The Culver Town Council will be opening up a public input session for discussion of the Sand Hill Farms workforce housing development project.
Town Manager Jonathan Leist explained that the project has been in the town’s comprehensive plan since the plan’s adoption in 2014. The lack of housing was identified as one of the main issues in the plan. Leist said a committee was formed to look into the project.
“We started a housing committee several years ago and they looked at a number of different sites – I think we had five sites and 10 different developers we met with over a six month period. We ended up settling on Sand Hill Farm on Jefferson Street,” commented Leist.
The housing project became part of the town’s application for the Stellar Communities designation last year. Since the town was not chosen as a Stellar Community, the Culver Town Council and the Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC) are looking at ways to fund the project with or without Stellar funding.
According to Leist, a Regional Cities grant worth over $200,000 was awarded toward the project last year and an effort toward some financial viability needs to be submitted by June 1 to keep that award.
Leist said the project has been amended since last year.
Originally when we annexed the property and looked at it as a Stellar Communities project, the commitment from the town was $200,000 for infrastructure that would basically take water and sewer to the site or slightly inside of the property. The discussion at our last meeting was taking water, sewer and the street up to the first apartment building rather than just to the property line.”
The CRC would finance $400,000 for the 24-unit apartment building project with nearly the same financial obligation from the Culver Town Council.
The town council and CRC met in joint session last week where several residents spoke out about the project so the joint entities tabled a housing development agreement and two resolutions in order to gather more opinions before moving forward. Public comment concerning this project will be taken in a public input session on Tuesday, May 23 at 6:30 p.m. ET at the Culver Town Hall prior to the regular public meeting agenda of the town council that evening.
