A developer plans more apartments in downtown Elkhart’s River District. This project will include a parking garage built with public money.
With all of the redevelopment that’s happened in the district over the past decade, and with more planned, parking in Elkhart’s core is getting tight.
"The parking demands in that district, in the immediate area, are outpacing the parking supply," said Mike Huber, the city’s director of development services.
Huber says parking is especially scarce during events at the Aquatic Center. Cities work hard to develop such density downtown, so Huber says it's a good problem to have.
"This is a continuation of the momentum that we're seeing in downtown. The River District is becoming kind of one of the signature neighborhoods in the city of Elkhart."
Developer Dave Weaver’s WeImpact Group already is building 110 apartments with ground floor retail and office, and plans 20 more townhomes, north of Jackson Boulevard, next to the aquatic center. Now they’re ready to build 89 more apartments south of Jackson at NIBCO Parkway. They’ll demolish the office and retail building that’s now there. Its tenants include the Elkhart County Division of Family Resources, a state agency.
Under an agreement with the city, The WeImpact Group would spend about $38 million to build the four-story structure. The city would pay $9 million to build the garage. It would offer 110 parking spaces for tenants and 140 spaces for the public.
Like The Mill in Mishawaka and Eddy Street Commons in South Bend, the apartments and commercial space would wrap around the garage.
The Elkhart Redevelopment Commission is set to consider the proposal at their meeting Tuesday. This would be the third time the commission has issued economic development bonds to incentivize development in the River District, following bond issues in 2015 and 2017 that cleared the way for the Stonewater and River Point West apartment complexes.
