Springhouse Designs City West's Townhomes
Springhouse Architects Chosen as the Designer for City West’s 69 Single Family Townhomes
In Cincinnati's West End neighborhood, one of the closest places to live near TQL Stadium is in City West, a 48-acre mixed-income residential complex. A group of private developers plans to finish City West more than two decades after the mammoth project first broke ground. It houses 686 apartments, but part of it was never finished. The new $34 million project is expected to result in 69 new single-family townhomes, with the first eight starting construction in July, and the last ones to be delivered by 2029.
Springhouse Architects will be the designer of the new townhomes.
Sheri, Logan, and Todd represented Springhouse Architects, designers of Cincinnati's City West development's new townhomes, at the historic groundbreaking of the City West Development. Springhouse joined Cincinnati's mayor, Aftab Pureval; the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) CEO; commissioners; and developer Jodi Funke and her City West Development Team at the event.
Decades in the making, this real estate project, offering both residential homes for sale and affordable housing, will play a vital role in the development and revitalization of Cincinnati's West End. Springhouse is proud to be a partner in this project by designing homes that fit into the West End’s look and feel.
The homes will be around 2,700 square feet with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, rooftop decks and private, two-car garages with direct rear access. The homes can be upgraded with elevators.
Ten percent of the homes will be income restricted. The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority placed the affordability requirement into the memorandum of understanding signed by City West Development LLC last August. The rest of the homes will be market rate, with prices starting around $500,000.
The developers will seek LEED Silver certification, which in the city of Cincinnati confers a 15-year property tax abatement on improvements, capped at $400,000.
Background info
The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority is a public entity that was formed in 1933 to provide federally subsidized housing and housing assistance to low-income families, within Hamilton County, Ohio. The Authority is headed by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and is governed by a seven-person board of commissioners and is subject to the requirements of Title 24 and Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations and the Authority’s procurement policy.
The Community Builders in conjunction with the Authority developed a section of the West End neighborhood of the City of Cincinnati known as City West. The overall plans for the City West neighborhood included the planned development of homeownership units on Ezzard Charles and Laurel Park Drive. Eighteen units were developed and sold by Drees in prior years.
More than 1,000 townhomes were planned, including 250 owner-occupied homes, 338 market-rate apartments and 434 income-restricted units. Initial designs showed a banking center, a grocery store, child care facilities, new school buildings, redesigned streetscapes and open green space.
A city of Cincinnati report heralded it as “a catalyst for growth and rebirth in the West End.” The resulting community won design awards from the Congress for New Urbanism and the American Institute of Architects. But it did not finish, with Congress phasing out funding for the Hope VI block grants back in 2007.