Housing Visions returns to Genesee Street

By Joyce Miles Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

As promised, Housing Visions is back with a plan to revitalize Genesee Street.

The Syracuse-based not-for-profit agency, which specializes in troubled-neighborhood turnaround, is negotiating again with local landowners to buy up parcels along Genesee and several cross streets.

Last year, Housing Visions proposed “Lockport Canal Homes” along and around Genesee between Pine and Washburn streets. The $8.5 million development consisted of 10 residential structures and a community center, upgraded or built from scratch and containing about 35 apartments of varying sizes for low- to moderate-income families.

The plan was seen as a positive for troubled Genesee Street because Housing Visions rescues rundown housing and then commits to aggressive property/tenant management to protect its investment.

The plan was shelved this past January — and tentative sale contracts with about a dozen property owners were voided — because the agency lost out on a $2 million federal stimulus grant that it had said was critical to the project.

Housing Visions is now trying to recreate the development using different financing and, in some cases, different properties.

“We’re almost done” negotiating land purchases, Ben Lockwood, Housing Visions’ director of development, said Monday. “We can’t do everything we want all at once, so we’ll eat the elephant one bite at a time.”

The new development is “similar” to what was proposed last year, Lockwood said: A community center is still planned on Locust Street, on the spot where Macaluso Shoe Repair and a hobby shop burned.

One change involves 88 Pine St., between Genesee and South streets. The old site of Lockport Trophy Co. is to be sold to Housing Visions, the lot joined with adjacent city-held property on Genesee and the whole thing subdivided into three lots containing four apartment houses.

The city planning board approved the land subdivision Monday evening.

The Common Council approved the sale of 155 Genesee St., and 169 Genesee a few parcels east of it, last week. Housing Visions will buy the tax-foreclosed properties for $1 on the condition they’re returned to city control if the development doesn’t occur.

The new Lockport Canal Homes plan isn’t finalized yet, but Housing Visions needs city approvals on the Pine/Genesee portion now, in order to secure project financing. The agency is working with YWCA of Niagara to acquire a federal grant for homeless housing; if the grant is approved, Housing Visions will dedicate some portion of the development to housing for victims of domestic violence, Lockwood said.

The Pine/Genesee portion will go before the Zoning Board of Appeals later this month. A number of variances will be sought, including a waiver on the rule that two parking spaces must be provided per apartment unit. The site plan on that portion calls for one shared parking lot for three apartment houses containing a total of 10 units and one parking space for each unit. The zoning board OK’d the one-space-per-unit layout of the overall development last year.

Once variances are obtained, the Pine/Genesee portion returns to the planning board for site plan approval. Planning commissioners peppered Lockwood and technical consultants Monday with questions about erosion control, landscaping and even the agency’s plans for rental property management. Commissioner Julie Muscato complained the sketches showed new builds that “lack historical character” because they don’t resemble closely enough existing Victorian-era structures in the neighborhood.

Neither new builds nor rebuilds may too closely imitate the originals they’re replacing, Lockwood said. That’s per the direction of the state Historic Preservation Office, which approves Housing Visions’ construction plans.

Since 1993, Housing Visions has invested over $150 million in developing new housing in old neighborhoods in seven central New York cities, including Syracuse, Auburn, Utica, Cortland and Binghamton. Developments consist of rehabbed and/or new structures built in the styles of the neighborhoods they’re in. The agency raises construction cash by obtaining and selling low-income housing tax credits from New York state.

Housing Visions’ holdings are managed by locally based property managers, according to Lockwood. Tenants undergo criminal background and credit checks before they’re admitted; and will be evicted if they, or their guests, break written rules of occupancy, including a ban on criminal activities such as drug-dealing, he said.

Tenants typically are working-class people earning about 60 percent of local median income, or salaries/annual pay in the low $20,000s range, Lockwood said.

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