Kenneth Boroson Architects image
A downtown landlord won city permission to build 106 new market-rate apartments atop a Crown Street parking lot and in the adjacent, converted LoRicco Tower.
Local land-use commissioners granted that permission in a vote Wednesday night during the latest monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.
The commissioners voted unanimously in support of the site plan to construct a new seven-story apartment building atop 208 and 212 Crown St. and to convert the existing six-story building at 216 Crown St. into a total of 106 new market-rate apartments.
The owner of the adjacent downtown properties is a holding company controlled by Richard LoRicco, Jr.
Local attorney Ben Trachten and architect Ken Boroson explained that the plan calls for converting the existing LoRicco Tower building into 34 new apartments: a mix of studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms, with apartment sizes ranging from as small as 415 square feet for the studios to as large as 940 square feet for the two-bedrooms.
The new seven-story building, meanwhile, would house 72 new apartments: a mix of studios and one-bedrooms.
The new apartment building would have 16 on-site parking spaces. Trachten said the landlord has also signed an agreement with the city’s parking authority to reserve 36 parking spaces for tenants at the nearby publicly owned garages.
Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand noted that the proposed development would have less groundfloor retail space than currently exists at this Crown Street site.
In prior years, he might have advocated for keeping more groundfloor space reserved for retail use, Marchand said.
But “our experience has been that retail has changed a lot in recent years, and we’ve seen more and more first floor spaces converted to residential use.” The loss of some retail space on Crown Street is “probably just fine,” given the struggles of landlords to fill groundfloor retail spaces across downtown. And, on the plus side, “we’ll see a lot more residential units.”
When asked about the construction timeline for this project, Trachten said that the proposed development is “all conceptual at this point.” It should be built “over the coming two years, three years.” The project’s site plan application states that the construction start and end date “are not yet determined but are expected to span 12 – 18 months.”