When Jeff McQuade, 65, was looking for a place to retire away from his chilly Michigan home, Bowling Green was a logical option.

The Corvette enthusiast and owner has been coming to the city for decades for Corvette events, and he figured finding a house to buy near the GM Corvette plant and museum would be easy, especially in light of neighbor complaints that led to a lawsuit about noise from the new National Corvette Museum Motorsports Park.

But when he drove around the area in November, he discovered “there was nothing for sale. It got me thinking,” he said. The search continued for weeks until he found a home about a five-minute drive from his target area, but it was in need of renovations and McQuade,

who worked in law enforcement in Michigan, has still not fully moved into his new home.

McQuade said he was surprised “that the housing market here is so tight.”

The news is no surprise, however, to developers, who are building apartments locally at a record pace to fill in the gap. That trend presents its own challenges for the city.

City-County Planning Commission Executive Director Ben Peterson said his agency in 2016 processed plans for 1,997 apartment units, as well as 426 single-family homes.

“It was definitely a record year for us,” Peterson said. In 2012, for example, those figures were 457 and 47, respectively.

The trend shows no sign of slowing in 2017. On Thursday evening, the planning commission recommended for approval plans for 100 new apartments in two complexes in the city.

“The demand for apartments is through the roof. Every developer … says they have a waiting list for every apartment complex they have in the city,” Peterson said.

Steve Cline, president-elect of the Kentucky Association of Realtors, told the Daily News recently that the Bowling Green and Warren County housing market is facing a shortage of housing options.

“Several months ago, we only had 100 residential building lots available in Warren County,” Cline said. “That is ready, buildable lots.”

Because of the shortage, Cline said he sometimes looks elsewhere for his clients. He recently found himself showing properties in Edmonson County to prospective buyers.

“People are coming from all over the country here to work,” Peterson said, adding that building apartments can be more lucrative for a developer than building homes because considerably more apartments than houses can be built on the same plot of land.

The consensus is the strong local economy is largely driving the population growth and resulting housing crunch. The November unemployment rate in the Bowling Green region was just 3.3 percent. The latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates are that Bowling Green’s population grew to 63,616 by mid-2015, up from 58,067 in 2010.

“In a growing community, there are challenges in many areas, but especially in housing,” Bowling Green Mayor Bruce Wilkerson said. “The challenge generally relates to the availability of affordable housing.”

In the last few months, “there were just over 300 existing homes for sale. With about 400 licensed Realtors that meant that there was less than one home per Realtor. Those statistics are sobering,” Wilkerson said.

“Land for subdivisions is practically not available within the city limits. … Townhouse or apartment living is a lifestyle some prefer due to its cost, convenience and ease of living. That trend began several years ago for Bowling Green and is continuing today,” Wilkerson said. “Since the cost of land acquisition is so high, these options are available for developers to meet the demand for affordable housing.”

Mike Simpson is the owner of Chandler Property Management, which has about 1,500 rental units in the county.

“It’s a strong market,” he said, adding that the occupancy rate for local apartments is about 95 percent. “It will be interesting to see what happens in 6 months” when some of the new apartment complexes open.

“Every market experiences a cycle,” Simpson said. The recent low point for the apartment market locally was around 2007, when people were able to buy homes with little money down and as lenders were more lax on providing loans to those with less than stellar credit.

When the housing bubble burst in 2008 at the start of the Great Recession, it was actually good news for rental units as that housing option was what was available for many former homeowners. “The credit market tightened,” Simpson said.

“Right now, it’s robust,” Simpson said of the rental market. “The population is growing; we have had an influx of immigrants … . I think our economy is diverse (and) growing.”

But the influx of even more apartments does provide challenges.

Peterson said it “makes the decision makers’ job much, much harder,” he said. Based on the complaints he hears at rezoning meetings, “traffic is the biggest concern for this community.”

At Tuesday’s city commission meeting, such concerns were voiced by Commissioner Brian “Slim” Nash during a discussion on a rezoning request for 30.93 acres to allow a 288-unit apartment development at Old Scottsville Road and Cumberland Trace Road near Cumberland Trace Elementary School.

Nash said he had a concern about having only one entrance and exit for the large development onto Cumberland Trace Road.

“This looks like a mess” traffic-wise, he said.

Nash, who previously served as a city commissioner, said he remembers talking during a city-sponsored summer stroll with residents of the nearby McFadden’s Ferry subdivision, which also enters and exits onto Cumberland Trace, about their traffic concerns. Nash ultimately abstained from voting on the request, which was passed by the other commissioners on a first reading.

More housing also means more work for city agencies like the Bowling Green Fire Department.

Brian O’Callaghan, assistant chief for fire prevention, said the department is tasked with ensuring that things like fire hydrants and water flow are sufficient at apartment complexes.

“We also try to inspect each apartment complex building annually, and when you have more buildings, the call volume goes up,” he said.

Wilkerson said these are better problems to have than the alternative.

“We all understand housing is a challenge for a growing area, but challenges turn into problems when a community becomes stagnant or loses population and jobs,” he said. “Look in other areas of the nation and see what real problems are when a community decreases in population and job opportunities are no longer present.”

Simpson reiterated the cyclical nature of the recent apartment boom.

“I can’t predict the future, (but) we’ve been in business long enough to see these cycles,” Simpson said. “Every market has a cycle, and right now it’s robust.”

— Follow Daily News city government reporter Wes Swietek on Twitter at twitter.com/BGDNgovtbeat or visit bgdailynews.com.