By KALIN KROHE
Panhandle Post
At its Aug. 16 meeting, Alliance City Council approved the redevelopment plan for the Alliance Heartland Flats Mall and Apartments Project.
The new building will be located on the west side of Alliance along Highway 385 near the new Runza restaurant.
This new four-story development would bring 51 one and two-bedroom apartments, 11 extended stay hotel rooms and two retail bays into the city.
"Obviously, we've had the hotel [Holiday Inn Express]...took a little while to ramp up, but it's doing very well now," 385 Apartments LLC owner Mike Works said. "I'm super happy that the Runza is out there with us now. The owner of the Runza is also in favor of this project. I know there's been some concern, is there enough demand in town for 51 new apartments? I will tell you that we're doing this in a whole bunch of other small towns. And the answer is absolutely. The nice thing that we can do is we can use those as extended stay hotel rooms that we do need. And so we can use it either way. And for some reason that we don't rent them all out, we've got an extra dozen of them, on top of 11 on the first floor, we would turn them into extended stay hotel rooms and be very happy with that. We do have that demand and that need often from the hospital from people that are looking for something more that needs a kitchenette or people that are going to be there for over 30 days. But either way, we're recruiting sales tax from creating benefits to the city. I think it's something that the city has needed."
Works said they would like to start this new project in the next 30 to 45 days.
"My office gets a lot of calls for rentals, and I don't have near enough to offer anyone," Box Butte Development Corporation Executive Director Chelsie Herian said. "And part of that goes to the quality of the rentals as well. So, any new construction, I think will be a huge benefit to the community."
Works said the quality of these new apartments will be top notch.
"Speaking of the quality, we are building the exact same apartments that we're building in Lincoln, and other communities," Works said. "We're talking about stainless steel equipment. We're having an elevator in this building. So, people of all ages will be able to use this. We are seeing a lot of folks that are in their late 60s and 70s are using it as an in-between-stage, where they don't want to live in the house anymore, but then they don't want to go to a retirement home yet. You know we've got coarse countertops, bathrooms, LVT flooring...they are very, very nice. So, we're not going to skimping on anything here that we wouldn't do anywhere else."
The Alliance Housing Authority is also in favor of this new development coming to Alliance.
"We have a big waiting list of low-income people that want a single bedroom and the housing authority does not have any single bedroom units," Alliance Housing Authority Executive Director Patricia Klemke said. "So, when we have a single person and vacant units, we have to put them in a two-bedroom unit if we have them available with little waitlist. This would be a perfect opportunity for our Section 8 program because like [Herian] said there are not that many units available. Hopefully they would cooperate with us on a Section 8 program. The Section 8 is a guaranteed check from us, every month, there's no question. And I know Section 8 sometimes gets a bad rap for the quality of tenant. But if the landlord would do proper, you know, previous landlord checks, they could get a good tenant. They can always deny someone, I understand that. But if they would do their landlord check, you can get the quality tenants. We are authorized to lease up to 187 Section 8 vouchers. Currently, we only have 124 leased. So, the way our funding works is, the more we lease, the more we get in our budget the following year. So, it's based on your historic leasing level, we have got a huge reserve, we can support that. I fully support this. We have so many people that can't find a quality, you know, even a place...it doesn't matter if it's quality, or even if it's subpar, they just can't find anything. So, I fully support this."