2019 Year in Review: Housing in the Northwest Suburbs
The year 2019 was a big year in the northwest metro for housing.
Ongoing Issues at Brooklyn Park’s Huntington Place Apartments
In Brooklyn Park, the city council worked to find solutions to help make the Huntington Place apartments a safer and more desirable place to live.
Roughly 2,500 people live at the complex, and according to police data, more than 500 crimes occurred there in 2018.
The property manager, Plymouth-based Dominium, had made some improvements to the complex, but the city claimed a lot of it was deferred maintenance.
“I don’t think they deserve one ounce of credit for that,” Brooklyn Park Mayor Jeff Lunde said in June. “I don’t think if we weren’t in there raising questions, I’d question if they’d even be doing anything. I think these people are slumlords and they’ve been sucking money out of people who rent there and then taking it somewhere else.”
City officials say Dominium planned to increase its focus on evicting people who fall behind in their rent or violate their leases.
Huntington Place could see a new owner in the near future too, as Aeon, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit affordable housing company, has expressed interest in buying the property.
New Market-Rate Apartments in Robbinsdale
In Robbinsdale, two new luxury apartment complexes got off the ground. The Birdtown Flats became the first market rate, non-senior restricted, apartment complex built in the city in the last 35-plus years.
“It’s a little higher of a price but more quality, and we’re excited to be part of the community,” Melissa Goretraill, the manager of Bird Town Flats.
Also in Robbinsdale, at the site of the former Westphal American Legion, crews began work on what will eventually become the Parker Station Flats, which is set to open in the spring of 2021.
New Senior Housing in Maple Grove and Plymouth
In October, Maple Grove’s Silvercreek on Main broke ground on the next phase of its 14-acre housing project in the heart of Maple Grove.
“To be able now to expand by 75 additional apartments, just meets the demand for the Maple Grove marketplace and allows us to further serve the older adults that we serve every day,” said Jack Collins of Silvercrest Properties.
That same month, the Parks’ Place senior living home opened in Plymouth. It’s a place where people with different stages of dementia can live to their ability.
“We want families to feel welcome here to visit their loved-one because this is their home,” said Kaitlin Kelly, Parks’ Place Director of Marketing.
Twin Cities Home Prices Reach Record High
As for the real estate market as a whole, the 16-county metro area continued to set records for home sale prices. Last spring, the median sale price for a home in the Twin Cities reached an all-time high of $285,000s.
“It doesn’t come as a real big surprise to us, because again, we still are fighting a shortage of homes that are out on the market right now,” said Jerry Moscowitz, a realtor from ReMax Results.
