Drivers and a pedestrian pass by the site of a planned five-story apartment complex to be built south of Center Street between Duncan and Harmon avenues in Fayetteville.
Photo: Todd Gill, Flyer staff
The team behind Eco Modern Flats and Sterling Frisco are set to move forward on another large-scale student apartment complex near the University of Arkansas.
Planning commissioners last week approved plans for the tentatively named “West Center” complex (aka “Project Center” or “Eco New“), a five-story, 175-unit building on the south side of Center Street between Duncan and Harmon avenues.
This map shows the location of the planned complex.
The building will replace a small apartment complex, a triplex and three houses (see map).
The project is the latest development from Specialized Real Estate Group who have once again turned to Fayetteville architecture firm Modus Studio for design of the building. The two companies worked together on the nearby LEED Platinum-certfied Eco Modern Flats complex, and the 637-bedroom Sterling Frisco complex under construction at Maple Street and West Avenue.
The new complex will house up to 480 bedrooms, a swimming pool and an embedded 408-space parking deck with room for at least 100 bicycles, according to planning documents.
Aside from the building itself, plans call for replacement of the single-head traffic light with a standard four-way signal at Center and Duncan, and the addition of a center turn lane on Center west of Duncan. Also planned for the area are new sidewalks and lighted crosswalks.
“The entire complex is wrapped in true urban sidewalks with tree wells and is really going to represent where we’re trying to go with development in this city,” said Seth Mims, a partner with Specialized Real Estate Group.
Mims said construction would likely begin this spring and be completed in time for the university’s 2014 fall semester.
Is it necessary to approve plans on yet another monstrosity? Is the Grove at capacity? How is the leasing going for the complex at West/Lafayette/Maple? What is going on on the former UBC property?
I was unaware it was the job of the planning commission or city government at large to require that all available properties for rent or purchase were allocated prior to new projects being approved.
And based upon Modus Studio’s past body of work this will be an upgrade aesthetically.
I do have some concerns about the increased amount of traffic through that area; be interested to see what they plan beyond a left turn lane to mitigate impact.
FWIW, Here’s a link to the traffic study. Findings begin on page 4 (labeled pg. 2).
Thanks
This can only improve that awful intersection, and it puts that many more students right on campus. It also brings us (hopefully) one step closer to demolishing some of those awful apartments in the leverett neighborhood.
P.S. awful
Yes, lets hope the next direction they go is north.
More trashed houses coming down. Good deal.
Wonder if the YouofA will decide they need to take over this property also.
i agree that the current apartment complexes are no prize but i’ve always loved that stucco house…i wonder if the current owners would be open to some architectural salvage before it comes down?
Why opt for salvage as one’s initial position rather than preservation – this is another dismaying example of pseudo-green profiteering that destroys the last of the old historic homes in town under the pretense of being eco-cool. A process that rewards the type of landlords who allow nice old rental houses to run down until they can really cash in. No community loyalty, no ethics re: the respect of property.
So it’s better to have small and aging rental homes with cars in the yard, as opposed to dense urban housing around the U of A? Gotcha…
Most of the formerly nice historic homes that are being torn down around town have long since been rundown through decades of neglect.
are you leading an initiative to save this house? if so, that would be a great example of your community loyalty and ethics! if not, perhaps your comment is a bit pseudo-sanctimonious?
why be critical of me rather than the slumlord who allowed this property to deteriorate..unless maybe you ARE the slumlord or friend-of, or just goin’along-to-get-along….
@ barry – dude, you came outta the gates with some pretty harsh criticisms of your own, so chill out…if i was the owner or were friends with the owner, why would i have asked who the owner is? duh. if you want to lead an effort to save this house, please do so and let us know when that launches. in the meantime, if you don’t, is it okay with you if the building materials in this house maybe get re-purposed rather than sent to the landfill? back to my original question…does anyone know who is owns the yellow house?
@barry (and others too)
First of all, we don’t know if that house is even worth preserving. But second and more important is your broader point of a process that rewards landlords who let their houses decay while still profiting. That is how free market real estate works. Simply, it’s speculation (whether long term or short term), often creating what Neil Smith calls a “rent gap.” That is our system. It is inherently unjust in many ways. One of the problems with this system is that even if the landlord has maintained the property, it makes no difference for a demo house. The landlord makes more or less the same money merely for the land.
That said, in many cases, new development, such as this project, can bolster community loyalty, because they actually help create community. Since community requires people and spaces for interaction, a new complex, if done right (e.g., NOT like The Grove), can contribute greatly. To the contrary, if you insist on saving the house, what are we really gaining by preserving it beyond just its physical form?
It might be how the free market works but like other things that ‘work’ its not necessarily right just because it happens to work = reward a certain strata of society like non-occupant slumlords.
There are absolutely no guarantees that something like the Grove won’t happen again and again.
Your argument seems to assume that your definition of community should satisfy everyone because it involves dense development with some courtyard or clubhouse to serve as community space. How does that serve any community other than the renters in the complex?
Dense developments in the town’s core increase traffic congestion and destroy greenspace that was once backyard gardens or play areas for children. You wind up with a kind of monoculture of residents in a neighborhood that once may have had a variety of age and income groups owning and living in it. Fewer owner-occupants does not predict well for upkeep and quality of life in any neighborhood.
How does putting dense student apartments where students are able to walk easily to campus increase traffic? These kinds of developments shouldn’t make up the entire housing stock of downtown and campus-adjacent neighborhoods, but they have their place. Denser population in the downtown area and entertainment district should increase foot traffic and business activity for local merchants.
Get real please. I guess students only walk to class and don’t drive anywhere–then why build parking garages….
The point, Barry, is that students are going to drive in the neighborhoods adjacent to campus, as well as on Dickson Street, irrespective of where they happen to live in Fayetteville.
Moving students closer to their primary destinations (campus, Dickson St) means less driving overall.
Given the dearth of on-campus parking, and the prices attached to desireable spots, I predict most of the students in the Duncan Street and Maple Street apartment buildings will prefer to walk or bike to campus.
and my point Glute is that there is more to this town than the UofA campus and the merchants that couldn’t survive without student dollars. I propose that all of you who are so enthusiastic about the construction of more complexes like this go ahead and move into them. If the quality of life there is so great why wouldn’t you?
@Barry
The University isn’t consulting with the city of Fayetteville on its expansion plans. Rather, it is forging on to increase enrollments to 28,000 students by 2015. That is a massive increase of bodies in a small town. These developments keep students closer and decrease car traffic, as students can walk and bike to class and Dickson street. Of course, some students will still have cars, but maybe fewer will decide they don’t need a car because they can walk everywhere.
The influx of students isn’t going to stop. I’d rather have the students near, leading to more thriving businesses downtown, than out near Farmington, Greenland, and points north.
barry, I agree with your first, perhaps most important point that just because that’s how a free market works doesn’t make it good. I was trolling a bit because often I see libertarian minded people who complain about specific kinds of real estate development but fail to recognize their own hypocrisy. The main reason monstrosities like The Grove are created because of poor and/or weak regulation on development. There are ways that the city could regulate against more things like the grove but urban planning is fairly weak here in Fayetteville.
Though a large development, such as ‘West Center,’ can certainly induce a monoculture of residents (I like that term actually), it is a bit naive to suggest there is such diversity adjacent to the UA. The majority of those houses are not owner occupied, but mainly serve as rentals for students. So the demographics really aren’t changing much.
And as for the community thing, there are so many layers. So let’s keep it simple and leave out family and networks of friends for this discussion. Rather, think of community as the interactions between people in specific areas throughout town. A ‘sense of community’ commonly refers to some tangible recognition of shared amenities, architecture and movement through space, and the presence of people. This is the basis for the argument about why car dominated cities are so sh****–because they isolate people from other people, making interaction impossible.
Urban cores of cities are the popular places to visit because there are lots of people, lots of services offering whatever to those people, and better attention to aesthetics. They are places where it’s easier to walk than drive, and thus they are bustling and usually interesting. Since downtown/Dickson is the closest thing we have to an urban core, I argue it’s in the city’s interest to encourage more people to live within walking distance, particularly students and young adults. If a city discourages dense urban development, then all those students end up in suburban sprawl or, worse, the grove.
I wonder if they will charge for gameday parking? Probably won’t be gameday parking though. As this is mostly an unreported income throughout. Does the city issue permits for gameday parking? 1099′s?
Nah, dude, no city approval for game day parking. That was a pretty significant source of revenue when we lived down on Virginia–nothing like getting a tan while getting drunk with your neighbors and making $300, all while calling those hogs…ahhh.
That would be a nightmare to regulate. Good “no-call,” city.
City might not care but I doubt the IRS is as forgiving.
- The fee for a new home based business is $22.00. If you submit the application online we give a discounted rate of $20.00.
Off the city website
The IRS may care, but it’s just cash in hand that pretty much goes back into beer anyway, so who could really care (or know)? I miss those days sometimes…
The priority of football and /or sports above the law. A message we send our student /athletes.
yup, that’s our culture
Students don’t want to live in unofficial off campus dorms with on sight housing management who are useless other than to make up fines and answer to the police since rent and other fees are paid online to these student housing complexes corporations . if there is a problem nobody knows what to do because they won’t spend extra money to fix it and they ask you to submit the problem online only to drag it out and blame you for it and not even tell you of the fine by having a credit collection agency come after you once you move out.
That stuff never happened to anyone.
Save the Yellow House! Make it the admin office or something!
that’s a cool idea!