Actual rental units (not condos!) slated for Milling District

Who'da thunk? Amidst the rampant condo-ification of the Minneapolis downtown area in general, and the riverfront/milling district in particular, Brighton Development has broken ground on 93 units of rental housing, right across the street from the Mill City Museum.

As profiled in the current issue of the Downtown Journal, the project will have 85 "affordable" apartments, including 17 section 8 (subsidized) one-bedroom units for lower income renters. The remaining 8 units will be market-rate. The project is called St. Anthony Mills Apartments.

Being that this is new construction in an especially hot area of town, the rents can't quite compete with your average "classic" building in the Wedge or Whittier neighborhoods, but they're still right in the range of the median rates for the city, ranging from $629 to $992. Most fall between $673 and $808. Still, it took some doing to make it work, including project funding from a slew of city, county, state and federal agencies (see the article for more details).

Brighton Development has been involved in the past with the development of the Mill City Museum, along with the Humboldt Lofts, the North Star Lofts, the Park Avenue Lofts, the Washburn Lofts, the Stone Arch Lofts, and many others in the area. (The starting prices for the Humboldt Lofts, situated right across the street from the new project, are in excess of $600,000.)

Now, since we have two Lund's grocery stores on the way for denizens of the downtown area, all we need is 600 to 1000 additional units of affordable, rent-based housing in the downtown core, and we'll be on the road to achieving the healthy balance that should be part-and-parcel of every metropolis. (Oh -- and universal healthcare, a free or low-cost college education for every graduating senior, fully-funded child care, a thriving market-socialist economy, the immediate departure - how about next Tuesday? - of the murderous Bush administration and their cronies from our nation's capitol, and a few other things...)