By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS
With more than a little financial help from the federal, state and county governments, developers will create 132 units for Westchester's long-neglected affordable senior housing market over the next year, following the start of work on two projects.
In Cortlandt, Wilder Balter Partners L.L.C. of Elmsford has broken ground on its $20 million, 161-unit Jacob's Hill complex. The project will include 103 apartments as well as 58 below-market townhouse condominiums, all for seniors, on Route 6 just west of the Bear Mountain Parkway interchange.
And in White Plains, former Councilman-tumed-developer William Brown Jr. has begun demolition to create space for 42 apartments on the corner of South Kensico and Hadden avenues, a few blocks east of the city's downtown. Brown's $10.3 million project, Kensico Terrace, will consist of 29 apartments for senior citizens and 13 for families.
Both projects combined will provide only a fraction of the 10,000 affordable units Westchester County has committed itself to helping build over the next decade
"It's a drop in me bucket compared with the 10,000 units (County Executive) Andy Spano identified as being needed, but it does show progress," said Brown, a principal in Kensico Terrace L.L.C.
Developers for both projects said they could not have been built without a patchwork of government affordable-housing programs.
Kensico Terrace raised equity by selling $2.3 million a year in state-administered federal housing tax credits, and received $2 million from the state Housing Finance Agency, nearly $1.2 million from Westchester- $896,000 toward land acquisition and $300,000 toward infrastructure costs and $400,000 from the Federal Home Loan Bank.
Brown said the pursuit of government funding explains why he didn't start work for three years following the first approval of his plans by White Plains officials.
SLOW PROCESS
The Housing Finance Agency alone took more than two years to process financing for Kensico Terrace. That delay. Brown said, forced him to get a second environmental inspection for the
property, since the first one expired while he was pursuing agency money.
"We were lucky we had a contractor that kept our costs relatively the same," namely One Key Construction of the Bronx, Brown said. "I wish I could tell you why it took as long as it did. The
process is just a long one. It's slow, it takes a long time. That's one of the downsides of building affordable housing."
State tax credits also account for the bulk of the financing for the affordable apartment portion of Jacob's Hill, project manager Deborah Post said. The project also received a total $3.85 million from the county ó $2.75 million in New Homes Land Acquisition funds and the rest, as infrastructure subsidies through the Housing Implementation Fund.
Apartment rents at Jacob's Hill will range from $805 to $1,100 per month. As for the condos, eight will be sold at below-market prices to qualified buyers - which given high demand are expected to all be residents now living in or near Cortlandt. The remaining condos will be priced at just under $250,000 for one-bedroom units and below $300,000 for two-bedrooms.
That would place the project below Westchester's median condominium price of $349,000 recorded in the third quarter by the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service Inc.
Jacob's Hill is Wilder Balter's second affordable senior development in Westchester. The developer last year started construction on Woodcrest at Leonard Park, a $45 million, 124-unit development mostly in Mount Kisco, on 25 acres off Routes 117 and 172. That project includes
90 condominium apartments for seniors, 66 of which will be sold at below-market prices to buyers from Mount Kisco and neighboring Bedford.
"There's a market for a moderate-rate condominium product and it fills a need in the community," Post said.
At Kensico Terrace, rents will range from $1,050 a month for one-bedroom units to about $1,200 for two-bedroom units.
Brown said he planned to pursue additional affordable projects, both in White Plains and in Mount Vemon.
"The next projects we do will be a lot bigger, two to three times the size we had at Kensico Terrace. "We'd like to do more than 100 units per project."
