West Lafayette City Council Approves Two High-Rise Buildings

I know many people in the neighborhood are upset by this project, although from what I’ve seen they tend to be people that moved near a University and then got mad when the University expanded, which simply doesn’t seem logical to me. The attorney for the project developer said approximately $900k in additional tax revenue will be brought in with this building. That’s a lot of money.

Purdue has had a shortage of restaurants and bars around Ross-Ade Stadium and Mackey Arena, which hurts the fan experience. I’m not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but as fickle as Purdue fans are, the town can’t afford to hurt the fan experience. In addition, the lack of a decent supermarket on/near campus is ridiculous. I know it isn’t a very far drive to Payless, Marsh or even WalMart, but it’s always seemed strange to me there isn’t a walkable grocery store by campus.

Two city council members apparently said residents in the area are adamantly against the building due to fear of “student rental creep.” Again, why live near a 40,000 student University if you don’t want to be near students? For the last three years, I lived literally two blocks from where this will be. It already is 90% students in the area. “Student rental creep” isn’t something these people should fear. It’s already happened.

The unanimously-passed State Street Corner project is a five-story, mixed-use building, that would contain more than 20,000 square feet of retail planned for the basement, first and second floors.

"“There would be 24 units containing 49 bedrooms for the third, fourth and fifth floors. The building is planned for the northwest corner of Northwestern Avenue and State Street, meaning the current building that houses the Egyptian Lounge, Subway, Where Else? Bar and the Prime Campus Housing offices would be demolished.”"

This project will move Where Else? to the Chauncey Hill mall to make way for the new building. The only thing strange about this is they JUST renovated Where Else? in the last two years. As you can tell from the unanimous approval, this project isn’t nearly as controversial. I just hope they’ll finally add a new bar or two to the area.