TOPEKA (KSNT) – Topeka City Manager Robert Perez joined the 27 News team on Monday to chat about new housing in the downtown area and street repairs.
Perez first talked about the city’s housing shortage and what efforts are being done now to rectify this problem. He said a recent study identified a shortage of 900 units in the downtown area of the city.
Large-scale housing projects that were recently announced seek to address these housing concerns in Topeka’s downtown. These include the best-in-class apartments coming with The Hutch and additional living spaces with Union at Tower District apartments.
“So, between this project, The Hutch, and our Union at Tower, I mean that… that’s close to a little over 400 units of living at both ends of the spectrum as far as attainability,” Perez said.
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Perez also talked about pothole repairs across the city and responding to service requests from local residents. He said work crews have taken the initiative to fix potholes in Topeka before they become major problems.
“This year, with fewer snow days, the teams have been able to do about 1,300 more potholes… repairs this year versus the same time period last year,” Perez said. “We’ve also seen a decrease of service requests from the public, which speaks more to the proactivity of our street crews, again, not having as much snow to deal with or they’re out there proactively taking care of potholes before the community even lets us know about them.”
You can watch the full interview with Perez above.
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