Multi Housing News August 2012 : Page 29
The $28 million, 11-acre, Southborough, Charlotte: Street-front townhomes and, behind them, a layer of fl ats, wrap around and hide a Lowe’s big box home improvement store (with rooftop parking). Architectural styles range from traditional to modern in context with neighborhood surroundings. San Diego, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Ore., Phoenix, Jersey City, N.J. and Baltimore. Additionally, at least 13 metro areas are cur-rently building light rails, and many more are being planned, according to an NPR report by JJ Sutherland, which says that it is diffi cult to fi nd a city in U.S. that is not planning or building a light rail system. From multifamily developers’ point of view, light rail systems are an amenity to the extent they in-crease access to the site and mobility of the region, or attract work-ers or residents, says ULI’s MacCleery. For fi xed rail, the development scale is at the level of the station. For transit-oriented development to work, the system needs to be well planned to begin with, says MacCleery, and the zoning and regulatory environment has to be conducive to development. To be successful, the light rail should be able to take people where they want to go and be convenient, safe and affordable to use, she notes. And of course, the rapid transit should be in the right loca-tion with respect to real estate markets. “Transit does not make a bad location good. It makes a good location better,” quotes Todd Noell, president of Noell Consulting Group. Banking hub Charlotte’s award-winning Lynx Rapid Transit Services system, which opened in November 2007, provides an www.multi-housingnews.com | August 2012 29
Publication List
Using a screen reader? Click Here