Frederick's west side is getting a new affordable apartment community, and it comes with something you don't see on many multifamily site plans: a child care center.
On Monday, Oct. 12, the city's Planning Commission approved plans for The Heights on Himes, a 145-unit affordable multifamily project on 6.9 acres of county-owned land beside the Prospect Center at 585 Himes Ave. According to Everything Frederick, which adapted reporting from The Frederick News-Post, the homes are meant for households earning no more than 60% of the area median income.
Frederick County picked New York-based Conifer Realty to develop the property in December 2025. The county will keep ownership of the land, an arrangement described in the coverage as helping make the affordable housing financially feasible.
Housing, child care and a bus stop
The plans include a 6,300-square-foot space intended for affordable child care services that will be open to the public, not just residents. A free public transit stop is nearby.
County housing director Vincent Rogers said the combination tackles the needs his office keeps hearing about from low- and moderate-income households: affordable housing, affordable child care and access to affordable transportation.
More county services are headed next door, too. Rogers said the county's divisions of housing and family services, along with part of the county health department, will eventually move into the Prospect Center. Those moves are planned, not already in place.
Frederick-based ADTEK Engineers and Zavos Architecture and Design prepared the design.
The project has been moving through city approvals for months. Back on May 26, the city's Zoning Board of Appeals approved a conditional use allowing a multifamily project of up to 150 units in the PB zoning district at 585 Himes Ave. At that hearing, Rogers told the board that Conifer was selected to build approximately 145 units along with commercial space. "We cannot wait for others to address this problem, and must use our resources, in this case, County owned land, to provide housing to moderate and lower income workforce households," he said, according to the minutes. He also pointed to the site's location near public transit and jobs along the Golden Mile.
The bigger shortage
The Heights on Himes is a start, not a solution. A county housing needs assessment released in February found Frederick County needs more than 31,000 additional homes to keep up with population growth, roughly 10,000 of them affordable to households earning 60% of area median income or less.
At the May zoning hearing, Rogers said that assessment found more than 20,000 county households are cost-burdened and earn less than $75,000 a year, about 1 in 5 households countywide and 1 in 3 in the city.
Planning Commissioner Robert Robey noted at this month's meeting that developers often point to the cost of building lower-priced housing and choose to pay fees instead of including affordable units in their projects. Putting the project on county land is one way around that math.
Neighbors were on board. Golden Mile Alliance executive director Robert Van Rens praised the developer's outreach and the project's potential for the west side. Steve Jakubczyk of Citizens for Responsible Growth also endorsed the approach. Kevin Sellner of the Frederick Housing Solutions Task Force suggested adding solar panels to lower residents' electric bills, though that was a suggestion, not a confirmed part of the approved plans.
What we don't know yet: when construction starts, when it opens, what the rents will be, how the project will be financed or who will build it. No general contractor has been named, and the coverage did not include a construction cost or building count.
Why it matters for Contractors
A 145-unit affordable project with a 6,300-square-foot child care build-out is solid work for site, concrete, framing, roofing, MEP, drywall and finish contractors in the Frederick area, and the child care space is a commercial interior job of its own. With site plan approval in hand and the county holding the land, the next milestones to watch are Conifer's financing and its choice of a builder. Conifer will need a general contractor and a full slate of subs once the money is lined up, so local firms should get on its radar now. And with Frederick County saying it needs about 10,000 more homes at 60% of AMI or below, this county-land model could be the first of several.