Image courtesy of SGA

A new development team with a new vision has brought forward a new proposal for one of downtown Portsmouth’s last remaining large, empty lots.

Portsmouth-based Two International Group, prominent developer of office buildings in Pease International Tradeport, has teamed up with locally-based hotel developer and operator Ocean Properties to propose a 5-story, mixed-use project on the 1.97-acre site.

The development, known as 2 Russell & 0 Deer St., will come before the city’s Historic District Commission for the first step in a long review process tonight.

The site, a roughly crescent-shaped parcel bordered by Deer Street, Russel Street and a set of train tracks, separates the city’s downtown from the North End, and will also help define a gateway for visitors arriving from Dover along Market Street.

The proposal outlined in the joint venture’s initial presentation shows three buildings between three and five floors tall, connected at their first floors by a ground-floor parking structure. One, at the corner of Maplewood and Deer Streets, would be a 57-foot-tall office building. The second, at the point where Russell Street and the railroad tracks come together, will be a 60-foot-high condominium building. In between will be a 60-foot-high, U-shaped apartment building.

As the project team’s initial meeting with the Portsmouth HDC is focused solely on the building’s massing, so no details about the building’s program or detailed designs were included in presentations.

The Two International-Ocean Properties proposal is the second attempt to develop the property in the last 10 years. A joint venture between the city and developer Chris Thompson to build a public garage and a Whole Foods-anchored mixed-use building on the site collapsed in 2019 after the grocery store pulled out following several years of litigation and delays.