Design panel likes replacement building at Chinatown fire site

The city’s urban design review panel likes the concept for a mixed-use building in Chinatown that would replace the previous structure destroyed by fire in 2015.
If only it could be taller.
The owners of 601 Somerset St. W., Shelley and Jamie Helmer, are constrained by their insurance company, which they say will only permit them to build something close to what stood there before.
Their proposed three-storey building at Percy Street would have commercial space at street level and eight ap