Project seeks grant funding for development
The Monroe City Council is set to decide next month on hiring a grantwriter to assist in attracting federal grant funding through the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for a local project at Blaine Street Station along Edwards Street.
The proposal would add an affordable housing component to the planned mixed-use redevelopment of eight acres along Blaine Street at Edwards Street.
Chad Draper, owner of The Eulalia Group, which is developing the project known as Blaine Street Station, appeared at a special called May 5 council meeting, along with Eric Miller and Jen Welch of Gwinnett-Walton Habitat for Humanity, to make the case for adding an affordable housing component to Blaine Street Station.
Also referred to as attainable housing, such residential options are designed to provide housing at an affordable price point for emergency services personnel, teachers, and others, including small business owners, who might not otherwise be able to afford housing in the communities where they work.
In broad strokes, the attainable housing proposal for Blaine Street Station, if assisted with a $5 million Innovative Grant, would involve The Eulalia Group building out 20 residential shells, with Habitat for Humanity doing the interior work on the structures. The homes would be sold at market value, then subsidized downward so that no qualified owner is paying more than 30% of their income to cover their housing costs.
According to Miller, taking this approach could create a new model for the range of Habitat for Humanity’s ongoing work to provide affordable housing, making Monroe a pioneer in that arena.
“What we’re doing is attractive,” Draper told the council, moving to allay fears that the attainable housing component of Blaine Street Station would be of lesser quality than other housing in the planned development or elsewhere in Monroe.
“It’s not scary,” Draper said. “It’s not anything that anybody would be ashamed of, or at least I hope not.”
Stalled efforts
The city purchased the Blaine Street property in 2017, and within two years, had established a new Monroe Police Department headquarters and Municipal Court on the site. But efforts to further redevelop the tract stalled, with only tepid interest in the city’s issuance of requests for qualifications and requests for proposals from developers to share their visions for mixed-use redevelopment of the acreage, a collection of vacant storefronts and an empty parking lot.
It was not until late last year that the city’s Urban Redevelopment Agency entered a contract with The Eulalia Group for purchase of the property. The first $200,000 installment of the $800,000 purchase price is due from The Eulalia Group on Sept. 30 of this year.
Chad Draper with The Eulalia Group’s initial proposed site plan for the Blaine Station project on Blaine Street in Monroe. Photo credit: Stephen Milligan | The Walton Tribune
‘A lot of fluidity’
However, the introduction of the attainable housing element into The Eulalia Group plan, combined with a resulting need for rezoning, has created some concern for city officials in terms of how contracts and other arrangements for redevelopment of the tract might have to be unwound and reworked in light of the proposed addition of attainable housing.
“I don’t think there’s a specific, concrete path ahead,” City Administrator Logan Propes told Mayor John Howard and the council at the May 5 meeting. “There’s a lot of fluidity to this process, in my opinion.”
Howard was particularly concerned about the addition of an attainable housing component to the Blaine Street Station plan, arguing that it could end up placing unsuspecting people in a home in a community where they otherwise could struggle to afford the cost of living. The city’s aim, Howard countered, should be to attract people who can afford to live in Monroe.
“This is a race to the top,” Howard said of the city’s ongoing redevelopment efforts. “This is a race to put out a product that brings a family who can afford to live here and also support our downtown businesses. I don’t want somebody to come in with an immediate struggle. That really does concern me.”
Howard also argued that the city had taken other steps to address housing affordability issues in Monroe, in terms of lowering square footage requirements for new homes. He also reminded the council that Habitat currently has just eight houses in Monroe, with six lots sitting vacant.
Some council members also expressed reservations about the attainable housing proposal, while at the same time praising the work of Habitat and The Eulalia Group. The Eulalia Group has been involved in a number of successful redevelopment projects in Monroe.
Public perception concerns
Nonetheless, those council members worried, among other things, that pursuing attainable housing, which was not part of the original redevelopment plan, might prompt public concern that the Blaine Street Station project was not being pursued as it was presented.
“I think if we go back and change what we’re doing after the fact, that doesn’t look very good to the public,” said Councilwoman Julie Sams, who advocated starting the process over if there is support for adding an attainable housing element to Blaine Street Station.
“I would like to see us go back, do it the right way, put it out for bid (saying) this is what we want,” Sams said.
Council support
There also was some vociferous council support of the proposal, and of pursuing the Innovative Grant to make it possible, at the May 5 meeting.
Councilman Tyler Gregory, who also serves on the Habitat for Humanity board of directors, told Howard and his council colleagues that the city already has “a good deal” with the Blaine Street Station proposal, but the possibility of an attainable housing grant “makes it better.”
“It allows the opportunity for people to be able to afford a home in this type of environment that they would not originally have,” Gregory said. Otherwise, he suggested to Howard and the council, those people “would be stuck with rental. They would be stuck somewhere else.”
“We have been blessed in this town,” Gregory continued. “We have had an abundance, yet with sit here with a poverty mindset, saying, ‘Oh, no. What happens if … .?”
It was Gregory who originated the idea of seeking an Innovative Grant for the Blaine Street project. Gregory, whose professional work involves dealing with grants, told his council colleagues at the May 5 session that Draper had asked him about grant opportunities for Blaine Street Station during a recent informal conversation.
One other councilmember, Adriane Brown, also sits on the Habitat board, and also registered her support for seeking the grant to allow Habitat and The Eulalia Group to incorporate an attainable housing element into Blaine Street Station.
“You’ve got to give people a chance,” Brown said, urging council support for Draper.
“Give the man a chance,” she said.
Brown’s and Gregory’s service on the Habitat board prompted Howard to raise the question of whether they had a conflict of interest in considering a grant for Blaine Street Station, suggesting that their participation “doesn’t pass the smell test. It just doesn’t.”
City Attorney Paul Rosenthal told Howard and the council that since neither Brown nor Gregory had any financial interest in the outcome of any eventual vote on a grantwriter, there was no conflict of interest. But Rosenthal added that the issue is “absolutely a gray area that could be debated,” and pointed out that Brown and Gregory could voluntarily recuse themselves from any grantwriting vote.
The most vocal support for seeking the grant and adding an attainable housing element to Blaine Street Station came from Councilman David Dickinson.
“I don’t see the downside to doing this,” Dickinson said, “and I am not going to look people in the eye who live in this community, who aren’t making the big money, who want to own a house. I am not going to look at them and say, ‘Well, we just thought it was too much trouble for the city to try to do something about affordability.”
No formal vote was taken at the called council meeting, but Howard did informally poll the council, whose members registered universal support for pursuing a grantwriter for the project. Currently, the city government has in hand nearly a dozen grantwriting proposals, the council learned at the May 5 meeting.
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