photo by: Nick Krug

A student walks across a vacant lot catty-corner from the HERE apartments along Mississippi Street on Monday, Oct. 17, 2016.

Two years after opening its doors, the HERE apartment complex can finally lease all of its units.

When it opened in August 2016, the seven-floor, 624-bedroom apartment and retail complex at 1111 Indiana St. was not permitted to lease 75 of its bedrooms because of a parking shortage in its underground garage. The second phase of the complex’s parking addition was recently completed, allowing all units to be rented and setting in motion a final approval that would allow the Chicago-based developers to begin receiving local property tax breaks for the project.

The previous City Commission provided the developers more than $8 million in incentives, including about $5.7 million in tax rebates over the 10-year incentive period and a sales tax exemption on construction materials that saved the project about $2.4 million. However, the Journal-World previously reported that developers have had to forgo the property tax breaks until the parking shortage was resolved and a final occupancy permit was issued for all apartments.

The parking issues date back to the conception of the project, which was originally to have a robotic underground parking garage that could closely park vehicles and would serve all the building’s apartments. But the company that produced that robotic system went bankrupt, and the complex instead has a valet-operated parking garage that lacks capacity to serve the entire building. To resolve the parking shortage, HERE has now built two surface parking lots near the apartment building, the first of which required the demolition of two houses. The second lot was done in conjunction with the realignment of Fambrough Drive. Twenty-one bedrooms still could not be leased until the second lot was built.

The city’s director of Planning and Development Services, Scott McCullough, said that second lot was recently completed and earlier this month the city provided HERE a revised temporary certificate of occupancy that releases all the remaining units. McCullough said a few outstanding items remained but that once those were complete the complex would receive its final certificate of occupancy.

The temporary occupancy permit expires Sept. 4. To receive its final permit, the general contractor needs to complete some “punch list” items, such as installation of a handrail for a retaining wall, pavement marking and crosswalk on Mississippi Street, and replacing storm sewer inlet grates to KU specifications, according to a letter to the developer that the city provided to the Journal-World. The letter states that the final permit will be issued once the punch-list is completed and the city receives reimbursement for inspection fees, which are estimated at $36,000.