State College-based HFL Corporation, which has developed a variety of student-oriented apartment buildings in the downtown, has begun planning for another.
The company has submitted to the borough has a rough concept plan for a 65- to 75-unit apartment building at the northwest corner of East Beaver Avenue and Hetzel Street, borough staff members noted Thursday evening. The subject came up at a Planning Commission meeting.
Already, borough Planning Director Carl Hess said, an HFL architect and the borough Design Review Board have begun preliminary conversations about the idea. He thinks ‘both the architect and the DRB were pleased with the tone and the discussion’ at their initial meeting, held a short time ago, Hess said.
StateCollege.com is following up with HFL to seek additional details. By August or September, Hess said, he thinks the borough will receive a final, detailed HFL apartment-building plan for review.
Preliminarily, borough Planner Anne Messner said, it appears that the HFL concept largely conforms with the commercial zoning in place at Beaver Avenue and Hetzel Street. The new building would sit immediately east of the Bryce Jordan Tower student-apartment building, also developed by HFL.
To make way for the new project, HFL would tear down the two office-oriented buildings that are located there now, between the Bryce Jordan Tower and Hetzel Street on the north side of Beaver Avenue. One of them is the Unico Building, the longtime headquarters of the Unico Corporation. HFL itself also is headquartered on the property, which is controlled by the company.
Elsewhere in downtown State College, HFL has lobbied in recent months for zoning changes to allow a multi-level apartment complex at 254 E. Beaver Ave., the site of a former Penn State fraternity house. The proposal for Beaver Avenue and Hetzel Street, meanwhile, would include some retail space, presumably at the street level, and primary residential access off of Calder Way.
The Beaver-Hetzel concept also would have the new structure sharing some parking access with the Bryce Jordan Tower. Current borough zoning provisions don’t include an allowance for the parking approach included in the HFL building proposal, but that’s expected to be addressed in upcoming discussions, Messner said.
StateCollege.com will report more details as they become available.
