More than 3,000 acres of vacant or underdeveloped land with existing access to public utilities could help put a major dent in Kent County’s housing shortage while spurring more than $10 billion in new investment and $100 million in new tax revenue. Those are among the preliminary findings released Wednesday by Housing Next, which is studying 32 commercial corridors in Kent County that could accommodate future housing development based on the presence of public utilities, transit, and underutilized or vacant buildings. A targeted effort by local governments, developers and investors to develop those 3,000 acres could produce more than 70,000 housing units countywide over the next 25 years, according to the preliminary findings ahead of the full study’s release this fall. That’s double the number of for-sale and rental housing units Kent County needs by 2027 to stabilize the local housing market, according to a report Housing Next published last year. Housing Next hired its former executive director Ryan Kilpatrick, AICP EDFP, founder and CEO of Grand Rapids-based Flywheel Community Development Services, to help conduct the study. “When we looked at the corridors, what we found is that well over 3,000 acres was either vacant or significantly underdeveloped,” Kilpatrick said. “Some of that acreage is commercial zoned, some of it’s zoned all kinds of random stuff, but on those corridors, there is plenty of land available that doesn’t have a building on it, but does have access to sewer, water, road, public transportation and all the rest. That’s a pretty big opportunity.” Housing Next Executive Director Brooke Oosterman said the corridor study was designed to help municipalities and developers as they continue to grapple with reducing the county’s housing gap. “What the analysis has shown us is that there is much more potential than we would have expected, and that we can, in fact, meet or exceed projected demand,” Oosterman said. “… We were really excited, and I would say, surprised, to find out that there is that much untapped potential in these places.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/e7ZXmkiV
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