prefinished cement board in various colors with seamed metal or composite shingle roofing.

He asked commissioners to allow him a few modifications in the design: Reducing depth of the setback for the ground level units along the street from the required 25 feet to 13 feet; reducing the interior parking lot landscaping to 860 square feet-instead of 1,350 square feet; allowing a smaller loading space with a depth of 16 feet instead of 18; and allowing narrower dimensions between the 80 bikes hanging on the wall rack system.

Rinkevich said the building would be shielded from surrounding neighborhood homes by trees growing along the rear side of the site's property line. However, commission member Jane Hansen questioned how long the trees would stand since workers would excavate near them to build concrete storm water planters on the east side of the site.

“You'll be cutting into the root zone so significantly so that the trees probably are going to be removed,” Hansen said. “And if you try to save it Portland won't accept that as being a protected tree because you've cut so much of the root zone off.”

Commissioners reminded the applicant that in the last design advice discussion they'd suggested not using fiber cement panel to ground level around the building.

“The issue is about durability, about how much abuse the building can take at the ground floor,” said chair Gwen Millius. “I think the issue with metal panel, in addition to fiber board, is they don't survive.”

Commission member Tad Savinar also disliked so much metal being used on the building.

“Maybe if the first floor was brick or something that was richer than ground face block that might elevate the quality of the building,” Savinar said. “So corrugated might work, but right now a composite roof, corrugated metal and split face isn't working. It's bare bones on every level.”

Expressing concern about the small size of the three proposed courtyards, commissioners questioned placing plantings in the center and benches on the outside. “It's really not a useable space for the tenants of your building,” Hansen said. “Those are all planting beds in the middle so there's not a lot of room for more than two people to sit on a bench.”

By switching benches to the center, tenants would have more space and feel they sat in “an outdoor room,” said commission member Jeff Simpson.

Some commissioners said they would like to see the two back courtyards moved up front near the lobby rather than being placed in the two back corners of the site.

The commission also wondered if the sound from the back courtyards might cause noise problems for nearby homeowners. “The sound might actually spill into the neighbors in an intrusive way if it's a summer night and everybody is outside,” Savinar said. He wondered if combining the back areas into a larger front courtyard might give tenants some open space.

Millius agreed, adding that she'd like to see the back courtyards moved up to the front of the building near the lobby where windows look out on them-not hidden away in the back.

Hansen observed that tenants in other buildings have often expressed “a very strong desire to have eyes on the outdoor spaces because you get a lot of undesirable behavior and people hanging out in places and kind of taking them over in a way that other people don't feel like they can go to that space.”

Savinar said the colors on the building were still a problem. He suggested breaking up the colors so the center section and the two ends might be different colors, adding that maybe “these two are gray and these two are blue, or gray, blue, gray-something that shows-this is the center, this is the end because this doesn't break it up.”

The commission asked the applicant to consider designing two buildings split by an entry drive with flanking outdoor areas to break up the overall building mass along the street.

They also suggested that the center recess at the main lobby might be a darker color so that it recedes from the street even more, giving the building a clear center and clear end pieces. Flanking recesses could also be darker which would help break up the building's overall length. Then, the four housing sections could stand out as separate.

The commission recommended that the applicants return for another advice session once the design is more developed.

After the hearing, Rinkevich said he was trying to calm down and, as much as possible, respond to the requirements. He complained commission members' comments “…are really the opposite of the ones they made at another session. They are changing their minds every time.”

This reversal of position especially applied to the landscaping requirements, he said. “At one meeting I was told it was good to have the three different areas of landscaping,” he said.

At the October meeting, Rinkevich claimed commissioners had switched from their previous recommendation. “They prefer to have the landscaping concentrated in one area,” he said.

Rinkevich also balked at the commission's suggestion to change his exterior materials-especially upgrading from metal to brick that is more expensive. “I will not do the brick,” Rinkevich declared. “There are hundreds of buildings that are not with brick. Their comment about the brick was really, really out of the blue.”

“Keeping in mind the budget is as important as the rest of the design,” Rinkevich said and that changing the complex to expensive exterior materials could drive the project over budget. He conceded he would change part of the materials, but not all of them. Rinkevich plans to meet with city planners in early December, and then decide when he will return for another informal review before applying for a final permit.
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