Michelle Brown, who lives and works out of her home at 7113 South Street, has compiled properties around her house, and Monday night pitched a plan to the Maplewood Planning and Zoning Commission to develop the .6 acres into a mixed-use planned unit development.
She owns four lots at the corner of South Street and Yale Avenue, and wants to demolish one house and build three. In the end there would be five homes including hers and another existing house on the property.
Each home could include up to 500 square feet of commercial space. The city is limiting the commercial use to bike shops, small retail clothing boutique, florist, professional office, book store, bakery, art studio, gallery, or cafe.
The three new homes would be approximately 3,500, 4,100 and 2,800 square feet in size, and Brown said they’re selling in the range of $340,000. Two have already sold.
Maplewood Director of Public Works Anthony Traxler said he likes the reinvestment in the area.
“I like the fact that the max you’re going to get as far as multi-family is a duplex,” he said. “It’s going to be an extensive reinvestment.”
The existing house, next to Brown’s, was for sale until she bought it. She called it “hideous,” and is going to demolish it, but she’s keeping the roof to move onto an existing garage, which will become her new ceramics studio. Brown said she also operates a construction company.
Before Brown’s presentation, several neighbors told the commission they were concerned about traffic and parking, but were less concerned when they learned it wasn’t going to be another apartment building going up. Apartments are to the south and west, and have a reputation of allowing trash to blow around.
Brown said the development will be very attractive and will complete the neighborhood feeling.
“They will be very visually pleasing. They will be cohesive all the way around, with gardens,” she said. “If you know the house I live in and the house that I own around the corner—I’m a landscape designer, so they will all look like that.”
The proposal will now go to the city council, and there will be additional opportunities for public review and comment.
The commission also approved an expansion of Foundation Grounds, 7298 Manchester Road, into the vacated space to the east.
I don’t think that house is hideous. It has lovely red brick and it looks like a style of more than 100 years ago. It’s an antique. However, perhaps there are structural issues if it hasn’t been maintained that one can’t see from the road. Otherwise, there are other houses in Maplewood more worthy to be called “hideous”.
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