So yesterday late afternoon, a reader sent me a tip that Cathexis had come out with new Tessera building renderings. I thought they were pretty cool, (below) so I shared them with fellow blogger Mike McGonagle, who didn't yet know about them.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, between him and myself ,and between myself and Mike Hidgon from the RGJ, we did a little research and discovered that there is a request submitted to the city to abandon the entire alley between 6th and 7th Street, between Center and Lake Streets. The three of us often work together when we discover new tidbits to report on.
I don't think this alley abandonment has anything to do with the semi-defunct multi-block Tessera Entertainment District Project, which was then scaled down to a Phase-1 Office Building, which Cathexis has apparently been working on.
See image below.
The yellow dots represent all of the properties Italian Capital owns. So who is Italian Capital? They own the land, but the developer is this guy, Jason Doornbos, from Landmark Properties, a company specializing in acquiring assets and developing projects that lie within University Districts.
One wouldn't want to request an alley abandonment unless you were going to do a large project that required the demolition of the entire block.
Which brings me to something our mayor said in her State of the State speech, here. "We're also looking at a $50 million student housing project that is extremely exciting from a company that is very familiar with just student housing. "
I am guessing Landmark Properties is the 'company very familiar with student housing.' So putting two and two together, it seems pretty clear a massive student housing project is headed to this block, and they have requested an alley-abandonment for the city.
This is VERY exciting news for downtown, and I can't wait to see it break ground.
Three Blind Mikes!