Dominium sees room for affordable rentals in Woodbury.

Byline: Matt M. Johnson

A $68 million project Dominium plans to build in Woodbury promises to boost the city's affordable rental housing even as market-rate apartment construction surges.

Plymouth-based Dominium won preliminary approval on Monday from the city's Planning Commission on Monday to build 211 apartments, 24 townhomes and a medical office building on about 19 acres of land in the southwest quadrant of Radio Drive and Hargis Parkway.

The proposal comes about three months after Bloomington-based Timberland Partners pitched building 218 market-rate rental townhomes on a 22-acre site near Woodbury's northern border with Lake Elmo.

Dominium's project comes as the need for affordable housing in Woodbury is growing, said Dominium development associate Shaun Reinhardt.

"We think it's a place that has the right infrastructure and the right demographic," he said in a Tuesday interview.

The project would include a variety of apartment and townhome sizes, including some meant for larger families. Housing units in the complex would range from a 723-square-foot one-bedroom apartment to four-bedroom townhomes measuring 1,840 square feet of space. The apartments and townhomes would rent at an average rate affordable to tenants earning 60 percent of the area median income, which is $60,000 per year for a family of four, according to the Metropolitan Council.

Rents at the Dominium project would start at about $1,125 per month, said Karl Batalden, the city's community development coordinator.

The apartments would be in a single, four-story building. The townhomes would be clustered in three, eight-unit buildings.

The project would include a park that would act as a buffer between single family homes to the west of the site and the apartment building. The townhomes would rise on the southeast corner of the site, next to the Five Oaks Community Church, while the medical office building would be at the corner of Radio Drive and Hargis Parkway. Development and construction of that building would be turned over to another developer, Reinhardt said.

Construction is expected to start in the summer of 2020. The residential portion of the redevelopment would be complete in spring 2022. The project would be the only...