Lucas Metropolitan Housing to grow Collingwood Green development

May 15—Lucas Metropolitan Housing is expanding its Collingwood Green development again, this time with 55 family townhomes and 75 senior apartments.

They'll likely be the last builds on the 20-acre site bounded by Nebraska Avenue, Division Street, Indiana Avenue, and I-75 near downtown Toledo as the housing agency looks to complete its first mixed-income neighborhood. The project has been 15 years in the making and will total about $80 million.

"We're really trying to make it a neighborhood of choice," said Matt Sutter, chief of public housing, development, and modernization.

The Toledo City Plan Commission this week recommended approving a zoning change from commercial neighborhood to commercial mixed use to allow the senior apartments to be built, and that request will go before Toledo City Council in June. The agency plans a mid-rise building with apartments on the top three floors and commercial on the first floor.

The housing is a partnership with the agency's nonprofit arm, Lucas Housing Services Corporation, as well as National Church Residences. They're applying for funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development that will provide permanent supportive housing to qualifying seniors and subsidies to ensure the housing remains affordable.

Construction could begin as soon as 2023, with occupancy by the end of 2024.

Mr. Sutter said officials aren't yet sure what will go into the commercial space, but he would like to see a bank or a small grocery store open to benefit residents in the area who don't have a financial institution or close access to groceries.

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As for the additional family townhomes, the agency hopes to break ground next summer and be ready for tenants in mid-2023. The build is a first for LMH because it will offer market-rate apartments alongside public housing, project-based vouchers, tenant-based vouchers, and other subsidized housing.

"So anybody can walk into the management office and say I want to apply to live here, and they will be screened," Mr. Sutter said. "So you can have no income, and you can make a million dollars a year, and you can live side-by-side."

It's something Senior Vice President of Operations Kattie Bond is excited about because it will tie in with the agency's push to reimagine the aging McClinton Nunn public housing development across Nebraska Avenue. The hope is that revitalization will spearhead a larger transformation from the edge of downtown through the Junction neighborhood.

LMH officials also want to build a community space and create outdoor recreation opportunities for children using the green space on the property to wrap up the project.

The agency is reimagining what public housing should look like, and the development is an example of how community-focused, mixed-use projects can help entire neighborhoods and not simply low-income families in need of stable housing.

"Collingwood Green will be the new public housing, so to speak," Ms. Bond said. "It will be moving away from the traditional public housing and moving to a new model for public housing that can be, especially with the infusion of truly market-rate, it can be a model for the rest of the country,"

The redevelopment started with discussions in 2006 and officially got off the ground in 2011 when LMH officials relocated residents from the 400 deteriorating public housing apartments that comprised the Albertus Brown and Brand Whitlock developments at what is now Collingwood Green. Those units were built between 1938 and 1940 in a barracks-style that is no longer functional.

Soon after residents relocated, LMH tore the buildings down and began a five-phase redevelopment of the site.

In the summer of 2013, a 65-unit senior apartment building opened at Division Street and Belmont Avenue. It offered low to moderate-income residents 55 and older modern housing with community rooms, a library, and an exercise room.

The second phase gave low-income families access to 68 colorful, multi-bedroom units adjacent to the first phase. In February, 2020, 55 modern townhomes opened, which helped the new development feel like a true neighborhood.

The financing has been a mix of LMH taking on private debt, LMH using capital funds, low-income housing tax credits from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, HUD funding, and city of Toledo funding.

First Published May 14, 2021, 1:10pm