Morningside Group has set the magic number for its Liberty Lofts development at four. Four more lofts sales and one of the downtown Ann Arbor's most significant projects in decades will be sold out.
The units have been hanging around for a little too long, so the Chicago-based developer is offering incentives to fill up what was once an old factory at the edge of downtown.
"We're hoping to work with buyers so we can close out what has been a really good project for us," says Ronald Mucha, member of Morningside. "We'd consider any deal within reason."
The incentives range from bargaining on customization of the units, parking spaces, upgrades to the units as well as pricing. The four remaining lofts range in price from the upper $300,000s to the low $500,000s.
A model for urban redevelopment, Liberty Lofts has won awards for turning an old factory into a high-density residential complex. Originally built as an automotive-parts manufacturer in the 1920s, the 68-unit building sits near the city's Old West Side, an old German immigrant enclave.
Approximately 70,000 of the development's 110,000 square feet comes from the original building. Lofts range in size from 844 to 2,337 square feet and emphasize the building’s industrial heritage with open floor plans, exposed mushroom-shaped concrete columns and burnished block concrete walls.
Construction workers also recently finished renovating the single-story section of the plant (at the corner of Liberty and First streets) into a commercial space.
This past spring, the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission gave Liberty Lofts an Adaptive Reuse Award --as an outstanding example of sustainable development, citing the graceful mix of vintage and contemporary structural elements while increasing downtown's housing density.
The developers were also lauded for efficiently using the land, effectively mixing retail and residential space and redeveloping a brownfield site in a flood plain.
Source: Ronald Mucha, member of Morningside
Writer: Jon Zemke
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