Developers propose 200‑plus apartments near Walmart, request up to $5M in city help

Representatives for Forest Drive Estates LLC presented a multi‑phase apartment development for land adjacent to the Walmart on Sycamore Estates Drive in Lawrenceburg and said they would seek some level of city assistance to make the project financially viable.

Eric Lang, with Land Consultants, said the proposal is “a development which includes somewhere on the neighborhood of 200 units,” configured mostly as two‑bedroom apartments with some one‑ and three‑bedroom units. He said the developers estimate a roughly $40 million total development cost and that the group would seek about $5 million — “somewhere in the neighborhood of a $5,000,000 range” — in public support, amounting to less than 10% of the projected project cost according to the presenters.

The developers described a phased build. Lang said a single building could take roughly 18 months to complete and that the first phase — described in the presentation as about 216 units — could be finished in approximately three years if construction is staged. Rents in the pro forma presented were in the neighborhood of $1,300 to $1,500 per month for dominant two‑bedroom units; presenters said the…