A five-story apartment building planned to open as early as 2009 would add more than 500 beds to a quickly growing segment of Route 1 that developers have recently targeted for student housing.
In the third student housing project to come before the city council in the past five weeks, developers presented plans for the StarView Plaza, a five-story apartment building that would go up on the empty lot next to Jiffy Lube.
The project was originally planned to be a hotel, but its principal developer Mukesh Majmudar, president and CEO of Star Hotels, said he switched the plans when Hyatt Hotels rejected his proposal for a franchise last year. The change in plans follows in step with two similar apartment buildings slated to open nearby that were once destined for other uses.
Like its future neighbors, the StarView Plaza will be a mid-rise building with plans for a brick facade and a mix of student housing and retail. The building will include 540 beds and retail space on the first floor. An atrium on its second floor will feature a pool, work out facilities and meeting rooms.
But the StarView Plaza differs from the other projects with a slew of eco-friendly initiatives that Majmudar said would make the apartment complex one of the greenest buildings in the city.
A specially engineered temperature control system will save on energy costs by naturally drawing heat to its upper floors and distributing it, the building’s architect Jon Grant said. Rainwater collected from the building’s rooftop and purified will run through its pipes, he added.
Grant pledged the building would be LEED Silver certified, which would require developers to pay for a stringent environmental review of the building. Few other developers moving onto Route 1 have said they’d pay for the certification, although all said they’d take steps to meet the standards regardless.
“This is a green project that would really make a mark,” said District 3 city Councilman Andy Fellows, who works for an environmental advocacy group and has introduced eco-friendly legislation.
Parking issues drew concerns from council members, even as the project’s plans call for an unusually high proportion of parking spaces for its size. As the council has recently had to restrict neighborhood parking by instituting permit parking, council members wanted to make sure the building would be able to meet the parking demand it would create.
The project is right across the street from the Berwyn Neighborhood, where District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin previously said the council could consider permit parking restrictions down the road if the problem spread there.
Madmujar presented two different timelines for the completion of the project. The faster one has construction beginning in September of next year and the development opening in August 2009. The second, “worst-case,” scenario has construction beginning in June 2009 and the project being ready to open in July 2010.
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