Until last year, NE Couch was a quiet back street. But after the city turned Burnside and Couch into a couplet, suddenly Couch is an major thoroughfare. It's only a matter of time before big developments start popping up and the newest is a five-story mixed use development slated for NE Sixth and Couch.
A Lake Oswego development group purchased half the block between NE 5th and 6th Avenues in 2006 for $1.47 million and hired architects Vallester Corl to design the Couch Apartments. Portland Architecture reports the details on the building: It'll have 70 apartments, mostly studios and one-bedrooms, above 11 ground-floor retails spots. That's a ton of retail for Couch, whose retail currently amounts to mostly a vacuum store and laundromat.
The Couch Apartments will also have more parking for bikes than cars, offering 23 car spots and storage space for 70 bicycles. That's a great sign and makes sense, seeing as the building is right on the bus line and a few blocks from the soon-to-be streetcar. Besides that, I'm not psyched about the design. Here's what it looks like, it's all metal and pine on the facade and looks like a condo:
- Vallester Corl
Sadly, the new Couch Apartments are demolishing two cool, early 20th century brick apartment buildings. Here's what the site looks like now:
