“There had been a few different times where it was under contract but then fell through for one reason or another,” says Tyson Lemke, senior pastor at the church on S. Maple since 2010.
First to try, in 2008, was a 640-bedroom behemoth aimed at students named 42 North that council rejected 10–1 after neighbors protested that drunken students would inevitably scatter red plastic beer cups in their neighborhood.
Second was “The Grove,” with just 224 bedrooms, in 2012. Lemke says he’s “not entirely sure” what happened to that one: “There was a financing thing and there [were] the challenges of developing in Ann Arbor [that] started to make them nervous.”
Promising “sophisticated style,” Avant will have 256 apartments with 418 bedrooms spread over nineteen buildings. The Southfield developer hopes to have them done by the end of next year. | Photo: Mark Bialek
Third was a project tentatively called Hansen Hill Condo with 150 apartments and townhouses that Lemke says got to “conversations about a purchase price, but not anything that went through.”
Finally, Southfield-based developer Arco Construction started talks with the church in 2017 about a project originally conceived with 600 bedrooms in seventeen buildings. The following year council voted 7-3 on factional lines to approve a revised plan for 256 apartments with 418 bedrooms spread over nineteen buildings. Called Avant, the project is aimed at all ages and scheduled to open by the end of 2023.
Lemke says that Arco paid $5 million for the property—money the church will use to build a 34,000-square-foot expansion that will house a gymnasium, youth ministry classrooms, and common space. He’s hoping to be done by late next summer—or just before Avant.
Lemke can’t say how much the expansion will cost. “We’re still trying to figure that part out,” the pastor admits. “We’re having a difficult time trying to lock in what the final price is gonna be.” But he knows inevitably it’ll be cheaper now than in a year.
He can say how he’d greet 400 new neighbors: “Come to church,” Lemke laughs. “We’ve had a number of people from the neighborhood walk here to church and we love it. So having people right here on top of the hill with us is wonderful.”
