Major Portsmouth-area developer The Kane Company has won support of a key city body in trying to add 274 apartments west of Portsmouth’s downtown.

The company plans three apartment buildings along a curving stretch of Portsmouth Boulevard, near the intersection of Market Street and Interstate 95, separated from a nearby neighborhood of townhomes with a large, planted “recreation area” and surface parking for residents.

A company representative told the Portsmouth Herald it hopes to price the project’s market-rate units for middle-income renters like “teachers and firefighters.”

The project recently won approval from Portsmouth’s Technical Advisory Committee, which reviews large projects before they reach the city’s Planning or Zoning boards.

The site zoning would grant Kane a density bonus if the company includes workforce housing or gives the city land to produce workforce housing on its own, something executives say they hope to do by transferring a different parcel of land that the company owns nearby.