In the midst of a hotel-building boom, how does one make a hotel stand out from the crowd? You could have it float on the river.

That's the ambitious plan laid out by developers in an application for early assistance from the city's Bureau of Development Services.

The applicant, Jonathan Cohen, is a partner at The Society Hotel, which opened its first location in Old Town/Chinatown late 2015. Now, preliminary plans call for the hotel to open its second location off a dock on the Willamette River, between the Fremont Bridge and Terminal 1 in Northwest Portland.

The Terminal 1 property was just sold to Lithia Motors, which plans to parcel out the land and sell a portion of it to developers. The neighborhood north of the Pearl District – some developers call it the Frontside District – is quickly changing.

Two blocks away from Terminal 1, a massive speculative office building project, Field Office, is going up next to the beloved Dockside restaurant, and apartments and condos line the blocks between the terminal and the bridge.

Cohen declined to comment about his proposed development, but his application calls for a floating hotel on a vessel moored at the dock that runs parallel to the shore in front of the new apartment complexes on Riverscape Street.

The underused pier would be transformed into "a terminal for river-related activities," the application says. The pier would be home to watersports, a seaplane terminal, a spa, a park, a farmers market, and possibly other amenities that would benefit the nearby condos and apartment buildings.

The pier could be accessed by the greenway trail that runs along the waterfront. A strip of land along Front Avenue would serve as a parking lot.

-- Anna Marum

amarum@oregonian.com

503-294-5911

@annamarum