After spotting a white shuttle bus around town emblazoned with the blue logo for Owl Creek Apartments, that is the question. Maps show no Owl Creek in Ann Arbor. There is, however, a new apartment complex with that name on Nixon Rd.
It’s owned by the Bleznak family’s Woodbury Management (which also owns Woodbury Gardens off E. Stadium). While planning the complex, they called it the Annex, because the former Nixon farm had to be annexed to the city before it could be developed.
The first of three buildings opened last June and the second in February, with the third targeted for completion this June. Studio to three-bedroom apartments run $1,400-$2,700 a month. “The first building is at about 92 percent occupied [and we’re] currently leasing the second and third building,” says Woodbury VP Mike Kolb. “Our projection is to be full by December of 2020.”
Kolb explains that the new name honors the Bleznak’s favorite family vacation spot in Colorado: “It all meant so much to them, to their entire family, that they wanted to bring that back into it and call this Owl Creek.”
Maps do show a creek flowing through the north side of the apartment site but it’s not named Owl Creek–or anything else. County water commissioner Evan Pratt suggests calling it simply an “unnamed tributary to Traver Creek.”
That anonymity could be a branding opportunity. “Will definitely look into naming the creek,” emails Kolb. “Would be a pretty cool idea!”
