By Ben Leubsdorf / Monitor staff
With the snip of a green-and-gold ribbon, city and housing officials yesterday unveiled 25 energy-efficient units of workforce housing on Parmenter Road that weathered years of lawsuits, revisions and handoffs between developers.
Next week, the first residents could start moving into the nearly $5.3 million Parmenter Place development, with 25 two- and three-bedroom units in six buildings owned by the
Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority, said John Hoyt, the housing authority's executive director.
Hoyt, city officials and dozens of other people involved in the project gathered there yesterday afternoon to inaugurate the development, which Hoyt said will likely be certified for occupancy early next week.
"You really haven't just provided housing. What you've done, in my opinion, is you've provided a home," said Mayor Jim Bouley, who cut the ribbon stretched across part of the development's freshly paved parking lot. "And anytime you can provide someplace that someone can go and they can call home, you truly have done a wonderful thing."
Rent starts at $801 for a two-bedroom unit and $924 for a three-bedroom unit. There are income eligibility requirements, but rent isn't subsidized. About 50 applicants are on a waiting list, and
Hoyt said he expects Parmenter Place to be fully leased within 45 days.
One of the trim, green-sided buildings at the end of Parmenter Road, off North State Street, was available for tours yesterday and featured wall-to-wall carpeting, a new fridge and an electric stove. The unfurnished apartment was so new, its smoke detector was still wrapped in plastic. Most of the project's $5.3 million cost was covered by federal money, including stimulus funding, Hoyt said, with Merrimack County Savings Bank providing $775,000 in financing.
Unitil contributed about $100,000 in rebates and other assistance to help the buildings come in nearly 50 percent more efficient than the state's building code requires, said Keith Freischlag, the utility's energy efficiency program manager.
Given the project's goal of providing affordable housing, he said, "this is a situation where they really need help controlling energy costs. . . . It really does help these people out, and they're much more comfortable buildings."
Discussions about the site date back to 2003, and its current incarnation began as a 40-unit townhouse private development in October 2006. The plan went through revisions as neighbors complained that the housing development was too dense compared with the surrounding neighborhood. Several lawsuits resulted.
Last year, the housing authority, a quasi-governmental body with a board of commissioners appointed by the city, took over the project from developer Mike Garrepy. Workers broke ground in January after a final lawsuit was dropped a few weeks earlier.
Having the project finished and near occupancy is "a huge relief," Hoyt said, "when you're talking millions of dollars and everything that can go wrong - and did go wrong."
(Ben Leubsdorf can be reached at 603-369-3307 or bleubsdorf@cmonitor.com.)
