Next phase of Taylor housing development about to start
May 10—TAYLOR — A developer expects 72 new two-bedroom apartments off Oak Street to be available by early next year.
Tom Navich, a partner in Taylor 1 LLC, said Wednesday construction on two, three-story 36-apartment buildings should begin soon and take eight to 10 months.
The company is also finishing work on a community center for residents that will house a gym and recreation area.
The company has already built 24 townhouses and 24 ranch homes on the land, which a borough official said the Lackawanna County Redevelopment Authority cleared of homes in the 1970s because of undermining and blight.
Navich and his partners, George Plisko and Jay Cooperman, also helped attract the Clover Group of Williamsville, New York, which built 116 housing units for people 55 and older.
All the homes, townhouses and apartments are rentals.
Between the two developments, the companies have invested about $35 million, Navich said.
At a news conference, officials touted the project's tax incremental financing, a program sponsored by Lackawanna County, the Riverside School District and the borough.
In tax incremental financing, property taxes on the new housing go to pay off a loan that paid for the installation of utilities and paved streets. The county, district and borough also offered property tax breaks that gradually decline over 10 years for the Clover Group senior housing.
George Kelly, the county economic development director when the project was first broached years ago, hosted the news conference and said the developers must cover any shortfall in taxes to pay the loan, but the tax aid helped the project happen.
"Without the infrastructure, it wasn't feasible to make this thing happen," Kelly said.
County Redevelopment Authority Chairman Kevin McDonough and borough Council President Ken Mickavicz said the project shows how local government and private developers can team up.
"There was a piece of property for well over 50 years that was basically nothing, there were no properties on it, no tax revenue being generated," he said.
For decades, the land was part of a thriving neighborhood known as Feltsville. Mine-cave-ins, a remnant of the region's underground coal mining past, damaged many homes in the 1960s.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the county redevelopment authority spent millions, much of it federal urban renewal money, buying and demolishing more than 200 single-family and multi-apartment homes, at least a dozen businesses and two churches and two churches area.
As part of that, the land had to lay fallow for at least two decades, officials said. The authority later turned the land over to the borough, which planned to use it for recreation, before Taylor 1 LLC came along. Mickavicz said other homes built across the street have experienced no problems.
Navich said the company conducted extensive drilling to test for underground mines.
"Thank God, we came up solid," he said. "It cost us a fortune."
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