Maybe you had to be there. But there was a month or two, early in the social media days, when the giant banana painted on the side of a student rental at the corner of Wood Street and Chauncey Avenue commanded the front page and made West Lafayette pick sides.
Was the mural, painted in late summer of at S. Chauncey Ave. City officials eventually stood down. The Banana House stayed up , adding its own Facebook page and adorning the shape with strings of lights at Christmastime. In the coming weeks, plans for a new, seven-story complex that will cover the block of Wood Street that the Banana House anchors will go to the Area Plan Commission and the West Lafayette City Council. If approved, the two-story Banana House, along with four neighboring apartment buildings, will be gone.
It was a good, nine-year run for Banana House. As Purdue anticipates another big freshman class for more on the number: see below and city planners look to lift an unwritten moratorium on bigger projects aimed at undergrad rentals, a handful of developments are starting to emerge along the edges of campus. A sneak peek of three around downtown West Lafayette, east of campus, was delivered Tuesday to the Joint Board, a committee from the city and university that reviews major projects close to campus.
Louis firm with projects in college communities in a dozen states, would include seven floors and units with up to beds, along with 5,square-feet of ground-floor retail space and a space parking garage.
The project would replace units that have beds in five buildings β including those in the Banana House. Munden said construction, once started, would take 22 months.
