Saturday, May 21, 2016
Smart people, good hearts, great idea
Some of you know that I am a real admirer of the work that Dan Collison and his staff are doing at First Covenant Church here in Minneapolis (I also get to preach there about twice a year, most recently last month).
The church is across the street from the new football stadium, and they are putting their property to good use, as explained in an article in yesterday's Star Tribune:
The city in recent years
has seen many new luxury apartments pop up, along with a few affordable
housing projects in which rents are subsidized. But new housing options
for the moderate-income worker — those who earn too much to qualify for a
subsidy yet not enough to pay for high rents — have been left out of
the downtown residential boom.
Ryan [Companies, a developer],
First Covenant Church and Community Housing Development Corp. a year ago
outlined a rough vision for a six-story apartment building across 6th
Street S. from the new Vikings stadium. This week, they submitted to the
city a near-final plan for the $38 million project, which was designed
by UrbanWorks Architecture.
The financing model is key
to the project. Workforce housing, or that which is accessible to
people making 50 to 60 percent of the area median income, is difficult
to execute. Developers need to make money on a project and there are two
ways to do that typically: build market-rate apartments that fetch
rents high enough to pay back the cost of construction or build units
for low-income earners that are eligible for government subsidies.
But Ryan,
First Covenant and CHDC found a way to make the math work for their
project, one that takes the Olympics for inspiration. They have an
unnamed private partner with a nice budget for housing and operational
space during the Super Bowl festivities that is close to committing to
the project.
