Positive funding news for North End Housing

Supporters of the long-awaited North End Home Ownership project heard some good news at Tuesday's Redevelopment Agency meeting.

The project, which has been in the planning phase for several years, will construct 17 home-ownership units on Ferry, Green and Rapallo in the North End, in a combination of new and rehab construction. The units will be targeted to first-time home buyers, and should be eligible for a number of subsidies to make the purchase affordable. The construction of the units, however, will cost considerably more than the purchase prices, and a complex network of grants, loans and city funds are filling the gap.

(If you'd like to know more about the history and financing of this project, click on the label "Nehemiah Housing" below this post, and you'll see a listing of the Eye coverage over the past year.)

Michael Taylor of Nehemiah Housing and David Berto of Broad Park Development Corp. reported that a critical grant of HOME funds from the state's Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) has entered the final phase of review and should close within the next two or three months. Once the DECD funds are secured, they expect to finalize a construction loan from Liberty Bank. That's a big step for these developers, who struggled to assemble the financing for this deal even before the economy began to crash. One of the recent compromises in the plan was to segregate one of the properties, 25 Ferry Street, which is slated for development as a duplex by Habitat for Humanity, so that the construction on the other properties could proceed more quickly. As the project moves forward, other funding will be sought to complete that property.

If all goes as planned, there will be a ground-breaking ceremony in late June, followed by the start of construction in August.

In other business, the Redevelopment Agency considered the possibility of adding the fledgling streetcar project to their agenda. After a debate on how this project fits in with Redevelopment's responsibilities, it was agreed that the Agency should take a closer look because the streetcar might improve the connection between the North End and the rest of Main Street.

True Confessions: In case any readers of the Eye don't know, I'll confess that I am a longtime member of the Redevelopment Agency. I'm writing about meetings in which I participate and therefore can't claim a shred of journalistic detachment.