Four apartment building proposals and one for an office building are competing for a site in the former Route 195 corridor across an intersection from the Wexford Innovation Center campus. The I-195 Redevelopment District Commission expects to choose a preferred developer at its next meeting, scheduled for May 22.

PROVIDENCE — Four apartment building proposals and one for an office building are competing for a site in the former Route 195 corridor across an intersection from the Wexford Innovation Center campus.

The I-195 Redevelopment District Commission heard from developers of two of the proposals, followed by a commission consultant who critiqued all five proposals for what's known as Parcel 28. The parcel is bounded by Friendship, Clifford, Chestnut and Richmond Streets, although one corner of that rectangle is not included, where Johnson & Wales University owns a vacant building at Richmond and Friendship Streets.

Commission chairman Robert C. Davis said he hopes that the panel will be able to choose a preferred developer at its next meeting, scheduled for May 22, and begin negotiating the terms of the sale of the 1.25-acre parcel.

All but one of the projects calls for a six- or seven-story building on the site, which slopes down about 20 feet from one end to the other, allowing some of the proposals to insert an additional story at the lower end of the building.

The one exception to that height is a 13-story, 387-unit apartment building proposed by DMG Investments, a Chinese-owned company with a U.S. headquarters in New York.

The DMG proposal also calls for 23,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and 14,000 square feet of commercial office space on the second floor.

Commission consultant Tim Love, of Utile Inc., questioned whether the Providence market could fill that much space.

The next-largest apartment proposal was a 246-unit building proposed by Exeter Property Group, headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. That building would include 22,700 square feet of retail space.

Post Road Residential, of Fairfield, Connecticut, proposed a 205-unit building with more modest ground-floor retail, including about 6,000 square feet in the Johnson & Wales building. Tom Montelli, of Post Road, said his company has an agreement to redevelop the building into a flagship bookstore for the university, plus a coffee shop.

The smallest apartment building was proposed by Pennrose, of Philadelphia. It would have 120 units and about 7,000 square feet of retail. The Pennrose proposal would leave the corner of the lot at Clifford and Richmond Street — at the same end as the Johnson & Wales building — open as a public park. It also would have a surface parking lot behind it, screened from Friendship Street by trees.

Consultant Love critiqued those features as "too suburban" for the city feel the commission is hoping to establish.

The final proposal was from Waldorf Capital Management, of Providence, which is already developing an apartment building on another former Route 195 lot on Friendship Street and across Friendship Street from Parcel 28.

Waldorf proposed an office building with just over 100,000 square feet of office space, plus almost 19,000 square feet of retail.