The project, which the city hopes to have completed by February 2008, will replace mostly student rental houses on the block with housing for single families, said Stephanie Gingerich, an East Lansing community development analyst.

“They’re all going to be unoccupied homes so they’re basically for people who would like to buy a single family home for single home ownership purposes,” she said.

The units — comprised of 16 single family homes and 14 condominiums — will range in cost from roughly $160,000-$200,000, said Tim Dempsey, East Lansing’s Community and Economic Development administrator.

“This is an area of town where we’ve seen the rental market kind of soften a bit,” Dempsey said. “A lot of the homes in there are kind of nondescript, some of the rentals weren’t the most architecturally significant homes. The homes were kind of bland in terms of their rentals for the most part.”

Although the houses aren’t the most glamorous and they are relatively far from campus, advertising junior Nick Leichtman said he enjoys living on the block.

“It’s a nice place to live for students,” Leichtman said.

Developers are determined to spice up the neighborhood by constructing homes with neo-traditional designs to give the block a “family feel,” Dempsey said.

“The garage and the cars will all be in the back so you’ll see the front of the home. It creates a much more neighborhood-friendly feel to it, that’s kind of our goal here,” he said.

Mechanical engineering junior Kaitlin Noren, who also lives on the block, said the city should try to avoid ostracizing students from campus, even if it’s unintentional.

“East Lansing is a college town, so residents will have to realize that,” Noren said. “When most people think about East Lansing, they think about MSU.”