Socks Construction planning two downtown buildings

Mar. 22—TRAVERSE CITY — Socks Construction has plans for one downtown property and is reworking a previous concept for another it just received in a trade with the city.

Company CEO John Socks said he hopes to break ground within 60 days on a building with 7,000 square feet of retail on the ground floor and 70 or so condominiums in the upper stories.

All told the building would have about 72,000 square feet of floorspace, according to parent company C4C & Companies' website. It's planned for the former site of Covell Funeral Home at 232 E. State Street.

"You can't find a better area," Socks said. "Front Street is full and you have kind of big corporates coming in for leases now so the next tier is State. Mom-and-pops are getting forced out a little bit, and I think State Street is a great place for them to land."

It's also next door to another Socks project known as Modern State that's home to Playa Bowls, and the new location for Cousin Jenny's Cornish Pasties, Socks said. It also holds eight short-term rentals, according to the company website.

Plans for the new building call for Socks Construction to hold onto the condos and use them as short-term rentals, Socks said — how many would be rented that way hasn't been determined yet, although city zoning places no limits on how many units in a building on C-4C downtown district land can be short-term rented.

Socks pointed that out when asked if he was concerned about any public outcry to renting some of the new condos that way in light of ongoing discussions for the need for long-term housing in the city.

"I don't know how many units are going toward that, but it's allowed in zoning so I don't know," he said. "We have to be able to make the dollars and cents work, and there's always an equation, right? That's what we have to figure out."

Talks with potential tenants for the first floor are ongoing but not final, Socks said. Ideally, he would like to see a restaurant and coffee shop in a floor that could be divided as much as eight ways, or offered whole.

The building would have around 18 parking spaces incorporated into the first floor, Socks said.

Downtown Development Authority Jean Derenzy said she doesn't know all the details of what Socks Construction plans for 232 E. State Street, but agreed the first-floor retail being planned there is just what the DDA wants to see.

"When you look at Playa Bowls and Cousin Jenny's, it brings a different vibrancy to State Street that we've been working on and private development is responding to it," she said.

Derenzy added she's not seeing independent businesses being pushed out of Front Street yet, but agreed it's good to have a place where they can set up and thrive. That's especially since the city's downtown depends on having an array of diverse stores.

As for the short-term rentals, Derenzy said she wasn't aware of plans for them at 232 E. State but, generally speaking, having more year-round downtown residents helps keep people downtown throughout the year. That means adding more long term residences, including apartments, into a mix of businesses and offices. A building of nothing but short-term rentals, though, wouldn't be in the downtown's best interest, she said.

She's hopeful that Great Lakes Capital's West End Lofts will start filling with tenants soon. More people living on that end of town would help future retail along State Street's west end, she said.

Meanwhile, Socks Construction is redrafting plans it had for another State Street address, Socks said.

The company traded that property with Traverse City in exchange for city Lot V at the corner of West Front and Pine streets, and across the alley from the traded land, as previously reported. Socks Construction paid $4,913,625 for Lot V, while the city paid $6,599,340 for land that includes Lot P and which the city plans the site of a future parking deck.

Previous plans for a project along State Street are now out of date, and the company is considering what it can do with the new property, Socks said. He deferred on the details, saying there aren't many to share for now. But he expected the building would have about 100,000 square feet in floor space and a mix of uses.