Despite objections from some people living in the Charlotte area, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren's administration is moving forward with a proposal for a $77 million high rise development in that neighborhood.
City Hall officials are pursuing the plans laid out by Edgewater Resources, instead of a plan proposed by CEA International and Morgan Management. The Edgewater proposal would involve a hotel and conference center, about 120 condos, 50 townhouses and other amenities. The other plan would have been for a smaller, four story building.
Rochester's Director of Business and Housing Development, Spencer Ash, says the public will still get a chance to make additional comments.
"There will be an 8 month period of time built into the agreement with the preferred developer where the community, the business associations and neighborhood associations and interested stakeholders will have an opportunity to talk about the scope and scale of the project, to talk about their concerns."
But Ash notes that city officials feel the larger complex proposed by Edgewater brings the kind of scale needed to help this become a transformative project for the city.
Edgewater is a Michigan based company, but Ash says they will be working with a number of local companies on the project and will also have to meet requirements for hiring local people to build the development.
He says one reason Edgewater was chosen was because of the type of expertise they have with this kind of development. Ash did not want to commit to a specific time frame right now for when the project will be built.
