The Minneapolis City Council is expected to approve another apartment building Friday in the Minneapolis Warehouse District, which has become a hotbed for new rental housing.
Schafer Richardson, a Minneapolis developer, has already received Planning Commission approval to convert a 1909 brick warehouse building into 44 loft-style apartments. The Cameron is geared toward people who work in the neighborhood and can't afford to live in some of the new development that's happening elsewhere in the city. Schafer has owned the 40,000-square-foot building for several years; it's adjacent to three condo buildings the company built over the past decade.
To make the units more affordable, they'll be smaller than typical, will average about 550 square feet and will be priced around $1,075 per month, or $1.95 per square foot. Other new apartments are leasing for $2 per square foot and up, but the units tend to be bigger.
Maureen Michalski, Schafer Richardson's senior project manager, said that the developer has owned the building for several years and that it's been vacant for about a decade. The company has applied for state and federal historic tax credits of about $3 million. Those historic tax credits have helped fuel hundreds of new rental units in the Twin Cities at a time when demand for rentals is growing. Schafer expects to start construction in the spring.
