An Atlanta developer's plans to convert the old John Houghton Elementary School and the Widows' Home on Greene Street into 47-unit multifamily apartments for low-income tenants has Olde Town residents feeling duped.
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An Atlanta developer's plans to convert the old John Houghton Elementary School and the Widows' Home on Greene Street into 47-unit multifamily apartments for low-income tenants has Olde Town residents feeling duped.
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Nate Owens/Staff
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Annette Bush, a resident of Greene Street and the president of the Downtown Development Authority, said the company that bought the Houghton school from the Richmond County School Board two years ago promised residents the building would be converted into luxury apartments. So, with the neighborhood's blessing, the Richmond County Planning Commission voted to grant a special zoning exception for the property.
Now another developer has the property under contract and has received a $500,000 grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta to buy the school and the Widows' Home and convert them into apartments for "very-low-income, low-income and market-rate tenants," according to a bank news release.
Affordable Housing Solutions Inc.'s plans to buy the property caught city officials and residents in the historic Olde Town district by surprise.
Augusta Mayor Bob Young calls Capital Development Group's actions a case of "clear deception" because an Aug. 24, 1999, letter from SunTrust Bank to the company's real-estate broker described Capital Development as "a leader in affordable housing."
"So they planned all along to put low-income housing in there," the mayor said.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a low-income household has an income at or below 80 percent of the area's median income, a very-low-income household has an income at or below 50 percent and an extremely-low-income household has an income at or below 30 percent of the median. The median income for Augusta is $33,086, according to the 2000 census.
Capital Development bought the Houghton school from the Richmond County School Board for $285,000 in May 2002, but the sales contract did not include covenants beyond historic requirements.
"So it was very short-sighted of the school board to issue a contract without limiting the use beyond the historical requirements," Mr. Young said.
Craig Taylor, the chief executive officer of Affordable Housing, said Capital Development called him six to eight months ago and said they were having difficulty with their "loft development" and offered to sell the properties.
"We do a different kind of development," he said. "We use a different kind of financing. We're a nonprofit organization, and our primary purpose is to provide housing for working people who are lower income, but our housing is almost always mixed income."
He said many people have a misconception about what low income means. For a one-person household in Augusta, low income is more than $21,000 a year, he said. He said his target market is for older adults.
Mr. Taylor said that if something is not done with the properties, they might be damaged to the point they're not salvageable.
"The financial reality is - I don't care what somebody says about what they're going to do - there's not an upscale loft apartment market in Augusta right now," he said.
Rehabbing the property into upscale units is not financially feasible, Mr. Taylor said.
Mr. Young said Affordable Housing asked the city earlier this year about writing a letter of support for their application for funds, which he refused to do if the neighborhood did not support the project.
"And the feedback I got is that the people in Olde Town did not want low-income housing in that building," he said. "And I had not heard anything since then."
Neither had the residents.
Andrew Harney, a co-owner of Azalea Inn across the street from the school, said Ms. Bush had been working with the Augusta Arts Council in hopes of putting an arts building at Houghton.
"We had also heard the Jessye Norman School of the Arts was looking for a place and thought the old widows' house would be perfect for that," he said. "So that's what we were looking at. But we definitely do not need and do not want any low-income housing. And there's no need for it. There's plenty of it here. They can't even fill up the apartments that are already low income."
Ms. Bush said Houghton was on the Downtown Development Authority's list of concerns and had been discussed at the past few meetings.
"Everybody has been working against great odds to increase stability in this neighborhood," she said. "We have been working on a plan for Houghton that certainly did not include dense housing, so this is a major blow if it goes through."
Bill Mundell, a past president of the Olde Town Neighborhood Association, said low-income housing would be the opposite of what the neighborhood wants.
"We already have Olde Town Apartments, which is lower income, which really did not greatly contribute to the neighborhood," he said. "They were pushed through against the wishes of the residents of Olde Town. It will arrest the Olde Town redevelopment by adding more low-income housing here. It really should be spread throughout the city."
Affordable Solutions also received a $500,000 grant to buy and rehabilitate May Park Villas on Hale Street that will serve low-income, very-low-income, extremely-low-income and market-rate tenants in Augusta.
The Widows' Home at 124 Greene St. was built to house the widows of Confederate veterans and was the City Hospital and the first Medical College.
Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or sylvia.cooper@augustachronicle.com.
File/Staff
