Edwards Communities has submitted plans for a five-story mixed-use building that will sit on the east side of High Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues. The plans will be presented to the University Area Review Board on September 17th.
The proposed building features 144 apartment units and a bed count of 476 (over half of the apartments will be four-bedroom units). It will be served by a 133-slot parking garage and will also be connected by a pedestrian bridge to additional parking across Pearl Street. Nearly 13,000 square feet of retail is divided into thirteen separate storefronts, with all but one of them facing High Street.
This is the first glimpse of the High Street portion of what will be a seven-acre development in total, extending east to Section Alley and filling in the entire block between Eighth and Ninth avenues as well as a portion of the south side of Eighth. Most of that space will be filled with apartments aimed at the student and young professional market, although the easternmost portion of the site will be anchored by a 60-unit building offering affordable one-bedroom apartments for the formerly-homeless. That building is being developed by the Community Housing Network and will replace their existing facility at 1494 North High Street.
Renderings show glass storefronts with a mix of different-colored brick on the upper floors. Campus Partners, the OSU-affiliated nonprofit organization that assembled the land, worked to get it re-zoned, and picked Edwards as the developer, had previously indicated that the High Street portion of the project would complement the scale and architecture of the existing Gateway buildings to the north.
This latest step in the approval process for the project comes amid increasing development pressure in the University District. It also comes as Campus Partners works to implement their ambitious plan for nine acres of land surrounding the intersection of 15th and High.
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Renderings via Humphreys & Partners Architects LP.