Woodwards building

When someone first came up with the idea to use the vacant Woodwards department store building to make lower cost housing for people, didn't you think it would simply be changing those huge open floor spaces into small apartments suitable for the less fortunate to have a place called home? Hmmm, I did too.
And yet looking at it the other day, they have left only about 30 feet of the facade of one corner of the building standing and there's a huge big hole in the ground there where they are building a totally new building on the site. And the apartments/condos being built seem to be tailored to the rich all over again.
Whatever happened to that original idea?