The ambitious renovation of the Forest Arms apartment building has made some progress, with developer Scott Lowell characterizing the fire-damaged structure as "weather-tight." "The structure and roof are completely water-tight, which is a great situation," he says. Next on the agenda will be reconfiguring the apartments into a more-modern floorplan. He anticipates that this next phase will begin in the fall and that construction will take a couple more years to be complete.
In the meantime, Dearborn-based advertising and marketing company
Team Detroit has teamed up with
Greening of Detroit and
University Cultural Center Association to construct Detroit's first vertical garden on the structure. The concept makes use of hundreds of garden containers called
Woolly Pockets made from recycled pop bottles, which have been hung primarily on the building's Second Ave. facade, with some on the sides facing the rear courtyard and Forest. Team Detroit will maintain and update
www.hanging-gardens.org throughout the season.
When complete, Forest Arms will have 74 apartments along with some first floor retail. The project is estimated to cost $9 million. Read more about the project
here and
here.
Source: Scott Lowell, Forest Arms
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
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