City Council discusses downtown housing

Downtown Milledgeville may see the addition of more housing options, after last Tuesday’s City Council meeting. While the city currently only allows loft apartments with up to two bedrooms, the proposed changes would give business owners considerably more flexibility to convert upstairs and even ground floor levels into apartments.

If passed, the city housing ordinance would allow three bedroom loft apartments, ground floor apartments and basement apartments. According to City Councilman Steve Chambers, these changes, however, would not come without restrictions.

“There are certain things you have to have,” Chambers said. “You not only have to have the square footage but you have to have available parking. What we didn’t want to happen is that you have people living downtown and they park on the street and that takes up an already shortage of parking spaces.”

While there are square feet minimums, entrance specifications and off-street parking requirements for apartments on any level, the main stipulation lies with the ground floor residences. The apartments must not exceed 40 percent of the total square footage on the ground floor and the first 60 feet from the front door of the building must be committed to commercial purposes.

There are no restrictions on how many apartments a building can have, but any that have more than nine bedrooms and/or occupy two or more floors are required to establish a centralized trash collection point.

As long as retail remains the focus of downtown and at the front of the buildings downtown, Chambers approves of the proposed changes.

“To me that’s no different than anything done in the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s on up to the 1950s or 60s where you had store owners that lived on the property,” said Chambers. “They either lived behind or they lived above.”

According to Director of Milledgeville Mainstreet Carlee Schulte, downtown residents will only improve downtown’s economy.

“I think it will be great because we will have 24-hour living, so that means more people downtown, more people buying lunch downtown,” Schulte said.

Several loft apartments already exist downtown and there are plans for more including the old Belk building next to Digital Bridges.

“(The Belk building) will probably be the first project that we will see come to light that is going on downtown that is going to (have apartments on) the ground floor behind the retail space, upstairs and in the basement,” Schulte said. “I think it is a great thing to be done for that building especially because it is a monstrosity of a building and in these economic times you aren’t going to get another Belks downtown.”

In addition to finally giving a use to the building that was previously limited in use by its shear size, the transformation into apartments will greatly improve the facade, benefiting the entire downtown area.

Other projects that are in the works include the Bishop Company building at the corner of Hancock and Wayne streets, which is slated for mixed use, lofts upstairs and commercial use on the ground floor.  Two additional floors might also be added above the Baldwin Bulletin, McMillin’s Shoe Repair and Ultra Force Security Dish Satellite store for loft apartments.

The proposed ordinance is scheduled to be reviewed by the Planning and Zoning Commission before returning to City Council May 10.