The Asheville Downtown Commission has endorsed plans for an 11-story condominium building planned for the south side of Pack Square.

The commission voted 5-2 in favor of the plan on Feb. 8, despite objections from some that it would overshadow City Hall. The commission granted the developers four variances from the city’s Unified Development Ordinance rules.

Some members said they liked that the building would be set back several feet from developer Stewart Coleman’s property line.

The Parkside Condominums proposal has been controversial since Coleman bought the land adjacent to City-County Plaza from Buncombe County.

Activists have objected that a portion of the land was deeded from George Willis Pack as a gift to the county and should not have been sold to a private developer. Pack specified in the terms of the gift that the land was to be used for public purposes.

Furthermore, county commissioners sold the property for roughly half its assessed tax value. The county’s tax office reduced that assesment to a figure closer to the sale price one day before a story about the sale was printed in the Asheville Citizen-Times.

The plan has been opposed by Pack Square Conservancy, the nonprofit charged with renovating Pack Square Park, because of its height. Conservancy guidelines specify that buildings adjoining the park not be higher than the shoulder of the Courthouse, which Parkside would exceed by 2-3 stories.

At the Downtown Commission meeting,  Chairman Pat Whalen, who voted against the plan, argued unsuccessfully that the commission’s rules required it to apply the Conservancy’s guidelines.

The Parkside proposal will go before the Technical Review Committee this Monday for review and public comment. The committee will meet at 1:30 p.m. in the 1st Floor North Conference Room of City Hall.