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PORTLAND, OR-The Portland City Council appears primed to open up Cascade Station to the biggest of big box retailers. The council last week approved an amendment to the Cascade Station District plan that would allow one retailer with a 205,000-sf footprint, another with a 185,000-sf footprint and a third with a 90,000-sf footprint to locate in the retail portion of the 120-acre commercial area fronting Airport Way near Interstate 205. The council is scheduled to vote on the revised plan this Thursday. Currently, no retailers larger than 60,000 sf are allowed, a formula that has not been successful. The infrastructure for Cascade Station was completed in 2001--including streets, two light-rail stations and a row of park blocks--but there are still no signed tenants and no buildings. Part of the problem is that the current vision is one that needs to be surrounded by residential, which doesn't exist in the immediate area. The larger stores would make it more of a destination retail area capable of drawing folks from Vancouver, WA, as well as Greater Portland."We have tenant interest and activity that is poised to make for a very exciting result," Steve Wells of Trammell Crow Co., the developers' agent, told the City Council. The increased footprint may be a direct response to Sweden-based retailer Ikea's interest in building one of its massive retail warehouses on the property. The retailer's preferred first-floor footprint is 205,000 sf, and it has been in discussions with the developers as recently as January.The retail portion of the project is being developed by Center Oak Properties under an agreement with the lease holder, Cascade Station Development Co., a group led by Bechtel Corp. Bechtel was given the 99-year lease of the land in trade for extending the city's light rail line to the airport. The amendments increase the retail space in the 120-acre commercial area from about 500,000sf to about 807,000 sf. In order to accommodate the growth in retail without changing the traffic impact, the extra 300,000 sf was removed from the amount of hotel and office development planned to eventually cover the rest of the 120 acres.