“I think it’s one of the most important projects that I will work on in my career,” said Kiya Patrick, vice president of development with GDPM.
GDPM is going to build a new a new apartment complex called Germantown Crossing on the former Day-Mont Behavioral Health Care property at 1520 Germantown St. The Day-Mont building, which has been vacant for years, is being torn down.
Germantown Crossing will offer 50 new federally subsidized apartments and will be the first phase of a larger housing plan for the area that GDPM developed after being awarded a federal planning grant in 2016.
GDPM will own, manage and provide services at the new apartment property, which will have a fitness area, a common area with a kitchen, onsite laundry, a computer room, outdoor space and some resident services.
DeSoto Bass, located just blocks away from the Day-Mont site on Germantown Street in the Miami Chapel neighborhood, has 354 public housing units that GDPM hopes to demolish in phases.
The first phase of demolition would remove 80 public housing units by the intersection of Germantown Street and Danner Avenue, Patrick said.
“We are anticipating that we will move 50 residents from DeSoto Bass to the new units and then we will knock down units at DeSoto Bass when they move,” she said.
The demolition work still needs federal approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The DeSoto Bass site accounts for about 40% of all housing units in the Miami Chapel neighborhood, Patrick said.
Last year, the Ohio Housing Finance Agency awarded GDPM about $1.2 million annually in low income housing tax credits for a decade-long period for the Germantown Crossing project — or nearly $12 million in total.
GDPM expects to find out in the next week or so if it has been awarded funding for another new housing project, which would create 40 new subsidized rental units.
GDPM once again is seeking funding from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.
The new proposed housing project would be built on the DeSoto Bass property, in the area where the 80 units are demolished
GDPM says it will tear down and redevelop all of the DeSoto Bass units when it can secure funding for new housing, but that could take five to seven years.
DeSoto Bass has a significant number of vacant apartments, and GDPM says it will move residents into those units when it needs to clear them out to tear down their apartment buildings. Tenants also will have the option to relocate to other properties in GDPM’s portfolio.
“No residents will ever be displaced,” Patrick said. “Units will come up before they come down.”
Dayton City Commissioner Darryl Fairchild, who in the past served on the GDPM board, said clean and safe affordable housing has a big impact on people’s health and well-being.
“Bringing these new units on is an incredible opportunity for our community and to really change lives,” he said.
Commissioner Chris Shaw said his longtime laundry business is just blocks from the Day-Mont property and people ask him all the time what’s going to happen at the site.
“This is really going to transform that neighborhood,” he said.
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