Campustown Redevelopment
- Thread starter Haverhill
- Start date
Ideally, Campustown would be for undergrads and Downtown would be for grad students and young professionals. Both would be dense enough to have frequent enough bus routes between the two to make them both pretty accessible to campus and other parts of Ames.
i'm admittedly a design snob when it comes to stuff like this and you are right-on. here is an example of something similar that, to me, is a much better situation with the traffic and icy conditions in winter. Down the street from my parents house in Saint Paul.
The worst part is after they built Legacy Towers or one of the first tall buildings, they created an ordinance requiring a 15ft setback for each couple stories up, to help with sun/shadow and scale. Then for all of the new Lincoln Way dev't (esp Kingland), the developers said (claimed? just to see if they could get away with it?) that the setbacks made their entire projects economically unfeasible, and so all upper story setbacks were waived.
The Kingland one was only 3 stories, and a narrow lot, so maybe I can see that but the 6-story Foundry and 2320 ones will definitely have some issues.
All that said, I think Kingland is ugly (no features/trims) and the 2320 and Foundry (especially) look sharp.
I would agree that some of it is to much but there is also the opposite side where students live in crapholes. Some people I think figure I'm paying a crap ton of money to go to school I should at least have somewhere nice to live.
Any news on what was decided for the proposed development on hayward? I see the council approved the Breckenridge project on west lincoln way but didn't see anything about that one.
what is average rent in ames now? i paid $800/month for a 2 bedroom on campus ave in 2006/7 and that was high because of the proximity to campus.
It seemed to me when I was at ISU a couple years ago that the luxury student housing was disproportionately suburban Chicago/Minneapolis students. They/their parents' idea of "reasonable" housing costs would be much different, and Ames real estate is dirt cheap compared to a lot of other places. So even the luxury apartments are a decent price in their view.
There were also more foreign students there as well but that's a different story because nearly all of the foreign students seemed to be quite wealthy
$800/person or total?? I'm paying $470/person for a 3 bedroom on Campus Ave now. Rent will be over $500 next year though.
Lived above Jeff's Pizza seven or eight years ago with a friend. I think rent for 2bd/1ba was $640 + electric and cable. I was shocked it was so low considering the access to campus and Welch. Friends in Cyclone, Legacy, etc were paying way more per person. IIRC Campustown Properties always had the highest rates by far in housing within 2 or 3 blocks of campus but people ate it up to be close to the school and stumbling distance from the bars.
Son pays $429 for three bedroom close to campus and bars of course.
Looked at one of the new ones last year and it was $700 in a four bedroom.
seems like these developers don't have a market ceiling because students can take out more loans for living.
$800 each?!
In 2006 I paid $200/mo as part of a 6 person 6 bedroom house on the green/red routes near City Hall/Wheatsfield 6th/Grand.
They voted to ensure vehicle access to the parking structure of the building from the city lot and they approved that the lighting/window glazing met the urban revitalization criteria for natural daylight requirements
If they can't turn it into a ped mall and/or relocate the fire station, then at the very least that needs to be an access road or one-way heading north. There's no reason to have traffic turning up that street from Lincoln Way. Turn it into one way, get rid of the parallel parking, widen the sidewalks and allow the businesses to have outdoor seating.
