While construction on the third phase of the $98 million Metro Green affordable housing development began in December 2015, the official groundbreaking was just held on May 24.
“Metro Green has been a transformative workforce housing project for Stamford”™s South End community,” said Stamford Mayor David Martin, who joked about the irony of breaking ground for a building already partially built.
“The reality is that sometimes people get excited and they don”™t follow through with what they promised,” he said. “Here we have someone fulfilling the promise before they even make it. This is an example of how to do it right.”
Martin was speaking of Metro Green developers Jonathan F. P. Rose, president of Jonathan Rose Cos. Inc. and Peter L. Malkin, chairman emeritus of Malkin Holdings, both of whom teamed up with a cadre of public and private financing partners to see the entire Metro Green project, in various phases of development since 2009, completed.
“We”™ve seen some wonderful things happen in Stamford since we acquired this property three decades ago,” said Malkin, whose company has been actively involved in Stamford projects and community building efforts since 1958.
“Working together with the city of Stamford, the Connecticut Department of Housing, the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, and Charter Oak Communities, we are creating a vibrant, transit-oriented community that provides quality housing for people of diverse economic and social backgrounds,” said Rose.
According to representatives for Rose, the $58 million Metro Green III at 717 Atlantic St. will be a 131 unit, 11-story apartment building and will include a mix of studio, one-, and two-bedroom units. Fifty-eight of the apartments will be rented at competitive market rates and 73 of the apartments will be restricted to reduced-income households with incomes ranging from 50 to 60 percent of the area median income.
The 2015 area median income for a family of four in Stamford is $105,400, according to the database Affordable Housing Online.
The previous phases, Metro Green apartments and Metro Green Residences, were completed in 2009 and 2012, respectively.
All 50 units of the $18.8 million apartments project are dedicated to affordable housing. Seven of the units are designated for residents with incomes below 25 percent of the area median income and the remainder set aside for residents making between 50 and 60 percent of the area median income.
The $26.7 million residences project also has 50 units, most of which are designated for residents with incomes between 50 and 60 percent of the area median income, though 10 units are market rate and five are for extremely low-income residents.
Both buildings are near or at full occupancy.
The 5.2-acre development was a former brownfield site and has come a long way in the last few decades, said Malkin.
“This area was horrible,” he said. “It was an incinerator where film was burned to take out heavy metals, thus polluting the entire area and becoming a brownfield, which we cleaned.”
The site was rehabilitated into the Metro Green development through a network of financing, including public and private partnerships. The largest portion of the financing, $45 million, was provided though state and federal sources, including the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority and the Department of Housing and Urban Development”™s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.
Private funding totaled $34 million and included $26 million from Citi Community Capital, tax-exempt financing issued through a collaboration with Charter Oak Communities for the benefit of the Stamford community, and $12 million from First Sterling Financial Inc in Great Neck, N.Y. on behalf of JPMorgan Chase.
The Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and the city of Stamford also contributed approximately $9 million each.
Some cost savings were achieved through the development”™s green design, which is LEED gold certified as resource efficient, the second highest certification from the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design green certification program.
“This combination of density and open space we think is really the future of great cities,” said Rose.
“The whole reason we create these projects is for the residents, for the ability for them to move forward in their lives. Our company”™s mission is to equalize the landscape of opportunity for all,” he said. “We really believe in an America where everybody has an equal start and housing is the place to do it. We are so proud of the residents who have found their way here and what they are doing with their lives.”
Lynette Powell is among the first-wave residents to move in to the development and thanked those in attendance for the opportunity living in the development has afforded her.
“It gave me an opportunity because I became disabled early in my life,” she said. “My income wasn”™t the greatest, but it gave me a chance.”
The Metro Green III is expected to be completed by June 2017.
