On Monday, Janesville’s plan commission gets a first look at a plan to sell a city parking lot along North Parker Drive to developer Bear Development.
Big Radio News broke the story last week that Bear has walked away from a planned mixed-income apartment development along the river in
Janesville’s Fourth Ward and now is eyeing a quarter-acre site downtown.
A city plan commission agenda released late Thursday afternoon says Bear has offered to purchase the parking lot at 214 East Wall Street to build what the city calls “much-needed multifamily housing.”
The plan commission is being asked to recommend to the city council whether selling off the land to Bear is a good fit for city plans downtown. Janesville’s downtown business community began voicing concerns last week. Their worry: Mixed-income housing might draw tenants who lack the income to fuel a downtown economy built on consumer spending.
Business operators point out that the city and private investors had pumped millions of dollars into cultivating an economic ecosystem downtown. This investment was intended to eventually lead to revitalization of storefronts and a jump in property values. That was a core concept of the ARISE downtown plan spearheaded in 2015 under former City Manager Mark Freitag.
Lahner says average monthly rents Bear aimed to bring to its earlier, now abandoned Fourth Ward project are about the same as those proposed for the North Parker Drive development — a wide range between $450 and $1,500. Lahner says Bear walked away from the Fourth Ward plan along the Rock River after it found the site was not suitable for its project.
He says the proposed units at North Parker Drive apartments would have a rent subsidy, and the units would trend toward less expensive rents, with average rents between $1,000 and $1,200 a month.
Lahner told a Big Radio talk show host this week he thinks too many people monitoring the local housing market have gotten hung up on categorical descriptions of housing types such as “workforce housing” and “affordable housing,” versus “market-rate” or “luxury” housing.
Lahner pointed out that many Janesville homeowners have mortgages around $1,000 a month, and he says renters at multiple market rate apartments downtown pay around $1,000 a month. He describes the apartments Bear is proposing as “housing the average Wisconsinite or Janesvillean can afford.”
The downtown Business Improvement District’s executive board plans to meet Monday afternoon, a few hours before the plan commission meets. The BID has one agenda item — “discussion and possible action in regards to 214 East Wall Street.”
Big Radio was unable to reach the downtown BID’s executive director for comment on the planned meeting.
Bear’s project would face multiple layers of zoning and planning approval, and meanwhile, Bear is pursuing state tax credits for the project. The developer needs to own a site it would build on in order to apply for those incentives.
