HTG’s Matthew Rieger with rendering of College Station (Housing Rely on Group, Getty)
Hollywood gave conditional approval to a layout and web site system for University Station, an 8-story, affordable rental improvement by Housing Believe in Group.
The Hollywood City Fee conditioned its approval on a pledge by Coconut Grove-based mostly HTG to restore the curvy architectural design and style that the developer initially proposed for College Station. The fee also permitted a $2.4 million town financial loan to HTG to enable finance the project.
The two-building complex in downtown Hollywood would have 216 flats with down below-market place rents, all reserved for tenants who obtain a lot less than the space median revenue. The flats will have just one or two bedrooms, and 141 of them will be for men and women accumulating 60 % of AMI, the rest to people with as minimal as 22 percent and as considerably as 80 p.c of AMI.
Project facilities will include a swimming pool, gymnasium, group kitchen, lounge place, and children’s playroom. A pedestrian bridge would link the properties on the second ground.
Nonetheless, commissioners called the most recent design and style also boxy. “It appears to be like a glorified university dorm,” commissioner Adam Gruber stated. Mayor Josh Levy reported “rounded elements” in earlier conceptual renderings were lacking from the newest renderings of University Station.
Commissioners explained they anticipated a grander architectural statement due to the fact University Station would increase on a downtown web site the town promotes as a commuter train station. The development site is throughout North 21st Avenue from the Florida East Coast railroad.
“I was expecting additional of a ‘wow’ variable … When any individual takes the train in this article, we do not want them to see bland,” mentioned commissioner Kevin Biederman.
The town-owned development site together North 21st Avenue, in between Fillmore Avenue and Polk Avenue, is now occupied by a parking lot, a municipal shuffleboard facility, and Barry University Higher education of Nursing and Wellness Sciences. Barry’s nursing university would occupy at minimum 11,000 square feet of new floor-ground area at University Station. HTG also ideas to create 4,000 square toes of business house on the floor floor.
Housing Trust Team, led by CEO Matthew Rieger, will make a one particular-time capitalized lease payment of $3.86 million to lease the town-owned Hollywood Station enhancement site, in accordance to town of Hollywood spokesperson Joann Hussey.
In 2016, the city issued a official request for proposals to acquire the 2.5-acre website together the FEC railroad, but bought no responses. HTG then created an unsolicited bid to lease and build the web page, which activated an additional RFP course of action, and HTG emerged as the winning bidder in 2020.
The metropolis efficiently urged HTG to build a more substantial parking garage than originally planned at College Station to enhance the property’s charm for a train station, stated Raelin Storey, director of Hollywood’s office environment of marketing and advertising, communications, and financial enhancement. College Station’s garage is made with 587 parking spaces, significantly additional than a 300-place minimum the metropolis requires. Integrated in the total are 254 community parking spaces. The enhancement also will have 30 handicap spaces, 4 additional than essential.
A analyze by the Florida Office of Transportation proposed Hollywood as just one of six achievable station stops on the east facet of Broward County for commuter practice service on the FEC railroad, probably from Tri-Rail. It operates trains on tracks farther west with suburban stops in Palm Seaside, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties.
“Because of the Broward commuter rail dialogue, we’ve been instructed we require to have 370 [parking] areas in the vicinity if we want to get a [train] station in Hollywood,” Storey claimed at the fee conference. The city fully commited $5 million to HTG to stimulate building of community parking areas, which was not section of the company’s initial prepare, she said. The total expense of the parking garage will be $18 million, Rodrigo Vargas, SVP of progress at HTG, informed the town commission.
Housing Belief Group plans to finance the University Station development with Federal Small-Income Housing Tax Credits, allotted by the Florida Housing Finance Company, and other resources of funding, Vargas explained. The town of Hollywood would cost an annual curiosity price of 1.5 per cent on the unpaid harmony of its $2.4 million personal loan to HTG, which would have a expression of 17 years.
HTG previously developed an economical housing development in Hollywood called Hudson Village. The eight-tale, 96-unit venture is at 1901 South Federal Highway.
