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A new lease on life
An article in the October 2008 issue of the Twin Cities Business magazine discusses Aeon's development of affordable apartment homes. Following is an excerpt of the article:
Room at the Bottom
At the other end of the apartment spectrum, nonprofit developers and even a few well-known for-profit builders are using state and federal government financial incentives to supply much-needed affordable housing.
The Turnstone Group, one of the key players in the late-‘90s trend of converting apartments to condos, has now reversed course, purchasing and rehabbing the long-troubled Blaisdell Apartments near Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue with the aid of city-issued multifamily revenue bonds. Sherman Associates, best known for its luxury condos near the Guthrie and in downtown St. Paul, has also entered the field by building affordable rentals along the rundown Brooklyn Boulevard corridor, partnering with Brooklyn Park taxpayers.
Then there’s the rehabilitation and new addition at the Har Mar Apartments in Roseville. In that project, the Twin Cities nonprofit Aeon, formerly known as the Central Community Housing Trust, is remodeling and upgrading 120 units in the 1970s-era buildings near the Har Mar Shopping Center at Snelling Avenue and Highway 36. Aeon also plans to add a new 48-unit, four-story building to the complex for tenants who earn less than the Twin Cities’ median income.
Aeon President and CEO Alan Arthur says the apartments had been considered a problem by Roseville officials: They weren’t kept up and drew more than their share of police calls. But their location was golden. Roseville approved $255,000 in funding to aid the project; the Metropolitan Council chipped in with a $305,000 Livable Communities grant.
“They’re fantastically located for those who work minimum-wage and service-sector jobs,” Arthur says. “It’s accessible by bus to downtown Minneapolis, downtown St. Paul, and Rosedale, where there is a lot of work for the people who clean our offices and wait our tables.”
With taxpayer dollars priming the pump, both nonprofit and for-profit developers are saying new and rehabbed rental units aimed at the low end of the market can produce good returns, as well as help to tackle a long-standing overall shortage of decent affordable housing.
One of the biggest steps in that direction was taken this spring with the passage of the 2008 bonding bill approved by Governor Tim Pawlenty. Included in that measure was $30 million earmarked for “permanent supportive housing” for the homeless, a move that would help address the needs of a relatively small group of people who gobble up 80 percent of the financial resources of social service providers.
“That was a major coup for non-profit housing developers,” Arthur says. “The idea is to get the chronic homeless off the street and save the state some money.” |
