A redevelopment project in Decatur hit the brakes this week after receiving pushback over affordable housing.
BFG Investments is trying to rezone 750 East Lake Drive to build a more dense residential apartment complex. Currently, the property is 17 multi-family units, mostly two-bedroom apartments, built in the mid-1960s, but the developer envisions 57 new one-bedroom apartments instead.
While Decatur requires 10% of the units in new residential projects to be below market rate, nearby residents worry a new building could still price people out of the area.
“I’m concerned about my neighbors who live there now and whether they will be displaced or able to afford the new property,” Mercedes Caravello, who lives next to the property, said during a Decatur Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday. She said the current units rent between $900 and $1,000.
Cameron Grogan, who represents BFG Investments, said affordable housing is badly needed in Decatur, and this will provide new stock. He argues the existing building, which lacks laundry facilities and proper stormwater infrastructure, doesn’t accomplish the goal of affordable housing.
“Affordable housing is needed. We all know that,” Grogan said. “We feel like it’s needed in new buildings.”
Of the 57 apartments the developer wants to build, six would be legally required to be priced at 80% of the area median income per Decatur code. According to federal guidelines, that means an individual would need to make less than $48,300 to qualify for those units. The other units would be market rate, which the developer said would likely be a little over $1,000 rent each month.
Grogan said the developer could build 22 townhomes without rezoning the property, which would lead to only three affordable units. He argued the more dense project would be more beneficial to the affordable housing cause, but commission Chairman Harold Buckley Jr. had reservations.
“We’re going from 17 two-bedroom units to six or seven one-bedroom units (that are below market rate). That’s a net decrease,” he said. “... I can’t support that in the city of Decatur. We have been beating our heads up against a wall until we’ve gone bloody trying to increase affordable housing stock.”
The planning commission unanimously voted to give the developer more time to produce an inclusionary housing plan along with a traffic study. At a later meeting, commissioners will decide whether to endorse the rezoning before it goes to the City Commission for a vote.
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