Quote:
Originally Posted by The Model
I'm not a big fan of the housing on Durango. The former Victoria Courts should have been the home of the new arena. What a great site, with an Arena, Dome, and Convention Center, and lets not forget the tower in the middle of all that. Too Bad.
I would have like to see some mid rise apartments, 10 to 15 stories instead of same typical 3 story apartment buildings that we see anywhere else in this city.
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I know what you guys mean, I really do. But SA is not at that point yet. Give it a few years, best case probably 3-5 years (or 100K to 200K more residents,) and a transit system before we see a true shift in demand for housing in the DT area.
I'm not a fan of THE housing on Durango either, but I am a fan of HOUSING in general in the DT area. I would have liked to see some mid rise housing too, but the fact is that a project like Vistana would have cost 3X what this is costing. Doesn't make too much sense when you have a large lot of land to work with, limited budget, and get the same number (actually 2 less) of units. Newer apartments are not hard to come by in this city and for some people, living in Stone Oak is better than DT. People still choose "shiny and new" over "location" in this city. The only "location" we have in this city is probably AH near the Universities area, Quarry, and MedCenter. Even the newer places can't justify building higher than 4 stories in the suburbs, with land availability still high and knowing that newer, shinier apartments popping up all over the place will take their tenants in 2 years.
Maybe once we get a little more density inside of 1604 to the north, which will mean more traffic, and LRT comes online down Fred Rd., we might see some higher density projects start to pop up when "location" starts to beat out the "shiny and new."
Before we can see a higher density project, demand needs to be firmly in place. Developing a rental housing market is a step towards the upward spiral that will emerge from the addtion of new residents to DT. This is the only way we can begin to see a shift towards more local-serving businesses in DT. Once those businesses are there, people will not need arm twisting to convince them to move DT.
And so far in this city, the only thing we have resembling these apartments on Durango is Quarry Village (minus the retail) and some condos on Louis Pasteur in the Medical Center.