By Michael Glenn
This week, I attended a Hutchinson Housing Commission meeting and saw the Hutchinson Community Foundation announce a three-year initiative to bring more affordable housing to Hutchinson, and this work needs to be continued and shared throughout our city.
Housing is tricky. As a community, we need more housing if we want Hutchinson to grow. It’s plain and simple.
But there are different ways to enhance housing projects that not only provide living spaces for people wanting to live here but also benefit the local economy, aesthetics and property value of buildings.
Downtown housing is crucial for Hutchinson’s future success. Without it, our community will continue to bleed more young professionals and new families to communities that do provide it, such as Wichita, Kansas City and even Chicago.
You may see those names of large cities and believe that these styles of housing projects are inconceivable for a town of 40,000. While we can’t build skyscrapers with hundreds of apartments in them, we can support the building of more downtown housing by renovating and opening what we already have: the “coffee shop and three floors on top,” more commonly known as mixed-use development.
This is why I was excited to see the community foundation fund pre-development costs and downtown code mitigation as part of its three-year initiative.
A good example of mixed-use housing is Bookends, a local bookstore that also has two floors of apartments on top.
We have many buildings similar to Bookends that would benefit greatly from having housing units on top of commercial stores in a mixed-use building.
We are used to the modern suburb that provides few to no means to get around other than by car. When we build suburbs that continue to spread the city, it may look like we’re growing, but we’re spending millions of new dollars on upkeep, water lines, infrastructure and more. By not focusing on infill and continuing to build out, we dig ourselves into a bigger hole if 100% of those properties are not filled.
Downtown development attracts young professionals who want to live in dense areas. We have the ability to add density, bring more money into the city and beautify our downtown while serving new residents who add to our community.
Downtown residential development is a win-win for the property owner, the new residents and the current residents of Hutchinson.
The more options we as a community have to offer to those fresh out of college or to young families looking to settle down, the more our population will grow, our city will be stronger and our future will be bright.