Apartment Choice

Last week the East Design Review Board threw a wrench in plans to begin construction on the complex planned around Capitol Hill Station when they declined to recommend any part of the project, including Capitol Hill Housing ’s planned 110 affordable homes on the B-North site. Board members voiced a variety of concerns, from Kenny Pleasant ’s objections to color palette to the chair Curtis Bigelow ’s concerns about the location of the daycare on Broadway, which he found to be in poor taste or perhaps dangerous. There was also Bigelow’s feeling that the building just hadn’t reached a high enough pinnacle of greatness. “This is a really good building. I think we were expecting it to be a great building,” Bigelow said, as quoted by Brandon Macz in Capitol Hill Times . Capitol Hill Housing ’s Communications Manager Ashwin Warrior said not getting the recommendation last week will certainly delay completion of the affordable housing and increase costs on the non-profit. “We anticipate...

There were many aspects of the four- site Capitol Hill transit - oriented development the East Design Review Board liked, but confidence was not high enough to clear it for permitting on Wednesday. Situated above the light rail station , the transit- oriented development will be Capitol Hill’s largest construction project to date, creating more than 400 apartment units in a superblock that borders Broadway , 10th Avenue, East John Street and East Denny Way. Each of the four buildings will be seven stories. Three will provide around 20 percent of their apartment units at affordable levels, while the Capitol Hill Housing B-North site will include 110 units at affordability rates of 30-60 percent of the area median income . The East Design Review Board ’s last assessment of the development, which is being led by Portland- based Gerding Edlen Development (GED), was in December. Board members agreed developers responded to the guidance provided at that time, but didn’t feel every r...

UConn’s place in the Hartford skyline . Hartford — For nearly a half-century, the University of Connecticut has had no place to call its own in the state’s capital city. Today that changes as Connecticut’s flagship university opens the doors of its new $140- million downtown branch campus on Prospect Street . The arrival of the campus, which comes after five years of false starts and setbacks, is a milestone for the university and the city of Hartford. Hundreds attended the grand opening ceremony downtown Wednesday morning . For UConn, it marks the institution’s return from the suburbs into the heart of the city – where the school first opened its Greater Hartford branch in 1939. It moved to West Hartford in 1970. The university, in the years since, had been able to continue to claim a “presence” downtown. Some of UConn’s graduate business programs are housed in a space it leases in 100 Constitution Plaza, and the university’s basketball and ice hockey teams play games in the XL ...

A decade after the crash, Shannon Valley housing estate , on the outskirts of Ballaghaderreen, in Co Roscommon, remains unfinished and partly in ruins. Although the number of “ unfinished housing developments ” has fallen sharply since 2010, Shannon Valley is one of hundreds that still dot the country. The Guls: ‘Every day I put rats in the bin’ Fatima Gul says her little brother, Yousaf, doesn’t like the rats. He jumps up on the sofa or the table in the living room when they come into the house. Their parents don’t allow Fatimar, who is 10, or her nine-year-old sister, Maryam, or Yousaf and his twin, Zohra, who are five, to play near the houses on the other side of their green. It’s too close to the rats and the rubble. Shannon Valley “ ghost estate ” outside Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. Photograph: Simon Carswell" height="349" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.3181475!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg" width="620...