URGENT ATTENTION – PLAN B – Low Income Housing Development Partners – Woda Cooper

Woda Cooper has experienced developers, general contractors, and property managers specializing in design, construction, and management. If you google them you will find an impressive mass of work. Their online presence leaves a favorable impression of the company. Here is an example of one of the low-income housing projects they use on their Facebook header.

The City Council – #Item 14 – saw the approval of “development partner”, Woda Cooper Companies, for the construction of the “workforce housing” (low income) units on Tarboro Street, across from Edgecombe Community College. I have written, most recently on Concerned Citizens, how opposed I am to the location, not the type housing. Now PLAN B is another story. I found two projects that Woda Cooper has designed that I would hold the ladder for, bring donuts and sing.  This company REPURPOSES OLD BUILDINGS!!!  for low-income housing. What a great idea. We have a few of those. PLAN B accomplishes the same outcome for housing but keeps the integrity of our historic facades intact, saves a building, adds seamlessly to the historic downtown. PLAN B is a better solution.

 Then and now. The top photo on the right was taken in 1932 when the now Cavalier Greene was a thriving high school in Corunna, MI. The classic 1908 school building was adapted a few years ago to become a 40-unit affordable community. With the addition of a new 22,000 sq. ft. section designed to mesh well with the original architecture, Cavalier Greene offers one- and two-bedroom affordable apartments for seniors and workforce families/singles who earn 30 to 60% of area median income (AMI).

In order to create affordable places to live in downtown Cleveland,  Woda Cooper bought
the old Stuyvesant Motor Company Building at 1937 Prospect Avenue and built the Prospect Yard apartments. The building was built in 1917 and a stone in the brick at the top of the building still reads “Stuyvesant” after more than a century.  The building has 42 apartments, with rent starting at $330 and topping out at $1,247 depending on how large the apartment is.

‘The project used many layers of historic tax credits. Woda Cooper went the extra step to also get affordable housing credits,  making it possible to keep rents low. The goal: to house people with working-class incomes and people needed in the downtown service industry. I don’t know if PLAN B will line pockets as easily as the cluster housing but I sure as heck know that to ‘restore and repurpose’ is a better answer for this project the wizards behind the curtain insist we must have. It becomes a piece of the Rocky Mount puzzle that fits. Don’t you agree?