At a Planning Commission working session last week, local home builder Alex de Parry discussed plans to demolish a handful of rental homes he owns on the east side of Fifth Avenue south of William Street to build City Place, a new four-story, 84-unit apartment structure. If built, City Place would likely be one of the first large-scale new construction rental developments targeted at the middle-income market - dubbed workforce housing - near downtown Ann Arbor in years.
"Right now everything happening in Ann Arbor is either upper end or lower end - no one is doing anything for the middle guys,'' said de Parry, who owns Ann Arbor Builders.
De Parry plans to rent City Place units - ranging from one-bedroom to three-bedroom suites - at between 80 percent and 120 percent of the city's average median income. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines say such a range, including utilities, would equal between $1,193 and $1,879 a month for a two-person household, based on median annual household income ranging between $47,700 and $75,168.
Other new apartment projects planned in downtown Ann Arbor include Citi Centre Lofts, which is supposed to be student housing; Glen Ann Place, which is proposed to consist of "luxury'' rentals; and William Street Station, which is planned to have 100 units of low-income affordable housing.
Parking at City Place is proposed to be provided in an underground garage. The building is planned to have a facade that looks like a series of Boston brownstones. De Parry said the project would cost between $20 million and $22 million.
De Parry owns seven parcels along Fifth Avenue totaling 1.2 acres. City Place encompasses six parcels just outside the downtown district, excluding the corner home because it's part of a historic district. The value of those six parcels, according to county records, is $3.25 million.
The homes on those properties have a total of 22 rental units now. Tenants include a mix of people who work downtown and University of Michigan staff and students.
Although de Parry hasn't yet submitted a site plan for city review, he discussed his idea in front of the city's Planning Commission during an informal work session last week. The site will need to be rezoned to allow for construction of the apartment building. De Parry is requesting a conditional rezoning under a fairly new Michigan law that hasn't yet been used here. De Parry is requesting the city rezone the site from a residential to commercial class with certain conditions in place, including promises that the building will be entirely residential, that the building height will be limited to four stories and that the historic property on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and William Street will be left intact.
Planning Commissioner Ron Emaus said he'd rather see the project proposed under a different residential zoning class or as a planned unit development, as he thinks the city may not be ready for conditional zoning.
"I like the conceptual design they were presenting. ... I like the density around downtown. But the zoning is an issue, and how you would do it, I'm not quite sure,'' Emaus said.
De Parry hopes to submit a formal site plan for City Place in the next two months.
Source: Ann Arbor News