CELL TOWER APARTMENTS
Normal, Illinois 2024-2025
36 Workforce Apartments
Pre-Development & Design
Uptown Normal
Normal, Illinois 2024-2025
36 Workforce Apartments
Pre-Development & Design
Normal, IL features one of the most successful downtown revitalizations in American urbanism. In 2001, the Town of Normal adopted a master plan by Doug Farr of Farr Associates that transformed the central district into Uptown Normal: a transit-oriented urban district recognized by the EPA, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the Congress for the New Urbanism.
At the heart of the plan, an oddly shaped intersection was converted into a major civic space called Uptown Circle, framed by a children’s museum, town hall, multimodal transit center, and mixed-use buildings with shops and restaurants. The Amtrak station connects Normal to Chicago in under two hours, making it one of the few Midwestern towns where car-free living is genuinely possible.
The Cell Tower Apartments is a residential infill project developed in collaboration with Lander Group. It is among the first new buildings to advance the next phase of Uptown’s growth. Sited along Constitution Trail and within walking distance of the Illinois State University campus and Uptown Circle, the project adds urban-format housing for a growing population of young professionals, graduate students, faculty, and empty nesters seeking the kind of amenity-rich urban living Uptown now credibly offers.
The project follows the principles that made Uptown successful in the first place: human-scaled streets, active ground floors, street-facing architecture, and durable materials composed to reinforce the character of an increasingly cohesive urban neighborhood.
Across the street, a companion project completes the block. A ground-floor liner building wraps the base of an existing parking deck, activating a currently vacant corner with a neighborhood shop, stoops, and apartments along Constitution Trail. Both the liner units and the Cell Tower Apartments share parking in the underused deck, eliminating the need for additional surface parking.
Together, the two projects fill a gap in the urban fabric, turning a single underperforming block into a continuous, inhabited edge that extends Uptown's walkable core one block further.