Lansing Housing Commission gets federal tax credit for proposed downtown apartments
THURSDAY, Aug. 10 — The state of Michigan has awarded the Lansing Housing Commission a $1.497 million tax credit toward a proposed $22.5 million mixed-use and mixed-income apartment building in the heart of downtown Lansing.
Riverview 220 would occupy most of the east side of the 400 block of South Grand Avenue, which stretches north to south between Kalamazoo and Lenawee streets and west to Cherry Street. A small strip mall anchored by Baryames Cleaners would remain at Kalamazoo and Grand.
LHC has proposed 63 apartments above 2,200 square feet of retail space. Executive director Doug Fleming said in May that most apartments would be priced for low-income tenants but some would be market rate. He was not immediately available for comment on the impact of the state tax credit on going forward with the proposal.
Not exactly sure how this works, maybe citykid remembers more of this, but Hepler is requesting the revocation of his OPRA ceritificate for the property up on May Street. I guess it's because the scope of the project is changing from office space to resident space. I can't remember what the OPRA was for from last year when they approved it at 700 May.
Cherry Hill - I am glad they are proposing a second building and it will help the configuration be not so dumb. I'm interested in seeing what the purchase agreement will be with the city since that site had been my personal bet on the city hall location. Sadly MSHDA (LIHTC) requires parking even if the project is urban/near transit. The city encouraged the development team to seek a variance with them for this though so hopefully the number can go down a bit more.
OPRA - probably a better question for LEDC since I do not know the ins and outs of all the incentives. It is my understanding commercial residential can still qualify for it so I don't know why changing it from commercial to residential matters. The stated goal is 'to, increase commercial activity, create employment, retain employment, prevent a loss of employment, revitalize urban areas, or increase the number of residents'. The letter in the agenda packet mentions NEZ so my guess is they get more money through that than OPRA.
from that CP article:
"The Capital Area Transportation Authority is eyeing the construction of an administrative building with space for homeless services on the south end of the block that the city’s old Center for the Arts — which housed BoarsHead Theatre — occupied. It would possibly have apartments as well.
Both projects, with their emphasis on helping low-income and homeless people, are strategically located across the street from the CATA Transportation Center. LHC would need to demolish buildings that were the home of Davenport University before it moved to 200 S. Grand Ave. in 2011. CATA would build on a city-owned parking lot that replaced the arts complex after it closed about the same time."
The development team is applying for a second LIHTC so that is what my comments were about. I don't have a rendering to share though.
Sorry if the confusion is with me rather than how the article is written. Phase II (the orange rectangle below) is set for the parcel to the south, currently owned by the city. This is where CATA will house admin with a couple dozen more apartment above.
@citykid Thanks for clearing that up, I was under the impression that the project with the CATA offices was an entirely separate deal. Hopefully this means they'll be looking at it as a combined site in order to achieve a more sensible layout. I really hope they're not planning on having that entire block of Cherry still just be parking lot frontage, that'd be very disappointing.
@hood Planning and Zoning may have flubbed the layout review. The development team preferred to activate the Grand Ave. side and it was considered the better of the two layouts presented. Once phase II was announced recently they were told that the sites can be combined so they are looking at some revisions. One thing I learned is that MSHDA mandates x amount of parking for LIHTC points no matter the context of the site location. Allegedly they weren't receptive to the first request for a reduction even though this is for a lot of seniors and across the street from the bus station.
2 spaces per unit or greater for family developments.
1 space per unit or greater for independent senior developments.
0.8 spaces per unit or greater for developments providing congregate services
This may be too much wishful thinking but I'm hoping conditions will be different when the tax credits expire and there is an opportunity for a third building along Cherry rather than all the parking.
If being used as a combined site it'd seem much more wise to just do a single building utilizing the whole 2/3 of a block along Grand there then orient another building Lenawee or possibly oriented to Lenawee & Cherry, something similar to the below:
I noticed that the architect behind Riverview 220 is the same architect behind that site plan for the MLK & Hillsdale, they are obviously horrendous at coming up with urban site plans. I'm wondering, is there a way to get more involved in these processes? It seems there's a lot of avoidable and senseless oversights/mistakes being made or just plain lack of imagination.
Comments
OPRA - probably a better question for LEDC since I do not know the ins and outs of all the incentives. It is my understanding commercial residential can still qualify for it so I don't know why changing it from commercial to residential matters. The stated goal is 'to, increase commercial activity, create employment, retain employment, prevent a loss of employment, revitalize urban areas, or increase the number of residents'. The letter in the agenda packet mentions NEZ so my guess is they get more money through that than OPRA.
"The Capital Area Transportation Authority is eyeing the construction of an administrative building with space for homeless services on the south end of the block that the city’s old Center for the Arts — which housed BoarsHead Theatre — occupied. It would possibly have apartments as well.
Both projects, with their emphasis on helping low-income and homeless people, are strategically located across the street from the CATA Transportation Center. LHC would need to demolish buildings that were the home of Davenport University before it moved to 200 S. Grand Ave. in 2011. CATA would build on a city-owned parking lot that replaced the arts complex after it closed about the same time."
The development team is applying for a second LIHTC so that is what my comments were about. I don't have a rendering to share though.
This may be too much wishful thinking but I'm hoping conditions will be different when the tax credits expire and there is an opportunity for a third building along Cherry rather than all the parking.
I noticed that the architect behind Riverview 220 is the same architect behind that site plan for the MLK & Hillsdale, they are obviously horrendous at coming up with urban site plans. I'm wondering, is there a way to get more involved in these processes? It seems there's a lot of avoidable and senseless oversights/mistakes being made or just plain lack of imagination.