“We’ve been in discussions with the developer and entered this pre-development agreement to explore the feasibility of building another type of residential project there,” said Tim Dempsey, East Lansing’s community and economic development administrator.

In the mean time, developers will focus on completing the current segments of the West Village project, which include the construction of 15 townhomes along Grand River and Hillcrest avenues, a four-story building of residential, retail and office units and an apartment complex called “The Flats.”

Five of the townhomes have been sold or reserved, and several of the apartments in The Flats have been sold as well. The pace of sales has been impressive considering how slow the market is, Dempsey said.

“It shows that even in a very slow real estate market there’s demand for housing near campus,” he said.

Developers hope to begin constructing the townhomes on Hillcrest in about four weeks so they’ll be finished by the spring of 2008. They’d like to have the mixed-use building finished by the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009, Staton said.

Progress of the project has been “above average,” developer Jerome Abood said.

“We’ve completed the majority of the site work which was extremely complicated,” he said. “We knew up front there would be a lot of site work.”

Even though West Village isn’t as big as East Village – a region bounded by East Grand River Avenue, Hagadorn Road, Bogue Street and the Red Cedar River – the project is just as complicated and will take a while to materialize, City Manager Ted Staton said.

“I’m thrilled with the pace of West Village,” he said. “They’re starting to clean the site up, there are units sold that haven’t even been built, there’s nice sales momentum on the ones that are built and (The Flats) have moved at a nice pace.”