Students seeking a more mature, upscale housing option in Urbana could find it as early as the fall semester of 2007.

“Older undergraduates and graduate students tend to want living conditions that are difficult to find on campus,” said central Illinois developer Chris Creek.

Last Friday, Creek’s firm, CTC Properties LLC, obtained the old Kmart site at the corner of Florida Avenue and Philo Road with the intention of constructing a luxurious complex with no less than 300 single- and double-bedroom units.

The five-story building is heavy on amenities such as quiet courtyards, an in-ground pool, multiple hot tubs, interview rooms, mini-lecture halls and computer labs.

“I feel I can put the nicer touches on these apartments because graduate students take better care of things,” Creek said.

Eligibility will not be restricted to graduate students. But, Creek said, mature students are definitely the targeted tenants.

It is a niche housing market that has largely been ignored by University-area developers, Creek said. CTC consulted firms as far away as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find suitable models for the complex it envisioned.

The development agreement CTC struck with the City of Urbana also requires the firms to reserve 30,000 square feet of the complex for commercial uses. Creek would like to see the space filled by restaurants but acknowledged that luring such businesses is one of the major challenges of the project.

The site falls within the Southeast Urbana Business District, a retailing area that has deteriorated in recent years due to the closure of the Kmart and the Jewel store next to it. Urbana City Planner Libby Tyler said competition from the mega-mall in northwest Champaign was too strong and traffic through the district was too light to support a big box store.

In a bid to reinvent the district, the city designated it an Enterprise Zone and offered businesses that are located there sales tax abatements and low interest loans. Incentive packages also were given to businesses already in the zone.

The revitalization efforts also are pushing critical street improvements. Philo Road itself is scheduled for a $1.2 million improvement next year that will expand it to three lanes. And the city’s public works department is looking into a possible extension of Florida Avenue as far out as Illinois Highway 130.

Creek hopes that CTC’s new housing complex will increase business activity and traffic in the zone enough to embolden the city to undertake the expensive extension.

“Ultimately, the district needs to be connected with a main thoroughfare to attract the large retailers back,” Creek said.

Creek’s stake in Southeast Urbana’s growth and economic strength has increased recently. The CTC firm is nearing completion of a 250-unit apartment complex called Amber Point and just broke ground on The Water’s Edge, a community of over 150 condominiums and single-family homes. Both developments could be well served by a commercially robust Philo Road.

Because his student-housing complex is further from campus than Orchard Downs housing, Creek said he understood the need for expanded bus service. There are currently several MTD lines that make stops in the area. But Creek said CTC would contract additional buses to run between the complex and campus destinations.

Some residents of Southeast Urbana are concerned about the impact of so large a complex on their community.

“I looked at the plans,” said Theresa Michelson of the Southeast Urbana Neighborhood Association. “And I couldn’t see where they will fit so many cars.”

Michelson, a founding member of the neighborhood association, said that the renters the complex wants to attract are likely to have their own vehicles. City ordinances for apartment complexes require at least one parking space per bedroom.

That would amount to roughly 700 required spaces for the proposed complex. The site plan in the city’s agreement with CTC Properties LLC only shows 140 spaces.

“We’re also going to have underground parking beneath the building,” Creek explained.

Creek likened his parking solution to the garages under Beckman Institute.

Michelson said the housing complex is a realistic use of the former Kmart site but she wants to know more about how the city will address high-density housing issues such as public safety.

“Several apartment complexes have been the source of a lot of crime down here,” Michelson said. “Hopefully, another apartment complex doesn’t add to it.”

Urbana police department statistics from 2004 show that the southeast received more calls for police service than any other sector of the city.

In response, Police Chief Eddie Adair told Michelson’s association that more officers would be assigned to their neighborhoods. Mayor Laurel Lunt Prussing also is close to appointing a community task force that would study apartment complexes with chronic crime and direct the city towards appropriate solutions.

Alderwoman Lynne Barnes (D-7) whose ward is in southeast Urbana said that one reason she encouraged the formation of a taskforce was that public safety was an important condition for new development.

Barnes said she doesn’t think that Creek’s complex on Philo Road will generate crime as others have.

“These apartments are high-end,” Barnes said. “The effect to the area is completely positive.”

CTC Properties will demolish the Kmart building within the next two weeks, Creek said. Site excavation should begin in January, and construction should be completed by June 2007.

“Our occupancy target date is August 2007,” Creek said. “It should be ready for all those who want to move in.”