The city of Asheville has backed out of its plans to buy the McCormick Heights housing project, but will continue to assist and fund the relocation of tenants there, and the owner of the property, Progress Energy, has announced it will go into foreclosure on the 100-unit complex.
“We regret we could not make this deal work,” Progress Energy Community Relations Manager Ken Maxwell told Xpress. “But we all would have regrets if we had not tried.”
City Council in December voted to approve the $2.5 million purchase of the ailing property from a subsidiary of Progress Energy and build new mixed-income housing there and on adjacent city-owned land. In January, Council committed $120,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to relocate the 41 households living in the housing project who would be evicted by the purchase.
But while researching the purchase, city staff found that the property came with a series of limitations imposed due to the low-income tax-credit program that would carry over to the next owner if it were sold. According to those stipulations, City Real Estate Manager Ed Vess told Xpress, 60 percent of any complex built on the property would have to be available to people making 60 percent or less of the median income, no mattter the size of the development.
“Those restrictions would not allow the flexibility we were looking for,” Vess said. “They impair our ability to do a better project than currently exists.”
A March 29 letter from City Manager Gary Jackson to Maxwell advises the company to “proceed with other options for the property’s disposition.” In other words: find another buyer.
The same letter reiterates the city’s intention to continue relocation assistance for the remaining 31 households still at McCormick Heights. So far, 10 households have been relocated, and others are at some stage in the relocation process, according to a March 29 memo from Community Development Director Charlotte Caplan to City Council. Thirteen households have yet to make contact with the Affordable Housing Coalition, the nonprofit overseeing the relocation effort.
The development, located above McCormick Field, sank into severe debt due to a lack of renters. According to the Asheville Housing Authority, which manages the property, a high crime rate kept potential tenants away.
— Brian Postelle, staff writer
So in other words, the city doesn’t want to but the property unless they can put million dollar condos and antique shops on the land, right?
Yeah, so it would seem
Vess told me that the city wanted to have some affordable housing on the property – even equivalent to the amount that is there now – but could not make the 60 percent requirement work.
hmmmmm…I wonder if this changes their thoughts to their “endless money pit” plan to end homelessness in the area.
:-)
What this has to do with the Tom Hanks- Shelley Long ’80s comedy I have no clue.
The cities plan to end homelessness will basically be a never ending money pool of wasted tax paper money much like the purchase of this apartment complex was going to be.