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Plan commission approved hotel-to-apartment rezoning; county board to review project
Summary
Payra Township plan commission approved a rezoning to convert the former Magnes Hotel to roughly 70 apartments; the project will proceed to the township board and then the Lee County board, and it will trigger change-of-use upgrades to meet 2021 IBC life-safety requirements.
The Payra Township plan commission approved a rezoning application that would convert the former Magnes Hotel from commercial to R4 multi-family residential and create about 70 apartment units, county building officials reported.
Joe, the county building official, told the board that the plan commission action was approved and that the application will next go to the township board and then to the Lee County board for final consideration in April. "They were talking that Kevin, 70 total units," Joe said when asked about scale; he said the majority will be one-bedroom and studio apartments with only a handful of larger units.
Joe explained the regulatory implications of the conversion: changing from a commercial hotel use to R4 residential constitutes a change of use that triggers upgrades to meet the 2021 International Building Code, including life-safety systems such as sprinklers and smoke/carbon alarms. He said developers are preparing plans to meet the updated code cycle.
Board members raised neighborhood concerns that the project might turn into HUD-supported low-income housing. Joe and others clarified that the planned conversion is privately owned, managed and described as 'affordable' rather than HUD-subsidized low-income housing.
Joe also said the developers purchased adjacent property to help address parking concerns and noted the parcel sits in a separate commercial subdivision that lacks covenants that would prevent the conversion.
The building-official report also included routine permitting numbers for February: Joe recorded 11 permits with a total valuation of $978,955 and permit fees of $3,144.10; the Title N building regulations were passed by the plan commission on March 2 and will be forwarded to the county board at the next meeting.
The county board did not take a formal vote on the rezoning at this meeting; the application will be considered in the scheduled April county board meeting.
