Apartments near Chauncey get green light from plan commission after worries addressed

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A spokesman for a proposed 13-story apartment building to be built just on the southern edge of the Chauncey Square Mall found himself answering to several frustrated parents and students, looking for a promise that their current leases for the 2024-25 school year will be honored.

The Standard, planned by Georgia-based developer Landmark Properties, would be built in the 200 block of West Wood Street, hosting 254 units, with 680 beds and 212 parking spaces, according to plans submitted to the Tippecanoe Area Plan Commission.

Backing up dozens of letters submitted to the APC before Tuesday's meeting, several students and parents voiced fears of early lease termination, citing notices to tenants that leases could potentially be terminated by Dec. 31 despite being signed for the entirety of Purdue University's calendar school year.

Ryan Munden, a lawyer with RTS Law representing Landmark Properties, said those letters tenants received were required by a West Lafayette ordinance, but he apologized for the alarm the notices created.

"We will not terminate any leases in December, and to be clear, we do not want students to be displaced in the middle of the school year," Munden said. "We will allow the students to stay through the spring of 2025, assuming they are in compliance with their lease, and any resident whose lease extends beyond the spring of 2025 semester will receive some assistance in finding alternative accommodations."

Amy Owen, a Danville, Ind., mother of a Purdue student with a lease at 222 W. Wood St., said she found herself riding the line of being for and against the apartment development after listening to Munden's explanation for notices. But despite Munden's promise of leases being honored through the school year, she still wanted to see it in writing.

"We just ask that based on what was just shared, that be stipulated in whatever voting that you do to ensure that's in place for students that are in those apartments to kind of protect them through the end of May," Owen said. "I think I have learned as a parent of a student here on campus that it's very difficult, coming in as a freshman parent, you find out that very quickly you've got about four weeks to figure out where they're going to live the next year, and you don't know that's coming."

Owen said that as her daughter enters her junior year at Purdue this fall, they are preparing to enter the annual housing chase for her senior year, explaining that not having to make that scramble again in December would be much appreciated.

Additional voices of concern came from current students fearing the prices that could be attached to these new apartments will be unattainable for the average working student.

Isabel Arias, a Purdue student and current resident of 222 W. Wood St., said she opposed the development because of the current lack of affordable housing near and around Purdue's campus.

"Many students are having to resort to living very, very far off campus in order to simply find rent for $500 a month, and then they can barely afford it plus the costs of transportation of any kind," Arias said. "I also want to say that prioritizing the look of the landscape, when students literally don't have anywhere to live sometimes and can't afford anywhere to live, I think, is frankly demeaning to a lot of people at Purdue."

Brantly McCord, a graduate student, said while he lives across the street from the proposed apartment complex site, he fears how the development will affect his own cost of living as a ripple effect through the constantly increasing rent prices around West Lafayette.

Munden and APC members agreed that a clause promising students would not be forced to leave their rentals until the end of May could be added to the rezoning request's language before voting. The request to rezone the property from multi-family residential to planned development residential was unanimously approved by the APC.

The project now moves to the West Lafayette City Council for final action on the rezoning.

But before the final vote, Munden said while he would not be able to speak on the estimated cost to rent one of the units within The Standard, he did point to a statement made by former West Lafayette city councilman Ted Hardesty in 2022, explaining that the market will decide prices for housing.

"It's an issue of supply and demand," Munden said. "Until we've addressed the supply issue, we're not going to address the affordability issue."

Jillian Ellison is a reporter for the Journal and Courier. She can be reached via email at jellison@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @ellison_writes.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: The Standard apartments get green light from Area Plan Commission