Traffic among concerns about plan that includes student housing.
By this time next year, an entire city block of downtown Fort Collins might be occupied by CSU student apartments, a parking garage and commercial space.
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The ambitious 10-month timeline means Rael Development Corp. of Irvine, Calif., needs quick approval on plans to redevelop Block 23 – the former home of Taco John’s, Placita Garibaldi and Tire Distribution Systems – into student housing.
Monday night, architect Jim Birdsall of The Birdsall Group in Berthoud talked to a dozen neighbors about the proposed 279-unit four-story apartment complex on North College Avenue, bordered on the north by Cherry Street, on the south by Maple Street and on the west by Mason Street.
The one- to four-bedroom units would be exempt from the city’s so-called “three-unrelated ordinance” that restricts more than three unrelated people from living together, senior city planner Anne Aspen said.
“This is a perfect antidote to three-unrelated,” Aspen said, because it is specifically geared toward students and will draw them out of single-family neighborhoods.
Increased traffic and parking in an already congested area worried Manuel Gonzales, who lives two blocks from the proposed project.
“It’s already stop-and-go traffic from 3 to 5 every day,” Gonzales said.
Birdsall said an impact study would be done to determine the effect on traffic.
The project, on the edge of the proposed Mason transportation corridor, is designed to encourage students to ride mass transit or their bikes to get to campus, a mile south of the development.
Rael Development plans to ask for funding help from the Downtown Development Authority and is talking with the city about a public/private partnership on the four-story parking garage.
“This is by no means a done deal,” Birdsall said.
Questions such as cost, rental prices, amount of DDA funding and management were left answered.
The property is now owned by real estate broker and developer Mike Jensen.
Block 23, on the cusp of Old Town and North College Avenue neighborhoods, has undergone a resurgence in the past few years with construction of Penny Flats, Mason Court Lofts, the new Discovery Science Center expected to be built next to Lee Martinez Park, trendy coffee shops and offices.