Hot property: Oaks Station Place

Type: Mixed-use, multifamily rental/retail/office

Residential units: 104

Commercial space: 8,376 square feet

Parking: 86 spaces (underground)

Developer: Oaks Properties

Architect: Kaas Wilson Architects

Details: A long-planned residential project to be built within the 46th Street station area of the Hiawatha light rail line came closer to reality last month when the Minneapolis Planning Commission approved its site plan and other elements.

Oaks Properties, which already owns the Oaks Hiawatha Station multifamily complex across Hiawatha from the station, has secured a conditional use permit, as well as site plan and preliminary plat approval from the city as it seeks to move forward with Oaks Station Place.

Final action on the market-rate project, however, is on hold pending a citizens' appeal of the approvals.

The new effort is a unique one in the history of the city -- the first multifamily project to be built within a transit stop parcel, making it about as "transit oriented" as can be.

Oaks has reached an agreement with the Metropolitan Council to sell it "excess right of way" to the west of the light rail tracks that is now unused green space. According to the plans, two pieces of land -- one along the station's western edge and another across its entry drive facing 46th Street -- will each hold a section of the new building to be connected with a two-story skyway bridge over the driveway.

Together, they will comprise a 104-unit, four-story multifamily residential complex, beneath which will be an 89-unit underground parking garage.

The project will also hold 5,562 square feet of general retail space and 2,814 square feet of office space and calls for the creation of a new, 7,200-square-foot, south-facing pedestrian plaza, suitable for outdoor dining, neighborhood events and farmers market activities.

The look and feel of the building, says Oaks Properties President Norm Bjorness, comes from Forest Hills Gardens, "an iconic transit-oriented community built almost 100 years ago in Queens, New York, on the Long Island Railroad." It will feature brick, concrete veneer, burnished block, metal and glass and exteriors and gable roofs.

Bjorness said the decision to charge market rates rather than build apartments with government-subsidized units is based on the belief the area along the Hiawatha Line is ready to support rent structures that extract a premium for such closeness to a transit hub.

"I believe there's a value in transit-oriented projects that have the best proximity," he said. "We're going to attempt to find out what that is."

DON JACOBSON