Dec. 6 Groundbreaking On $14M Student Housing Project In Auburn Hills
AUBURN HILLS -- Auburn Hills will soon see a new mixed-use, 100,000-square-foot building designed with the city's growing graduate student population in mind.
The building will serve as a retail site and a preferred residence for graduate-level college students from Oakland University and Cooley Law School.
The planned four-story building and attached four-story, 279 space parking structure are situated on a 1.84-acre site zoned in the downtown district. The first floor of the building along Auburn Road will house 6,150 square feet of retail space and the remaining portions of the building will house 97 apartment units specifically marketed to graduate-level college students.
A groundbreaking is scheduled for 3 p.m. Dec. 6. Following a brief ceremony at the property, located west of Grey Road between Auburn Road and Primary, there will be an Open House until 5 p.m. at the downtown Auburn Hills office, 3395 Auburn Road, across the street from the new development.
Lansing-based Prescient Growth LLC, the developer, has already received endorsements from Oakland University and Cooley Law School to deem the building a preferred primary residence for their graduate students and law school students respectively.
The development is a public private partnership, with the building being developed, owned and operated by Prescient Growth LLC and the parking structure owned by the City's Tax Increment Finance Authority. TIFA captures growth in the tax base and reinvests that capture back into community infrastructure improvements such as roads, water, sewer and site developments. The total project is expected to cost about $14 million. The private investment for the apartments will be around $9.5 million and the public investment for the municipal parking structure will be approximately $4.5 million. TIFA had already authorized investments in water main upgrades, power line relocations and property acquisition prior to the project's initial submittal in anticipation of this type of redevelopment.
