New student housing site up for vote

A bubble of new student housing could grow larger in the next few years if a request that would allow the construction of another central-city apartment building wins the Columbia City Council's approval tomorrow.

The rezoning request applies to two properties on Locust Street between Hitt and Waugh streets, just east of Salty's formerly the Athena nightclub and Club Memoir. It would convert the zoning from dense residential to planned commercial. The designation would allow the construction of a student apartment building with potential ground-level commercial space. The project is proposed by the Odle family as part of its Brookside brand.

Garrett Taylor, an attorney for the firm that represents the developers, said at most the building would feature 150 units and would be 80 feet tall, but he said an exact size had not been determined.

"We just don't want to hamstring ourselves right now," Taylor said at a Feb. 9 meeting of the Columbia Planning and Zoning Commission. That panel recommended allowing the proposed rezoning in a 5-3 vote.

Before making the recommendation, P&Z commissioners expressed concerns about where tenants of the planned apartment complex would park. The request contains an exception for a parking requirement that usually goes with planned commercial zoning.

City planner Matthew Lepke said the planned commercial designation offers some protection for residential aspects of the neighborhood, and the waiver of the parking requirement was included to entice developers to bring projects to that area of downtown.

"That's sort of been the cookie that's been extended to the developers to get them to come to areas that the city felt were ripe for redevelopment," Lepke said.

The building would stand next to another student apartment complex planned at the current site of Salty's. That project has been proposed by St. Louis developer Jeff Pernikoff, who plans about 190 beds at the site. The Odles also are building student complexes on Elm Street and the intersection of College Avenue and Walnut Street, and local developer Travis McGee is working on a student apartment complex on Ninth Street across from the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute.

P&Z Chairman Doug Wheeler, who voted against the recommendation, said he did not think the council had adequately addressed parking issues associated with the Odle's project at College and Walnut.

"Not all college students have cars, but a lot of them do," Wheeler said, according to meeting minutes. Andy Lee and Ray Puri also voted against the recommendation.

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New student housing site up for vote