The Place on Ponce Owners “Happy” with Leasing Progress
Decatur Metro | November 12, 2015 | 10:47 am
The Place on Ponce at 315 West Ponce is always an interesting development to keep an eye on.
Most of us are well-aware that until very recently, there were few rental options in the city and now – starting with The Place on Ponce – three large apartment projects are about to come online (totalling around 600 apartments) with even more potentially working their way through the pipeline.
The Place on Ponce was the first of the three projects to be completed and it opened its much larger, second phase to the public at the start of September. At the time, they reported that Phase II was already 42% leased.
But how’s demand looking now, a couple months in with the two “A” apartment projects, Arlo and Alexan, coming online in a few months?
We followed up with Carter’s Chief Development Officer, the always responsive Conor McNally, who let us know that the entire project is now 62% leased and that they are “happy with that progress”, adding “the market is receiving the product very well.”
We shall keep an eye on the occupancy rates as more and more apartments open up around Decatur in the coming months, but for now the folks at The Place on Ponce sound satisfied with their progress.
Photo courtesy of The Place on Ponce Facebook page
Hmmmmm. I’m guessing they’re nowhere near fully occupied, which at this point may not yet be a problem for them. But methinks those currently sky-high rental rates are going to have to be adjusted downward once “the market” here in Decatur has several hundred more units open up for lease.
I’m wondering if the Alexan is going to go for the lowest hanging fruit. I don’t know how pimped out the units will be but they’ve certainly got a number of factors that, in my experience, make them less desirable for downtown living: their building is by far the most architecturally confused and spastic; it’s on the worst of the three streets where apartments are being built; it doesn’t have any commercial amenities downstairs; and it doesn’t have a regionally-celebrated cocktail bar across the street as Place on Ponce and the Arlo both do.
As Cuba indicates, I can’t believe they’ll be able to match rates with the other two projects once everyone’s up and leasing unless we still find demand for Decatur downtown to be exceeding the new supply.
“architecturally confused and spastic” — perfect.
Serious color and texture confusion as well. I wouldn’t live there on account of how bizarre it looks.
Moving in might be a better option. Like this guy:
Author Guy de Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower so much that he paradoxically chose to eat lunch there nearly every day because being on the tower was the only place in Paris where you didn’t actually have to see it rising into the sky.
I’m eagerly awaiting the day that this building gets a new paint scheme. I can’t get my head around what they were thinking when they chose all those colors.
Come on , they were just tring to match the CVS red across the street in a nod to local corporate architecture.
“Architecturally confused” is being charitable. What’s with the corrugated tin?
It’s a shame that the new downtown architecture has such low standards for building materials. Its beginning to resemble a Potemkin village.
The Alexan looks like the Partridge Family bus. Frank Gehry would look at that thing and say “Man, that’s really an eyesore”.
Agreed on all points with regards to Alexan’s design, but one plus for it is that it would probably be the quietest of the three. Sparse foot traffic around it (especially for evening revelers), and cars’ headlights always point away from it going around that curve.
But it’s darn close to Glennwood, Renfroe, and DHS for families ready to downsize for CSD attendance!
There has been so much attention paid to these new apartment complexes and the potential for school overcrowding. And yet, the 34 large townhomes proposed on Forkner will probably generate more students, more traffic, and more disruption to the neighborhood than the Place on Ponce.