City Cottages
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In a world where developers are hungry to build inside the city, developers have to get crafty, and that means Cooper-Young could get even sillier with tiny homes.
From the same guys who brought you the tiny village (coming soon to Elzey), comes the tiny apartment complex on York. That full-length attraction comes with a tiny featurette, a solo tiny home planned across the street on a tiny triangle of land down by the railroad tracks.
City Cottages
A sample of a home built by City Cottages. This is not one built in Cooper-Young. Those haven’t been built yet.
The guys just pulled off the tiny village concept in February, back when the tiny home concept was brand new. But this time, there’s a new sheriff in town: The Cooper-Young Historical District status.
Will they be able to sell the idea to the Landmarks Commission, Land Use Control Board, and the Memphis City Council? No spoilers, please! We’ll all have to wait to find out.
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Ed Apple, of Apple Partners LLC, has applied to the Landmarks Commission to build two new “tiny home” concepts in Cooper-Young, at the corner of Tanglewood and York in a sort-of-residential, sort-of-industrial area close to railroad tracks.
City Cottages
For the south side of York, Apple’s application calls for “new single family attached (two family) homes” at 2039 York and 2040 York. The application says “homes.” If they are, indeed, two separate units, they are pushed together to look like one, four-unit complex.
City Cottages
On the north side of York, Apple wants to build one tiny home on an equally tiny strip of land. Ready to call this place home?
City Cottages
The house would face York. Here’s what it would look like.
City Cottages
For both projects, Apple has, once again, partnered with Little Custom Homes to build the houses. The homes are pre-fabricated at a facility in Arkansas and assembled on site. Apple and Little Custom Homes have argued, though, that the houses aren’t modular homes or trailers.
Both projects sit on land zoned for residential use and both site are currently vacant.
In February, the council approved Apple’s previous project to build 10, 1,000-square-foot rental houses at the corner of Elzey and Tanglewood.
While that project did not have to get Landmarks approval, the council approved it only with a set of conditions. For example, it none of them could be used as a short-term rental, they had to have residential roofs with architectural shingles, street-side landscaping and more, according to the Cooper-Young Community Association.
For its homes in Cooper-Young, City Cottages invites prospective tenants to ”enjoy life from the center of town without permanently putting roots down.”
City Cottages has also eyed the University District as a site for more tiny homes.