The Portland Development Commission broke ground over the weekend in Lents on 9101 Foster, a project that will include 54 apartments and 9k SF of ground-floor retail space. Sixteen of the apartment units are affordable. Williams & Dame Development originally conceived the project after PDC asked for requests for interest in 2014. The developer ultimately handed ownership of the project back to PDC this year, in part to focus on other projects, reports the Portland Business Journal.

Designed by Hacker, the two-building project is one of a number of projects that PDC believes will jump-start the Lents Town Center area, including the 145-unit, mostly affordable housing project called Oliver Station, and Woody Guthrie Place, ROSE Community Development's 68-unit mixed-income apartment complex. The other projects are all in various stages of design review. [PBJ]