By: Kia Farhang

Marcy-Holmes officials are planning the neighborhood’s next 10 years.

The Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association is looking for a middle ground between traditional single-family homes and new student apartment complexes that have divided public opinion, focusing on what they call “gentle density.”

At a public hearing on Tuesday, residents expressed a desire to build housing for students, young families and seniors.

“They don’t want to become a monoculture of just students,” said Pierre Willette, economic and community development manager at the University of Minnesota Foundation.

Willette is part of a steering committee tasked with updating the neighborhood’s Master Plan, which Minneapolis City Council last updated a decade ago. He said Marcy-Holmes needs to keep working on being a neighborhood for everybody.

The old plan focused on keeping high-density housing on the neighborhood’s edges while maintaining a “solid core” of single-family homes on Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth streets southeast.

Willette said the recent swell of student housing has changed the neighborhood dramatically.

“The neighborhood needs to figure out how to deal with that change,” he said.

He added the University — and its students — are major stakeholders in the neighborhood’s future.

For more on what the Master Plan could change, pick up Wednesday’s Minnesota Daily.