15-story plan filed for Chauncey Hill Annex site on State Street hill, near Purdue
Developer involved in the $250 million Rambler project in West Lafayette's Levee area looks to build a high-rise a few blocks up State Street hill, too
An emptied two-story strip center called Chauncey Hill Annex, once home on State Street hill to Jimmy John’s subs, LaBamba burritos and the original AJ’s Burgers and Beef, is the latest site for a proposed high rise, just blocks from Purdue’s campus.
LV Collective, an Austin, Texas-based firm also involved in a $250 million redevelopment of the Levee area just down the hill, filed draft plans Monday for a 15-story apartment and retail project on 0.8 acres at the corner of State Street and Chauncey Avenue.
The project would include 290 units with 816 beds, 5,500 square feet of first-floor retail space and 138 spaces in a parking garage in a space bound by State Street, Chauncey Avenue, South Street and an existing alley, according to plans filed with the Area Plan Commission.
The first hearing on the project could come as soon as the Aug. 20 Area Plan Commission meeting. That could put the rezoning request for the planned development before the West Lafayette City Council for a final vote as soon as September.
Andree Sahakian, senior development manager with LV Collective, said the plan is to break ground in early 2026 and open in early 2028.
The project cost wasn’t revealed.
The site is across State Street from The Rise and The Hub, a pair of high-rises geared for student renters, and catty-corner from the former Chauncey Hill Mall, where the Hub at Chauncey complex is under construction to bring 681 units with 1,687 beds.
Sahakian said the timing of the timing of the project follows a recent APC study of rental housing that showed near-0% vacancies near Purdue’s campus.
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Enrollment at Purdue climbed 5.6% ahead of the start of the last academic year, 20% since 2020 and 42% in the past decade, with 55,119 students on the West Lafayette campus in fall 2024. (Purdue officials said last week that, despite record applications, they built its coming annual budget on an assumption of “steady” enrollment.)
Sahakian said LV Collective saw the block as one of the last development opportunities available in West Lafayette’s downtown plan “to provide high-density housing in West Lafayette and contribute housing supply as called for in the 2025 City of West Lafayette Strategic Plan.”
“LV Collective looks forward to delivering a high-profile project with keen attention to the public realm to contribute to the future vibrancy of Chauncey Hill, the State Street corridor and West Lafayette,” he said.
The Chauncey Hill Annex property was part of a 2017 deal that included ownership of the Chauncey Hill Mall on the south side of State Street.
Marc Muinzer, a developer and real estate investor, was part of that deal that brought the northwest corner of Northwestern Avenue and State Street – a property that had been boarded up long enough that it earned the nickname Plywood City that is now a multi-story development anchored by a campus-geared Target store – and the fast food and offices of the Chauncey Hill Annex.
Muinzer floated several concepts for the property, including a 17-story, mixed-use building that never materialized, amid a temporary city moratorium on high-rise projects in the last 2010s, at a time West Lafayette was gauging the market as three were in the works along and near State Street.
Muinzer still owns the property that LV Collective would take on for what is being called the Chauncey Hill Annex project.
LV Collection’s other project in West Lafayette, in the Levee area near the northeast corner of State Street and River Road, includes a mix of 590 apartment units, up to 1,350 beds and 21,700 square feet of ground-floor retail space, spread between two buildings. Part of the plan includes the city getting Landmark to incorporate the downtown-style grid street layout contemplated by the city’s downtown plan between River Road and Tapawingo Drive. A new street layout will have Brown Street ending near the current intersection with Howard Avenue. A new street – which will be called Poplar Street – is being built straight north from there, rather than angling toward River Road, as Howard Avenue does now. Howard Avenue would cut across the northern edge of the property from North River Road, stopping at the edge of the Levee Plaza property.
Demolition started in December 2024, after the motel, Bruno’s, Rubia Flowers, Puccini’s, La Hacienda and China One had all left. (Nine Irish Brothers restaurant, where the groundbreaking crew took the party inside Wednesday afternoon, is operating as usual.)
Developers said this spring that work is expected to be done by July 2027.
Several other projects are underway or close to completion within several blocks of the Chauncey Hill Annex, including:
Landmark Properties, a firm that has developed or managed property in more than two dozen states, is building a 13-story, 254-unit, 670-bed complex called The Standard along Wood Street, just north of Chauncey Avenue.
St. Louis-based Subtext Acquisitions has two complexes, Verve and Verve II, that will have a combined 1,213 beds along Wood Street, between Salisbury Street and Chauncey Avenue.
West Lafayette-based developer Shane O’Malley’s 4-Up, a residential project bound by Wiggins, Vine and Fowler streets, is expected to open with 334 beds later this year.
O’Malley also recently filed draft plans with the APC for a project called The Sullivan, a proposed six-story project with up to 551 beds near 4-Up, along blocks of Fowler, Vine and Wiggins. The plans filed with the APC anticipate an opening in 2028.
Construction is expected to start in May 2026, with a 2028 opening for the Approach, an 11-story apartment complex near the corner of South River Road and Williams Street in West Lafayette. The West Lafayette City Council this spring unanimously approved rezoning for the project being done by West Lafayette-based Weida Holdings. The complex would have 268 units and a maximum of 655 beds, replacing several smaller apartment buildings on that 1.4 acres, according to plans filed with the city.
Lafayette-based Trinitas Ventures in April filed initial plans for what could be a $350 million mixed-used project on 11 undeveloped acres between Tapawingo Drive and River Road. Draft plans include 960 units, 1,800 beds and 15,000-square-feet of commercial space in a series of five- and six-story mixed-use buildings roughly behind River Market Apartments, a Speedway and the Hampton Inn.
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
Adding up the max bed count in Dave’s story here, that’s 8,260 new beds in just this area. That doesn’t include other apartments being built in West Lafayette (e.g., on Waldron behind University parking garage; off Sagamore behind Market West).
That's gotta be close to being a concern for the FAA. It's not quite under the approach for runway 23, but it's not far off.