Mixed-Use Apartment Block Proposed for Wiltsey and Commercial

Though the Conditional Use permit was first applied for in 2016, only now is the developer formally asking for a "Class 3 Site Plan Review for a proposed mixed-use development including 71 multi-family residential units and approximately 11,998 square feet of retail commercial floor area" at the corner of South Commercial and Wiltsey Road.

3 floors of apartments, ground floor storefronts

In the intervening time, this project has got a lot more interesting.

Broadly speaking, it is the kind of development envisioned by the rezoning in Our Salem. It's also across the street from the site proposed for the forthcoming South Salem Transit Center.

It could be a direct model for future projects, a model to iterate and improve on, or a kind of dead-end.

Project site at Commercial and Wiltsey
(click to enlarge)

It's a long and narrow building oriented on a north-south axis, separated from Commercial Street by large parking lots and chain restaurants. 

There would be three stories of apartments, and a ground floor of storefronts. The top image, the south elevation, looking at the narrow side, is typical of the north and east elevations also. The west elevation has no storefronts, only back doors.

Safeway and the Beehive Station food cart pod are both about three blocks worth away, though it's along Commercial Street, and many would not think twice about driving that distance.

So this site and project occupies a kind of in-between urbanism. In form and in theory it's very walkable, but this site is a suburban strip-stroad and that might be its autoist reality. Compare this to the YWCA/Family Building Blocks building on North Broadway, just north of Salem Cinema. (Do you know of other new large mixed-use blocks with apartments outside of downtown? Southblock at the former Boise site is one, and 990 Broadway is a smaller one also. We are still experimenting with them, even though the "five over one" style is very common elsewhere.)

Nevertheless, it could be a transitional moment. So it's something to watch and to cheer for.

The Hearings Officer will assess it later this month on the 28th, and once the Staff Report is out there might be more to say, either an update here or in a separate post.