Madison developer Neutral, formerly The Neutral Project, will break ground in October on an apartment building in the 500 block of West Main Street as part of a new approach to address the city’s housing crisis, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. The news comes as the developer completes construction of a 14-story building downtown.
The unusual new four-story development will use mass timber — a structural material composed of layers of wood glued together — to support the floors, cutting down the building’s carbon footprint. The walls will be held up by steel. The building design comes from a 12-by-12 foot grid from Neutral’s architectural team; the building’s dimensions are all multiples of 12 feet.
Neutral plans for many similar buildings to follow, anticipating two to four in Madison per year. Projects will contain four to 50 units, with a combination of studios, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, and townhouses to provide “missing middle” housing. If plans are successful, future developments will become less expensive to build as the company’s project design and manufacturing costs fall.
The developer’s target rent for future projects is “the lower end of the market rate.” The West Main Street project is expected to be affordable for those making 100–120% of the area’s median income; later Neutral developments will aim to be affordable for people making 60–100% of the area median income.
