HOUSTON, TX - A nonprofit housing organization announced plans Monday for a 20-acre, mixed-use development on Houston's Near Northside, a project Mayor Bill White called an important step in providing affordable housing near downtown and other employment centers. Over the next few years, a vacant FedEx Warehouse at 4004 Irvington will be transformed into 80 to 100 single-family homes, 180 to 250 apartments and a retail center, said Mary Lawler, executive director of the Avenue Community Development Corp., which will oversee the project.
White said the project, one of the largest developments inside Loop 610 ever undertaken by a Houston nonprofit developer, represents a wise alternative to "leapfrog" suburban development that consumes huge tracts of land and requires costly extensions of streets and other infrastructure. "Building vibrant communities close to downtown is the best thing that we can do to reduce crime and traffic congestion," White said.
Lawler said half of the single-family homes and an undetermined number of the apartments will be priced for low- and moderate-income families. Home buyers who meet income and other requirements will qualify for federally funded down payment assistance of up to $36,000 because the Near Northside has been added to White's urban redevelopment program, known as Project Houston Hope.
Because of these subsidies, White said, many buyers will have monthly mortgage payments that are as low as or lower than what they now pay for rental housing. Some families in another Avenue CDC development in the same neighborhood pay as little as $600 a month, including taxes and insurance, said Lawrence E. Garvin, a home builder who worked on the project.
Avenue CDC purchased the site from FedEx with a $9.48 million loan from the city-sponsored Houston Housing Finance Corp. The city's Housing and Community Development Department is providing $50,000 in operating funds and $100,000 in predevelopment funds, assistant director Donald Sampley said.
The project is an outgrowth of a 6-year-old revitalization plan for Northside Village, an area between downtown and the North Loop. Among other features, the plan called for conversion of industrial property into new residential neighborhoods. White said the homes would appeal to young families whose children can repopulate neighborhood schools where enrollments now are declining.
Lawler acknowledged that the national economic crisis makes this a challenging time to take on a major urban redevelopment project, but she noted that Houston is faring better than much of the rest of the country.
Avenue CDC hopes to complete demolition of the warehouse early next year, Lawler said, and spend the rest of 2009 preparing the site and making necessary infrastructure improvements. Construction will begin in late 2009 or early 2010, she said.
Source: chron.com