photo by: Douglas County GIS map

Plans for a new apartment complex have been filed a 27 acre piece of vacant ground along the South Lawrence Trafficway. The 400-plus bedroom apartment complex would be built on the on the property just east of Michigan Street and just north of the four-lane SLT in the photo above.

After a more than 20-year wait for the completion of the eastern leg of the South Lawrence Trafficway, it was only natural to wonder what that bypass project would draw to the area. We are getting a pretty clear answer on one front now: large new apartment complexes.

Plans have been filed for a $28 million, 400-plus bedroom apartment complex along the eastern leg of the SLT. The project is slated to go next to another large apartment complex that was constructed about a year after the bypass project was completed in 2016.

The latest plans are for 3250 Michigan St. In case you have forgotten, Michigan is the new street that was built south of 31st Street, in between Ousdahl Road and Louisiana Street. If you are still having a hard time picturing the location, as you are traveling east on the SLT — east of Iowa Street — you see an apartment complex full of brightly colored, houselike structures. This new complex will be on 27 acres of vacant ground just east of that complex.

That existing complex, The Nest, is billed as a student housing development. The proposed project — tentatively named Union at the Loop — isn’t necessarily being pitched as a student housing development. Instead, it is being proposed as an affordable housing project.

Kraig Gallagher, a development manager with Indianapolis’ The Annex Group, confirmed that the company has received federal tax credits to help build the project. However, he referred other questions, such as the expected monthly rental rates, to a marketing representative with the company. If I hear more details, I’ll provide an update.

However, the use of tax credits usually does provide some guarantees about the affordability of a project. For instance, most of the apartment development in the Warehouse Arts District in East Lawrence has been done with the help of tax credits, and those credits basically have placed upper limits on the amount of rent the developer can charge for those units. I don’t have enough information to know whether this project is using the same type of credits and will have the same sort of rent controls, but the developers certainly are emphasizing the affordability aspect of the project.

Whatever the case, the project will be a major addition to the Lawrence apartment market. Plans call for 12 buildings plus a clubhouse on the property. The development is proposed to include 80 one-bedroom apartments, 108 two-bedroom apartments and 60 three-bedroom apartments.

Developers hope to begin construction in May. The project does require some approvals from City Hall, but not a ton of them. The property is already zoned for apartment development. Traffic in and out of the complex would use Michigan Street, which is already constructed. The project needs site plan approval — the technical details of parking, lighting, building placement and other such issues — and that process is done administratively by the city’s planning department. As it stands now, the project won’t need any approvals from the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission or the City Commission.

As for the company behind the project, The Annex Group has just under 20 student apartment complexes across the country, according to its website. The closest one appears to be in Warrensburg, Mo., serving students at the University of Central Missouri. The company’s website also lists about a half dozen affordable housing projects, primarily in its home state of Indiana.

Based on the application on file at City Hall, the Lawrence project presumably would fall into that affordable housing category. The company has built some of those projects in major college communities, most notably in Bloomington, Ind. It lists amenities like a fitness center, community garden and a playground. A brochure for that property listed rent rates between $900 to $1,200 for two- and three-bedroom apartments.

Plans for the Lawrence project show a playground and community building. As for the apartment buildings, there will be 12 of them ranging in height from two to three stories, according to the plans.

One other item to note about the project is that it continues a trend of out-of-state companies becoming more aggressive in building in the Lawrence market than some of the longstanding local developers. Case in point is that the property that this project is slated for is owned by a company led by one of Lawrence’s larger apartment developers, Tim Stultz. For whatever reason Stultz is selling this property rather than developing it himself. Certainly, local apartment developers haven’t completely ruled out projects in Lawrence, but it does appear that the locals and the out-of-town developers are viewing the Lawrence market a bit differently right now.