The Tomorrow Building is a four-story, 40,000 square foot building in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee that was originally built as a hotel in 1888. After a $9.5 million transformation, it houses 39 furnished micro-unit apartments, shared social and work spaces, and four locally owned retailers. The building’s developer is part of an incubator for early-stage companies, which has found that the co-living concept has helped with retaining employees.
The Owyhee is a 139,424 square foot mixed-use building in downtown Boise, Idaho that combines 55,683 square feet of office space, 36 studio and one-bedroom apartments, 23,913 square feet of restaurants and convenience retail, and a ballroom for special events. The building was built in 1910 as a grand hotel, and is fondly remembered by many local residents. Its redevelopment included the first newly built apartments in downtown Boise in decades, and established that a market existed for luxury apartments and creative office space. Many local lenders and investors passed on the Owyhee’s renovation, but out-of-town investors saw its potential both during redevelopment and after completion.
Encore is a mixed-use, mixed-income redevelopment of what had been public housing just north of downtown Tampa, Florida, developed by a partnership between a housing authority and a bank-owned community development corporation. Encore currently comprises four apartment buildings with a total of 662 units of housing, 559 of which are affordable to seniors and family households with low incomes. At full buildout, the LEED for Neighborhood Development Gold–rated community will have up to 1,513 housing units, plus 180,000 square feet of office space, 200 hotel keys, and a 36,000-square-foot grocery on its 12 city blocks. Over eight years, the $425 million investment will create 5,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs on a site that previously supported only 18 jobs. Encore uses innovative and efficient districtwide approaches for stormwater management and cooling.
Storrs Center created a new, mixed-use downtown for the town of Mansfield, Connecticut, replacing a small shopping center adjacent to the University of Connecticut. Its 11 mixed-use buildings house 626 rental apartments and 139,707 square feet of retail and office; 42 for-sale townhouses and condominiums are also on the site. New retailers, such as a supermarket, restaurants, medical center, and bookstore, create an eclectic college-town atmosphere, while a half-acre town square and 20 acres of nature preserves provide places for gathering and recreation.
The project was initiated by a partnership between the town, the university, and local business leaders. Master developer LeylandAlliance, together with apartment developer Education Realty Trust (EdR), built the $169 million retail and residential development, while the town used over $25 million in grants for on-site infrastructure and planning. Storrs Center was a finalist for the ULI Global Awards for Excellence in 2015.
Mercantile Place is a rental apartment community in downtown Dallas that consists of four separate and diverse buildings with a total of 704 apartments. Two of the apartment buildings were converted from office buildings (one of which was historic), the third involved the renovation of a historic building previously converted from office space, and the fourth is a new 15-story apartment building. Though the buildings are located on three separate blocks, they share amenities and parking, and the four buildings have been positioned and marketed together as one residential community. The project also includes four restaurants at street level. Mercantile Place involved the use of tax increment financing (TIF) and is part of a public/ private effort to renovate older structures and bring more housing to downtown Dallas.
An adaptive reuse of the historic Denver Dry Goods Building, built in 1888. The six-story structure, located in downtown Denver, has been renovated for affordable and market-rate housing, retail, and office uses. The building’s 350,000 square feet of space was subdivided into smaller condominium units and repackaged, using 23 different financing sources.
The Uwajimaya retail store and Uwajimaya Village apartments are a successful experiment in medium-scale, mixed-use retail and housing development. Covering an entire city block in Seattle, Washington’ ™s International District, the ground floor houses Uwajimaya, a 60,000-square-foot (5,574-square-meter), 50-year-old Japanese grocery store and import business with the upper five floors devoted to Uwajimaya Village’ ™s 176 apartments. Replacing a truck maintenance facility on the site, the development builds upon the historic identity of the neighborhood while reaching out to a larger regional market.
One Arts Plaza (One Arts) is the first phase of a three-part mixed-use project that is intended to anchor the east end of downtown Dallas, Texas. It is located in the city’s Arts District, a master-planned area that is home to several performance halls and museums. The 24-story structure contains 27,000 square feet (2,508 sq m) of restaurants and other retail space on the ground floor, 498,000 square feet (46,266 sq m) of office space, 61 luxury condominiums on the top seven floors, and 1,161 parking spaces. One Arts was developed by Billingsley Company (Billingsley), an organization founded by former Trammell Crow employees Henry Billingsley and his wife, Lucy Billingsley, the daughter of Trammell Crow. A long-term “hold” developer, the firm develops and manages retail, office, multifamily, industrial, and townhouse products in the Dallas region. Billingsley Company is a land developer that buys land in anticipation of future growth.
The Heritage at Freemason Harbour is an upscale apartment community located in the historic Freemason neighborhood of Norfolk, Virginia. The 184 units are located in three U-shaped buildings over three blocks and feature courtyards and on-site parking. Retail and office space is located on the ground floors of two of the buildings. Targeting high-income singles and couples, the Heritage is the first luxury apartment development in downtown Norfolk.
Twenty years before construction was even contemplated for this 2.5-acre (one-hectare), 1.3 million-square-foot (120,770-square-meter) mixed-use complex, a Seattle landowner — with no prior experience as a developer — assembled a distressed downtown parcel for eventual redevelopment. As the neighborhood declined, Stimson Bullitt, founder of Harbor Properties Inc., positioned and consolidated his properties by swapping with other owners, and striking agreements with them and the city to fortify his germinating concept for a high-density downtown residential village, supporting and supported by retail establishments and restaurants. The entire enterprise was a risky venture, as there was then no identified market for high-end apartments in the downtown district. However, Harbor Properties’ decision to build a 16,300-square-foot (1,514-square-meter) public park and to reinforce an eight-block-long pedestrian corridor with retail spaces introduced new uses that enlivened the neighborhood and made the idea of living there attractive.