A Georgia developer is breaking ground on an eight-building apartment complex with a plaza and retail space on a long-vacant lot next to a MAX station blocks from Gresham City Hall.

The 7.4-acre site, at 1699 N.W. Civic Drive, was purchased by the Metro regional government for $2.2 million in 2002, ahead of the construction of a MAX Blue Line. It sold the site to Wood Partners of Atlanta earlier this year for $1,000.

Metro said that without the deal on the land, the site likely would have been developed as about 150 garden-style apartments.

By essentially giving the parcel away, Metro said it’s doubling the density of development on the site, and along with it increasing the number of trips residents would take on the adjacent MAX line by about 62,000 a year.

Under an agreement with Metro’s Transit-Oriented Development Program, the project will instead include 318 market-rate apartments, as well as retail space. The deal also requires the developer to build a large plaza measuring 22,000 square feet — half a downtown Portland city block — with a children’s play area.

“A strict market rate for the transfer would not support the public space and public access that is part of the requirements for the development,” Metro spokesman Clifford Higgins wrote in an email, “and it wouldn’t have allowed us to maximize the opportunity for mixed-income family housing at that location.”

A ceremonial groundbreaking is scheduled at the site Tuesday, but the developer said it had already begun work on the project. The expected cost of the the construction wasn’t disclosed.

The city of Gresham is also hoping to jump-start redevelopment of a vacant former Kmart nearby.

And Metro owns another 4.2 acre parcel south of the MAX line. There, Higgins said, another developer will build 400 homes, of which 160 will be rent-restricted for low-income residents. It will also include a brew pub and space for brewing classes through a partnership with Mount Hood Community College.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com; 503-294-5034; facebook.com/elliotnjus

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