Historic Detroit school building could be converted to apartments

[Airforceguy]

This will be a good fit for this neighborhood.
Historic Detroit school building could be converted to apartments

The Detroit Planning Commission on Thursday is considering a request to rezone the former William E. Higginbotham School at 20119 Wisconsin St., in the Garden Homes neighborhood near Eight Mile and Wyoming, so it could be turned into apartments by Detroit-based Urge Development Group.


The vacant school would be converted into 40 apartments while a pair of new garden-style apartment buildings would have 60 units across them, according to plans being considered today. In the school, there would be 10 studios, 24 one-bedroom and six two-bedroom apartments, while the new buildings would consist of 24 studios, 24 one-bedrooms and 12 two-bedroom units.


Urge Development owner Roderick Hardamon said there would be a mix of affordable housing, with some units affordable at rates between 50 to 80 percent of the Area Median Income, perhaps with some at 40 percent, as well.


That federally designated figure is sometimes controversial because it includes suburban income figures and therefore skews what is considered "affordable" upwards in a historically poor city. Generally, units at 50-60 percent at or below AMI levels are considered more within reach.

https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-e...-apartment-use

[jcole]

Similar thing done with the old school building in Almont; they turned the end of the school that had been the elementary into Senior Citizen apartments and assisted living and then the rest of the school, which had been junior and high school into a wedding venue with three or four different sized halls as well as the school kitchen into the catering area. Great use for a school that was begun in 1927

[expatriate]

There is a nice example of this in Plymouth and soon another in Grosse Pointe. I wish we were a little more creative in adaptive reuse of these fine old buildings rather than just demolishing them for cookie cutter "five over one" construction.

[Hypestyles]

hopefully this can happen more often to have more housing options in the city, beyond the core of downtown and cass corridor/midtown.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

A lot of old schools are quite attractive. It’s a shame that more are not being repurposed.