The Champaign City Council voted 8-1 to change existing commercial space in Champaign to seven one-bedroom student apartments.

The change will affect the ground floor of Burnham 310 apartments at 310 E. Springfield Ave. The ground floor is currently vacant and considered commercial; the ordinance changes its status to residential.

The change from commercial to residential space will “fulfill a housing need” with “seven desirable leasable spaces (to be) created in lieu of empty commercial space,” according to a city memorandum. 

Marci Dodds, D-4, was the sole dissenter of the council bill. She said she did not trust the building’s contractor, the Pickus Companies, to follow through with the change, as the city has had trouble filling the building’s commercial space in the past. 

“I have supported Pickus’ efforts to change before,” Dodds said. “There’s nothing in Pickus’ track record that says they’re going to re-build (the bedrooms) well. Their description to me was vaguely creepy.” 

Dodds also said she wondered how a space that was designed to be commercial, with glass front windows, could be re-designed to be a residential space. 

Deb Feinen, council member at-large, said the city had chosen Pickus over local developers who were “maybe more honest about what could happen in that space,” but she said she would still support the bill. 

“It really bothers me, but by the same token it doesn’t do us any good to have empty space in a development that is going under,” Feinen said. “It’s left a terrible taste in my mouth … but I don’t see what choice we have at this point because it’s in everybody’s best interest that the development succeeds, and being able to say ‘I told you so’ and having an empty building doesn’t do us any good.” 

Tom Bruno, council member at-large, said the economy is partially to blame for the vacant space, not solely Pickus.

“It’s not so much what the owners or people who subsequently owned this building have promised us or failed to promise us,” Bruno said. “I’m mostly disappointed in the recession that hurt everybody’s business and claimed some businesses and claimed a lot of commercial space to be sitting vacant or underutilized.” 

Bruno also said that changing the space into student apartments was a good way to fill the space, as students “still need a bedroom to sleep in,” despite the shape of the economy. 

“What didn’t drop as precipitously as the demand for commercial retail space was the demand for bedrooms for University students,” Bruno said. “This is a reasonable reflection of changing circumstances in my mind.”

Emma can be reached at [email protected].