Ninety-unit Cedar Pond Townhomes development gets $15.3 million in federal tax credits; construction should start by Oct. 15

If all goes as planned, a Minnesota developer will begin construction in mid-October on the 90-unit Cedar Pond Townhomes development on 11.2 acres south of Williams Boulevard and north of Wilson Avenue SW.

The developer, EverGreen Real Estate Development, Prior Lake, Minn., on Wednesday was awarded $15.3 million in federal affordable-housing tax credits by the Iowa Finance Authority to help fund the project.

Greg McClenahan, president of EverGreen, said the firm’s plan was to start construction by Oct. 15 and be complete in a year.

The city’s Replacement Housing Task Force and the City Council, on a 6-2 vote in late March, backed the project over some objections from neighbors.

“It’s been a long process,” McClenahan said Wednesday afternoon. “I feel gratified that the city has been a big supporter of the project.”

Cedar Pond will feature 48 two-bedroom units and 42 three-bedroom ones with one of the units for an on-site manager.

The units are targeted to households who earn 60 percent or less of the area’s median family incomes.

McClenahan has other rental complexes in Iowa. A University of Iowa graduate, he was at the University of Iowa this week going through freshman orientation with his son.

Renovation of the empty, flood-damaged Roosevelt looks like it really will get going now

Minneapolis developer Sherman Associates Inc. is going to start its renovation of The Roosevelt, the former downtown hotel and now an empty, flood-damaged apartment complex, yet.

The start of the renovation has been pending for a few months now as Sherman Associates has worked out the details of its federal tax-credit financing that requires some local City Hall help.

On Wednesday evening, the City Council will alter its previously approved incentive to the project by increasing a temporary loan of $300,000 to $650,000, and by adding $26,000 to a long-term loan, bringing it to $1.632 million. The long-term loan will be paid back over 30 years at 1-percent annual interest.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Jackie Nickolaus, a Sherman Associates vice president with an office in Urbandale, Iowa, said the firm is hoping to close on the project’s financing as close to July 15 as possible. Work on the renovation of The Roosevelt will begin the day after the financing closes, she said.

The $10.3-million renovation will convert the 12-story building’s second floor to apartments and do away with the building’s small, efficiency apartments. In the end, there will be 96 units, 90 of which will have rents considerable “affordable” and targeted to those who make less than the median household income. The building’s first floor will remain commercial space.

Empty, flood-damaged Roosevelt may begin its return to life within a month

Renovation of The Roosevelt in downtown Cedar Rapids is readying to begin, developer Sherman Associates reports.

The former hotel turned apartment complex in the heart of downtown has been out of commission since the June 2008 flood.

Jackie Nickolaus, Sherman Associates vice president in Urbandale, Iowa, says that Sherman Associates finalized its purchase of The Roosevelt in December for $2.2 million.

She said that financing for the renovation should be in place by the end of April, and renovation of the building will begin immediately after that. Much of the funding is coming from federal affordable-housing tax credits, though the City Council also is providing some financial incentives. The council will address its loan commitment to the project at its April 22 meeting, Nickolaus says.

Sherman Associates’ renovation plan will turn some of old hotel’s small, efficiency apartments into larger ones and covert what had been commercial and office space on the second floor into apartments. The first floor will remain commercial space.

In total, the building will have 96 apartments, 90 of them designated as affordable.

Sherman Associates, headquartered in Minneapolis and a prolific developer and property manager, was the first to come to Cedar Rapids and use the term “work force housing” in place of affordable housing.

Income guidelines for affordable housing requires that someone have a job, and the guidelines are broad enough to apply to many people in the work force, Sherman Associates and the City Council now repeatedly point out.

Nickolaus says the first tenants should be back in The Roosevelt within six months of the start of construction. She adds that Sherman Associates is now negotiating with two first-floor commercial tenants.