By the fall, senior citizens from Garfield and elsewhere will be living in apartments they helped to imagine. And below them on the ground floor as many as six new office/retail tenants will enliven Penn Avenue.
The Fairmont Apartments, at Fairmont and Penn Avenues at the Garfield/Friendship border, are the culmination of a long-term community planning process, says Becky Mingo, director of the Friendship Development Associates.
Back in 2001, Friendship, Garfield and Penn Avenue stakeholders were working on a master plan for the area; meanwhile, Mingo recalls, city government was under a mandate to close “nonperforming” senior housing projects, and the city housing authority was looking at the senior residences at the top of Garfield Heights.
“Seniors said, ‘We’re very independent, rather than being isolated at the top of the hill, we’d like to be right on a bus line,’” says Mingo.
In the resulting building, designed by Rothschild Doyno Architects and built by Mistick Construction, the apartments will be leased to seniors by Presbyterian Senior Care, while the FDA will retain ownership of the retail spaces.
The one- and two-bedroom apartments are designed to be handicapped-accessible, and the building will feature lots of common recreation space and laundries on each floor.
The storefronts have a full glass façade in the front, and, thanks to the slope of Penn Avenue, a few will feature ceilings up to 20 feet high -- tall enough to add a mezzanine, Mingo says. “Now leasing!” she adds.
Source: Becky Mingo, Friendship Development Associates
Photo courtesy of Terry Oden, Rothschild Doyno Architects