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...

The 155- unit Ann Arbor City Apartments is under construction on West Washington and South First streets in downtown Ann Arbor . Daniel Brenner | AnnArbor.com Editor's note: The number of parking spaces to be held by Village Green has been corrected. Related story: Rent comparison : What can you get for $2,500 a month around Ann Arbor? Luxury apartments in downtown Ann Arbor are no longer just for students. The under-construction Ann Arbor City Apartments on the southeast corner of West Washington and South First streets is the first luxury apartment project built downtown in years that doesn’t cater to students. It’s designed for young professional renters as well as corporate relocation. "It's midway between the YMCA and the core of downtown where U-M jobs are," said Susan Pollay , executive director of Ann Arbor's Downtown Development Authority . "I think it feels like, from what I saw, exactly one of the things needed in this marketplace." ...

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...