DAYTON — The city of Dayton is working to address housing shortages created by physical storms and the high demand and low supply of places to buy and rent.
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Forest Avenue used to be the home to a large housing project known as Hampton Square, but it is now demolished.
Just up the hill from the former neighborhood was the former all-girls Julienne High School, but now the city is planning to bring hundreds of new places to live there.
Sky 7 and everyone living in the surrounding neighborhoods can see about 13 acres of land at the site.
City officials see it too and have identified the land for greater use.
At a recent meeting, they changed the zoning from single-family to mature multi-family dwellings.
Dayton Planning Division Manager Tony Kroeger said that the need for housing got even larger when tornadoes swept through Dayton just four years ago, wiping out hundreds of apartment units.
“There’s a need for new, quality, safe, attainable housing and that’s what this is intended to provide,” Kroeger said.
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The city has a developer ready to move forward on building 11 apartment buildings with 260 units in all.
“It’s on 13 acres, let’s keep in mind, it’s a large footprint of land,” Kroeger said.
The developer has already released conceptual images of what those apartment buildings will look like.
Seven two-story buildings face residential areas of Homewood Avenue and Old Orchard Avenue.
Additionally, four, four-story buildings in the interior of the property face the more commercial Forest Avenue.
“The plan is for one building, along Forest Avenue, to have commercial space and it will most likely be in the form of a daycare,” Kroeger said.
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Kroeger believes this is exactly the type of development the city should bring to a unique urban site with great views and geographical features.
The bottom line is helping the city’s people move forward.
“That sounds great for a lot of people in the city because a lot of people are homeless and don’t have any houses so that sounds really good, I hope they get this done,” Dayton resident Jamal Austin said.
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