New Housing and Retail on Washtenaw and Platt

[wolverine]

Washtenaw is sure changing fast these past few years. Im glad that our current existing suburban retail districts are changing for the better instead of falling into ruin like some other do.

This project calls for six buildings that would contain retail and restaurant spaces along with 12 dwelling units. I'm not quite sure what to expect out of this. I'm wondering if this will look similar to what is across the street where there is a two story "strip mall type" structure, but with offices on the second floor. Ann Arbor's new suburban architecture seems quite different from the rest of Michigan in that our new strip malls are multi-level. The large amount of parking still needs to be resolved, but at least by building up, we can build less strip mall structures therefore slowing sprawl a bit.

Here's Memorandum on the "Arlington Shops"

http://www.a2gov.org/CityAdministration/Cl...1-09-06/D-7.pdf

[mendelman]

Great to hear. That group of buildings really needed to be redeveloped. They were looking real shabby.

Though, only 12 du seems too small. Why only 12? I'm sure they could have gotten much more than that by code (which could be between 73 du and 110 du, if I'm reading the zoning code correctly).

Also, good to see that dealership going away. It was a pretty smuckly run business.

[tracer1138]

Great to hear. That group of buildings really needed to be redeveloped. They were looking real shabby.

Though, only 12 du seems too small. Why only 12? I'm sure they could have gotten much more than that by code.

Also, good to see that dealership going away. It was a pretty smuckly run business.

[mendelman]

Of course Ann Arbor isn't one to be affraid of density, so I image the number is just right for what the market requires.

[wolverine]

My guess is the number units is based on the size of the building, which is then dependent on the square footage of commerical space provided. I'm also not quite sure if the developer may have been required to build X number of units for X square footage of commercial space by the city?

[jbr12]

Retail typically rents for higher rates then du... A couple of projects I've worked on actually sacrificed a couple of ground floor units to create more leasable retail spaces

[wolverine]

Here's an image of the proposed strip mall. It's pretty typical of what's going up around there. 2 levels, retro facade, etc.

Image found on DetroitMan's site.

http://www.detroitrising.com/images/arlingtonshops.jpg