The Wichita City Council has approved a letter of intent for bond financing to help with a downtown housing project that will include affordable housing.
212 N. Market St. LLC is planning to renovate an office building at 212 North Market, creating 51 one-bedroom units and 23 two-bedroom affordable housing units. The developers plan to apply for 9 percent Low Income Housing Tax Credits through the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation.
The City Council approved a letter of intent to issue up to $21 million in Industrial Revenue Bonds to help finance the project. The package would include a sales tax exemption on bond-financed purchases and there would be a ten-year 100 percent property tax abatement with a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes based on current taxes generated by the property. Developers will pay the costs of issuing the bonds and they will pay off the bonds, and there will be no risk to the city.
Council Member Maggie Ballard said in a post on social media that the project will help address the need for at least 300 to 400 new apartments downtown per year to serve the new biomedical campus. She said the agreement for 212 North Market will require units to be offered below HUD-defined fair-market rents.
The city reports that since the adoption of Project Downtown in 2010, there have been 1,658 new residential units that have been added to downtown Wichita, and a market study by Zimmerman/Volk Associates found that downtown could support between 383 and 460 new residential units a year. The new biomedical campus in downtown Wichita is expected to increase the demand to a range of 575 to 767 new rental units.
[ photo: Google Earth ]
