OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — More than 500 housing units are planned on being built near Lake Butte des Morts on the Oshkosh’s northwest side.
The units will consist of both apartments and townhouses.
It’ll also include a club house which will have a hot tub, pool and a community room.
If approved, a large piece of farmland near the Lake Butte des Morts would be developed into 522 new homes. The units will be built between Highway 45 and be east of the lake.
The area consists of five lots totaling 72.50 acres.
“We’ve been kind of looking at Oshkosh for quite a number of years, we recognized a shortage of housing, quality housing in that market,” said Jake Buswell, owner and partner of Red Earth, LLC, who would be the property owner.
According to the plan commission staff report, the project will consist of five four-story, 82-unit apartment buildings, two four-story, 40-unit apartment buildings and eight two-story, four-unit townhomes.
“It’s an area of the city on the northwest side that does not have a lot of housing options outside of single-family so this project could potentially bring some diverse options to the northwest side of the city,” said Mark Lyons, Oshkosh’s Planning Services Manager.
He says the city completed a housing study analysis in 2021.
The forecast in this study show Oshkosh to grow by over 3,200 permanent residents by 2030.
To accommodate this population, Oshkosh will need to produce almost 1,700 new housing units.
This demand equates to about 160 units annually.
“It indicated for our housing needs we needed about 30% of the new units coming online to be the townhome variety and about 35% of the new housing units to be multi-family, so this project is helping potentially fill two of those gaps within our housing market,” said Lyons.
Red Earth doesn’t have a cost estimate yet, but says these new units will help with that.
“This is a really unique location with lake views and it’ll be a really unique community within the Oshkosh community,” said Buswell. “Really, we’d like to have a diverse offering of properties, not just all one bedroom or two bedrooms, there’s going to be wide range of unit mixes.”
If the project gets the green light, it will be built in six phases.
“Right now they’re hoping to begin phase one yet this year, and then depending on how the construction schedule goes, subsequent phases in the following years,” said Lyons.
Plans also call for a bridge connection from the property to the Wiouwash Trail.
The development plan approval of this housing project will be brought up at Oshkosh’s Plan Commission Tuesday.
