Apartment Look

Supporters and opponents of a proposed conversion of the historic Campana building to affordable housing on the borders of Batavia and Geneva packed another meeting this week to share their views. About 100 people attended the continuation Wednesday of an Aug. 2 public hearing before the plan commission , a citizen- appointed advisory panel to the Batavia City Council . On one side were residents worried about traffic, the influx of students in the Geneva schools and whether the former 1936 factory is suitable for living quarters. On the other side were proponents of affordable housing and historic preservation . Evergreen Real Estate Group has submitted a zoning application with Batavia to put 80 market-rate and income restricted apartments into the 131,000-square-foot building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and received a local historic landmark designation in 2003. Sandra Ellis said the Fabyan Parkway and Route 31 intersection has been known as a...

Six years ago, Mike Brown and Casey Lynch stood on Downtown Boise ’s 8th Street and wondered: Why don’t more people live here? Downtown seemed to have everything that a growing percentage of Americans wanted in a place to live. “I mean, there’s all kinds of jobs. There’s a million coffee shops and hair salons and restaurants, and there’s an active street life ,” says Brown, who founded the Los Angeles- based development company LocalConstruct with Lynch in 2008. Casey Lynch, left, and Mike Brown have made their mark in Boise. Provided by LocalConstruct But in 2011, fewer than 4,000 people lived in Downtown’s scattered apartment and condominium buildings and houses. On a typical weekday afternoon , most Downtown workers got in their cars and put the city in the rearview mirror. Brown and Lynch saw an opportunity. They thought Boiseans would trade ample floor space and vaulted ceilings in the suburbs for smaller, high- end Downtown apartments that offered amenities like gyms, a do...

The Oglala- led community development corporation looks for solutions that grow out of local experience. Food sovereignty, youth leadership, and social enterprise drive the organization, which has an ambitious plan to build a model sustainable community on the Pine Ridge Reservation . Share This: As the organization celebrates its 10 th anniversary, a Native American community development corporation started by young people is building an ambitious, authentically Lakota rural community from the ground up on the Pine Ridge Reservation . “Whether it’s food poverty, or the lack of jobs, or the huge housing shortage here at Pine Ridge, we start by asking why we haven’t figured it out. Where are the gardens? Where are the homes? It’s like no one had ever questioned these things,” said Jennifer Irving, Director of Regional Equity for the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation . Thunder Valley describes itself as a “ grassroots community development corporation guided by th...

It’s served as a classroom annex for the former Lancaster Boys’ High School just around the corner. In 1909, part of it was converted into a basketball court for the school, “with the maximum cost of equipment not exceeding $25,” according to newspaper records. It was the home for Lancaster Bible College ’s precursor, Lancaster School of the Bible. It’s housed more than one church congregation — most recently, Foursquare Gospel Church . Standing solidly on North Mulberry Street , the square, pale yellow building looks over Shreiner-Concord Cemetery and Thaddeus Stevens’ gravesite. And it’s been a public hub of one kind or another in this west-end section of Lancaster city since it was built in 1880. Now, 128 N. Mulberry St. is gearing up for its newest incarnation: Four apartments carved out of cavernous church space . For Ben J. Cunningham, a Millersville University professor and part owner of the project, its been part investment, part neighborhood effort and a test of the crea...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...