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| Artist rendering of 65 E. Elizabeth Ave. in Bethlehem after renovations are complete. (Contributed) |
Post Road Management LLC of Allentown earned approval
from the Bethlehem zoning board Thursday for allowing 48 luxury apartment units
to his plans for upgrading an underutilized 10-story office building in
Bethlehem.
Plans for the building at 65 E. Elizabeth Ave., one of
the tallest in Bethlehem, call for four floors of renovated office space and 48
new residential units on floors five through 10.
Borko Milosev, principal of Post Road Management and the
developer for the project, said he would like to rename the building Tower 65.
He will maintain an on-site management office on the first floor and sought
city approval for a density variance that would allow for the number of
residential units.
“It’s going to take some time to develop plans; the
apartment-related work we are going to dive into now,” Milosev said. “If we can
retain existing tenants and lease the building, we will do that. The problem is
the building has been vacant over 50 percent for the past three years.”
When it opened in the 1960s, the building was filled with
office tenants. Milosev said in order to attract new ones, renovations and
upgrades are needed and a mixed-use project would help achieve that.
His plan includes renovating the residential floors to
create eight luxury units on each floor, with the potential for penthouse
apartments on floors nine and 10 that would be either one-, two- or
three-bedroom units.
“We are going to do this in stages,” Milosev said.
His plan is to possibly complete two to three floors at a
time.
Rents for apartment units would be about $900 for
one-bedroom units and $1,200 for two-bedroom units.
Milosev, a Moravian College graduate, said he is not
looking to attract students to the apartments, but rather young professionals
and empty nesters.
With apartments included in the plan, Milosev said, there
is enough on-site parking since a majority of the residents would be at work
when office users are at the building. Lehigh Valley Business’ office is on the
seventh floor of the building.
Artefact of Bethlehem is the architectural firm hired to
design the rehabilitation of the building, including the façade and all the
office and common hallways, while another architect, John Lee, is designing the
apartments.
The brown exterior will get refurbished and possibly
repainted a gray or silver color with louvers on some of the windows.
“The colors are a little outdated, and we were looking
for different ways to create a more contemporary look that will have a maximum
effect on the building,” said Lucienne Di Biase Dooley, project architect for
Artefact.
She described the building as a gateway to north
Bethlehem.
The lobbies would be refurbished with a design that
incorporates a mixture of glass and concrete.
One of the ideas that the firm is working on is creating
a screen over the windows for the residential units that would create a more
private feel by filtering the light for the bedrooms.
Also, the design plans include a balcony for each
residential unit.
“Now we are value engineering the whole system,” Di Biase
Dooley said. “Once we complete the value engineering, we will start to prepare
construction drawings and go to get building permits.”
Source: LVB
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