New retail and more than 300 condominiums are in the works for a landmark property vacated last year when Albina Fuel Co. moved its headquarters across the river to downtown Vancouver, Wash.
The development, proposed by SRM KAL LLC, a company comprised of developers and descendants of the Albina Fuel family, would add large and small ground-level retail space and condominium units to the 5-acre site on Northeast Broadway just west of Northeast 33rd Avenue.
“We’re going to change the future of Broadway to make it exciting and make this city’s dreams get realized,” said Peter Fry, a planning consultant working on the project. A pre-application conference with the city is set for the morning of July 21.
The first phase of the development would include two buildings with retail space topped by residential units. Fry said there likely will be an anchor retail tenant — something like a grocery or drugstore — and then space for smaller retail.“We definitely have some real interest,” he said.
According to Sheila
Frugoli, a senior planner with the Bureau of Development Services, preliminary
documents and sketches show 192 residential
units in one building and 122 in the other. Fry said the units will
be condominiums. There also are plans for 330 off-street parking
spaces. A second phase of the development, at least five years down the road,
could bring residential towers to the site as well, Fry said.
Neal Arnston, president of Albina Fuel, referred comments to Mike
Giomi, a commercial agent with Emerald Commercial Real Estate Services
in
Seattle.
Giomi said the land
is not being sold out of the family for the project. SRM KAL LLC includes
Neal Arnston and his surviving sister, Hazel Larpenteur. It also includes
Giomi’s wife, Jennifer, and her brother, Michael King,
who are the children of Sandra King, the late sister of Arnston
and Larpenteur. The company also includes SRM Development, a development firm based
in Spokane, Wash.
Architects for the project include Brian Runberg of Runberg Architecture
Group and Sake Reindersma of Carter & Burgess Inc. Runberg
will handle the residential side of the development, and Reindersma
will cover the commercial
end. “We’re really excited about this project,” Giomi said. “It’s
finally coming to fruition after all these years.”
A similar development proposal for the Albina Fuel site fell through in 2003. Milliken Development Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been working on plans for residential towers and retail development, but a complex rezoning and permitting process helped scuttle the deal. Neighbors, too, had voiced concerns over additional traffic such a development could create.
Giomi said the latest proposal, unlike the Milliken one, does not involve a sale of the land. That, along with the fact that the architects and the development partners have experience with similar mixed-used projects, will help align the goals of all stakeholders, he said.
Lynne Coward, land use chairwoman for the Sullivan’s Gulch Neighborhood Association, said Giomi and Fry have been in touch with neighbors to keep them relatively apprised of the project’s progress. The association helped secure a state grant in 2003 to have a planning study done on the development of the Albina Fuel site. Though it was never adopted by the city, Coward said the study led to some helpful suggestions for development and traffic circulation in the area.
“The neighborhood is having a particular interest in Broadway and the viability of our businesses here, and that (development) is something that will affect it,” Coward said. “The main thing is that we get a process that is constructive, that we get to the real issues so we can work them and not put ourselves in boxes.”
Fry said he is hopeful that the city will work with the development team on some of the conditions attached to development of the site, including traffic improvements that will need to be made at Northeast 32nd Avenue and Broadway. Giomi said he and others are planning to make the development process as inclusive as possible.“We want to sit down and make sure we do all the proper things possible for a successful development that will meet the city requirements and neighborhood requirements and make everyone feel very positive,” he said.