A rendering of the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, courtesy of Andrew Foley, development director at Jonathan Rose Companies. Credit: GOA Architecture. This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public . A long-awaited housing development that could bring hundreds of new apartments to a series of empty lots in Burlington’s South End neighborhood is beginning to come together. The first phase of the major public-private deal, called the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, got official sign-off from the Burlington City Council last month. The project’s backers have also scored key funding commitments from Treasurer Mike Pieciak’s office and state housing funding agencies.  The project on Lakeside Avenue is the beginning of “a neighborhood being born out of a big parking lot,” Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak told city councilors in May. City officials and developers hope the project could eventually include over a thousand homes, making it one of the largest developments in Vermont – and putting a considerable dent in the Queen City’s housing shortage. Regional planners estimate that Burlington needs to add between 3,500 and 10,500 homes by 2050 to get the housing market to a healthy state.  The development is possible, in part, because of a 2023 zoning change in the formerly industrial area that allows for some of the densest housing development in the state, according to local planners.  A rendering of the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, courtesy of Andrew Foley, development director at Jonathan Rose Companies. Credit: GOA Architecture. The South End project’s backers include Champlain College, Champlain Housing Trust and Ride Your Bike LLC, the investors behind the nearby Hula coworking campus. They have brought on Jonathan Rose Companies, an affordable housing developer with projects from New York to California, as the lead developer. The South End project is the company’s first in Vermont. The development agreement signed by city councilors in May greenlights the South End project’s first 204 units, estimated to cost roughly $100 million.  Per Burlington’s inclusionary zoning policy and state rules, at least 20% of the first round of apartments will be set aside as affordable. But the developers hope to secure enough funding to allow them to earmark a third of the 204 apartments with income restrictions, said Andrew Foley, director of development at Jonathan Rose Companies, in an interview. The development agreement offers the developers reduced city fees if the affordable units are priced even more modestly than required. The lion’s share of the new apartments will be studios and one-bedrooms, Foley said. The building would include common social spaces for neighbors to gather, he added.   Like any large-scale housing project, the developers of the South End apartments are piecing together financing from a wide array of sources. They recently scored an $8 million low-interest loan from Pieciak’s 10% for Vermont program, along with a $6.7 million award from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to support 67 affordable apartments – including 10 reserved for people experiencing homelessness.  To build out new roads – along with wastewater connections and stormwater infrastructure meant to cut down on sewer overflows into nearby Lake Champlain – city officials are going after funding from a new state program. The Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, a tax-increment financing tool created by the Legislature last year, would allow the city and the developers to borrow the funds needed to build out the infrastructure against the development’s future property tax revenue. READ MORE City officials and the developers are working together to submit an application for this CHIP financing. The South End development could be the first project in the state to utilize the program after its launch in January. “I think a lot of other potential applicants are kind of saying, ‘I wonder how that South End project works out’ – for us to maybe go first,” Foley said. With an eye toward lowering the project’s carbon footprint, the development will be all-electric, Foley said. The developers are looking to use mass-timber construction techniques, he added – essentially using large, prefabricated wood panels in place of steel or concrete. They also want to construct a rooftop solar array, employ a geothermal heating and cooling system and promote a “car-light” neighborhood in close proximity to bike paths and transit routes. The developers hope to close on their construction financing by the end of the year. “Everyone’s eager to see the construction start and housing built, so we’re trying to move as fast as we can,” Foley said. Read the story on VTDigger here: Hundreds of housing units in the works at closely-watched project in Burlington’s South End. ...read more read less