To the editor:

My wife and I are residents of the 50-some single-family home Springwood Heights subdivision, located southeast of the corner of Clinton Parkway and Lawrence Avenue. The historic Stone Barn fire station is located in our neighborhood.

A large, out-of-town college housing company that competes with the developer of the HERE apartments is requesting to build an apartment complex similar in size, 520 bedrooms in two buildings, two to four stories tall, on 9 acres abutting our neighborhood on the corner of Clinton Parkway and Crestline Avenue.

This land is surrounded on three sides by single family, residential town homes and the First Presbyterian Church. A day care center is located in the middle of the property that the apartments will surround. It is currently zoned as a transitional area allowing smaller mixed office and residential use. In order for these apartments to be built, as designed, the developer will require three major changes to the city/county zoning codes:

1. Amend the comprehensive plan, which states this area should be zoned the way it currently is.
2. Request that this parcel’s zoning be changed from its current zoning to multifamily zoning.
3. Designate this area as a Planned Development Overlay District, which would allow the developer to put more apartments in a smaller zoning designation.

These types of massive apartment projects should be reserved for nonsingle-family areas where they don’t overwhelm established homeowners, destroy the habitat and increase noise and traffic congestion.

We ask the Planning and City Commissions to vote no on this project and urge the developers to look for a more appropriate area to build this student housing.