Officials tour Foster Senior Lofts as senior housing nears completion

ELYRIA — Contractors continued to work diligently Monday, putting the finishing touches on the new Foster Senior Lofts apartment building as city officials and local leaders toured the project. Foster Senior Lofts will be a 46-unit apartment for people age 55 and older on Bond Street, which is designed to be affordable and to let seniors live independently without having to leave their communities. The project is by Pivotal Housing Partners and the construction is being done by Ruscilli Construction, of Dublin. It was fostered in part by the Elyria Community Partnership, and also received funding from the city as well as the nonprofit development company Grow America. Elyria provided $250,000 for the project to support the demolition of the former Thomas Jefferson School, which had sat on the southern end of the property. City Council also approved a 15-year, 100 percent property tax abatement to make the project possible. Pivotal has agreed to pay one half of the property tax it would have paid into Elyria Schools directly to the district. The apartment complex is expected to officially open in late May, and official applications will go out to prospective residents in the next week. Elyria Community Partnership Executive Director Mone't Roberts said that around 250 people have registered for the building's wait list. "For the Elyria Community Partnership, this is a demonstration of the need for affordable housing in our community, particularly for seniors," Roberts said. "We plan to work on other partnerships and projects to bring more affordable housing to the city." City officials, City Council members and representatives of local nonprofits toured a number of apartments on the third floor of the project, which is almost completely finished. Councilwoman Brenda Davis, D-2nd Ward, represents the ward in which the project is being built, and she said she was thrilled to see it come to fruition. "I am feeling overwhelmed, I am so proud of this," Davis said after the tour. "You visualize something, but you didn't think it was going to come out this way. We had some pushback in the neighborhood, people didn't want it in their neighborhood because they were looking at it like it was going to be Section 8 (subsidized housing), and they thought their property values would go down. But it doesn't look like that at all, and their properties are going up." Davis also said that the extensive waiting list for applications shows that there was a need for affordable senior housing not just in Elyria, but across the area. The tour on Monday showed off a number of rooms including both one and two-bedroom units as well as several that were designed specifically to be accessible for those with a number of disabilities, including mobility and hearing issues. "This site was an abandoned school that was being vandalized and could have potentially been a really negative thing for this neighborhood," Assistant Safety Service Director Dawn Calvert said. "To see that cleared up and abated and turned into something that obviously is so needed in the area is really rewarding. It demonstrates what a partnership can look like, (with) the neighborhood coming in and voicing their concerns and Pivotal making amendments to their plan to make sure that it fits within the community. It is really special when a project pulls this many people in and it's demonstrative of what the community can do together." Pivotal has announced plans to carry out a second phase of construction to build a similar building on the southern portion of the property, but no timeline has been announced for that phase. "This has been a great project and we are excited to get it finished for the city, see it filled up and hopefully do a phase two here in the near future," said Michael Perkins, project executive for Ruscilli Construction. "Based on the number of applications that have been submitted, we will have no problem filling up these 46 units rather quickly." Perkins said that affordable housing, both for seniors and for all ages, was in high demand across the Midwest, and Ruscilli was in conversations with other developers about further projects in Lorain County in the coming years. An even larger affordable senior housing project is slated to begin construction this summer, as the 115-unit McGregor Landing senior housing complex is expected to break ground behind the recently opened McGregor Foundation Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, or PACE, center on Leona Street. For more information on Foster Senior Lofts or to request leasing information, visit pivotal-communities.com/properties/foster-senior-lofts. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.