Apartment Choice

SPOKANE, Wash --- Construction on the old Macy’s building in downtown Spokane will not be completed until next spring. The first two floors of the former Macy’s building were set to open for retail use as early as November. Some set-backs in construction, like flooding in the basement, has pushed back the opening date until spring. When the downtown Spokane Macy ’s closed in January 2016, renovations quickly followed. Centennial Properties bought the building and announced a plan to renovate the first two floors into a new retail space with the remaining seven floors for residential use. The new building will be called “The M,” it will feature 109 units ranging from 750 square feet to 1500 square feet. There are no price ranges set for these apartments yet. There will be a rooftop deck for all apartments that is dog friendly, it will also have a kitchen, seating and firepits. Now, about a year after the plans were announced, developers said construction will take longer than expecte...

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...