MONEY

DTN to build new MSU student apartments in East Lansing

Lindsay VanHulle
lvanhulle@lsj.com

EAST LANSING – Next spring, when Michigan State University students move out for summer break , about 15 cottage-style houses in the heart of East Lansing's central residential neighborhood will be torn down.

Garten Haus Apartments, as the buildings near Gunson and Beech streets are known, will be replaced with five three-story buildings by fall 2016. Lansing Township-based rental housing developer DTN Management Co., the developer for the $4 million project, will keep the name.

DTN's project includes 21 student apartments for a total of 10,500 square feet. The first floor of each building will be used predominantly for parking, company Vice President Colin Cronin said. All but two units will have two bedrooms. The remaining two units will have one bedroom each.

Cronin said DTN has been patching roofs, windows, siding and sewer lines but decided it would be a better investment to replace them. He said he did not know when they were built.

"They're just kind of falling apart and obsolete," Cronin said. "They're past their useful life by a long way."

The new Garten Haus project will improve sight lines for drivers at the intersection, which is asymmetrical, as well as improve the sidewalk, said Darcy Schmitt, East Lansing's planning and zoning administrator.

City incentives won't be used for the project, Schmitt said.

Most of the construction will be done in the summer and fall of 2015, Cronin said. Work is expected to last between 13 and 15 months.