Rooms with a view top 2014 building projects

The four biggest projects receiving building permits from Champaign and Urbana in 2014 were all student apartment complexes with three of those going up along Green Street.

While Green Street appears ripe for more development in 2015, watch for more student apartments to take shape along University Avenue.

Already, the Campus Circle Urbana complex is rising in the 1000 block of West University Avenue in Urbana.

Farther to the west, the Latitude apartment complex is expected to be developed on the north side of University Avenue between Fifth and Wright streets in Champaign.

Plus, buildings have been cleared at Fourth and University and at Third and University, ostensibly to make way for new developments there.

The six biggest student apartment projects for which permits were issued this year will add 625 apartments to the mix. Most of those apartments will have more than one bedroom, so it's projected the six complexes will have a total of about 1,900 beds.

The tallest of the new projects is HERE, a 16-story apartment building at the northwest corner of Fourth and Green streets in Champaign. When finished, it will have 143 apartments on the sixth through 16th floors and a total of 528 beds. It will have an automated parking system on the second through fourth floors and a fitness room and outdoor patio on the fifth floor.

"HERE is topping out the concrete structure, and interior work is well underway," according to JJ Smith, the chief operating officer for Chicago-based CA Ventures (formerly Campus Acquisitions), which will own and manage HERE.

CA Ventures will also own and manage West Quad, the apartment complex being developed on the south side of Green Street just east of the Canadian National railroad tracks in Champaign.

"At West Quad, the two-level parking deck along the tracks is built, and the apartment (section) on top of it is framed up three additional levels," Smith said. "The town homes around the grand courtyard have begun to be framed as well."

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Rooms with a view top 2014 building projects