The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
The Township Redevelopment Agency hopes to meet later this month with a company that wants to take over the portion of the Renaissance 2000 project not finished by Leewood Development Group.
The Agency hopes to have VDS Development Partners & Advisors in for its February 23 meeting so it can introduce itself to Agency members and explain its proposal.
The company was the only one to reply to a Request for Proposals sent out by the Agency after it formally found Leewood in default late last year.
“We hadn’t really heard from (Leewood), really,” said Mark Healey, the Township’s Principal Planner. “They had an obligation in the redevelopment agreement to move forward in a certain time frame, and they didn’t. So the Agency basically found them in default and put the RFP out to bring in somebody else to do it.”
Leewood was contracted to build about 220 units, about half of which were to be affordable housing. The project, located roughly between Route 27, the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens property, and Matilda Avenue, was included in the Township’s Affordable Housing Plan.
The new company would develop around 100 units, with at least 20% – or no fewer than 20 – of those being affordable housing, Healey said.
VDS submitted conceptual plans to build 3-story townhomes along High Street and Oak Place, and also a multi-story apartment building between Oak and Irving streets.
Parking for the apartment building would be underground, Healey said.
Healey said one of the questions he has for VDS is why they are asking for a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, program.
PILOT programs are seen as incentives to get developers to build affordable housing. They exempt developers from paying property taxes for a fixed number of years, in return for the developer making regular payments to the town based on a percentage of the project’s valuation.
PILOTs are somewhat controversial because while they mandate that the County receive 5% of the payment, there is no such mandate to make payments to a town’s school district, as would normally happen in a regular property tax payment.
PILOTs are “a common thing when you’re doing 100% affordable, maybe 50% affordable, because it basically has to be subsidized in a way,” Healey said.
Asking for a PILOT in a development such as this, Healey said, “which is a little unusual for a 20 percent affordable.”
Healey said it was also unclear if VDS was asking for money from the Township’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
“Usually if you’re doing a 20%, they call it an inclusionary development,” he said. “It’s assumed that if you’re doing a 20% affordable, that’s basically what developers do. And they typically don’t get PILOTs and they don’t get affordable housing trust fund money for doing a 20%.”
“They’re also getting pretty good density,” he said. “If they were to do what’s around 25 to 30 units to the acre, it’s pretty good density. That’s how they subsidize the 20% affordables because they have the density to get the market rate units to subsidize it. Usually you don’t get a PILOT and development fee money.”
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