Friends to reevaluate plan for Barr lot senior housing

By Lauren Heaton

When Village Planning Commission members recommended last month that the Friends Care Community plan for senior apartments be denied, it gave the Friends Care Board of Trustees a chance to reevaluate both the cost and the aim of their project. Can the organization finance the $2.8 million facility to be built on the Barr property on the corner of Xenia Avenue and Limestone Street? Will it truly serve the majority of the senior population in the village? And will it really be affordable, as Friends has said it would be? These are the questions Apartment Committee Chair Paul Webb said Friends will reinvestigate this month.

Village Council has scheduled a public hearing and first reading at its meeting Monday, May 5, to consider the preliminary planned unit design for the apartment project. Friends will then have a month to make any necessary changes before Council holds a second public hearing and reading on June 2, when it will vote to either approve or deny the project. Both meetings are at 7 p.m. at the Bryan Center.

“The delay has given us time to step back 10 yards and take a critical look at where the project is going,” Friends Care Community Director Karl Zalar said last week. “We want to make sure that if it’s a break-even project, let’s make sure we can fund this for a few years — or do we want to approach it from a different avenue?”

The project has been presented as a 30-unit, three-story building to be oriented along Limestone Street with the 30-space parking lot built into the northeast corner of the 1.6-acre Barr property. The one bedroom apartments are estimated to rent for $650 per month, and the two-bedroom units for $850, and six of the apartments will be subsidized with $100 a month each. The building is expected to include a living green roof and geothermal heating and cooling systems, with a permeable surface for the parking lot.

In its rejection of the proposal, several plan board members voiced concern that the building was too massive for the residential neighborhood and that its design didn’t fit the architecture style surrounding it.

And several residents who had initially expressed interest in senior apartments downtown when contacted last week said they were surprised at the high rental prices which were beyond the means of two out of the four who were interviewed.

While the Friends Apartment Committee, charged with leading the project design, had initially analyzed the financial feasibility of building fewer apartments and therefore reducing the size of the building, they found that anything under 30 units would raise the rent beyond what Zalar called “reasonable” rental fees, he said last week. And even with the current 30-unit scenario, Friends would have to subsidize the project at the rate of $60,000 a year to break even, he said.

Building cost scenarios
When the Barr property became available and Friends began investigating the need for affordable senior apartments downtown, 20 people voiced strong interest in living there. The apartment committee also did some comparison research and found that continuing care and retirement communities in the region with one- and two-bedroom units at rents comparable to those Friends is anticipating were in high demand, Zalar said.

And though Friends calculated that the project would take a loss, given its nonprofit mission to serve the needs of seniors in the community, the organization chose to pursue it, he said.

Staying within the $650-850 rental rates, Friends calculated that it would take a net income loss of $75,000 each year on a 12-unit building, Zalar said. A 17-unit facility, including a $50,000 elevator for two stories, would result in a $90,000 annual net loss; a 24-unit building would yield a $57,000 net loss.

The economies change given the needs of the different sized buildings and the cost of housekeeping services for a greater or fewer number of units, Zalar said. But no matter how many stories the building is, there is still the cost of putting in and maintaining a foundation, a roof, and in several cases an elevator, and the more units that will fit in between those costly items the lower the rent for each unit can be, he said. He gave no figures for the original plan to break the units up into several smaller structures because the cost of more than one foundation, more than one roof, and several elevators wasn’t even worth analyzing because the planner knew it would cost even more, Zalar said.

Under the current plan, Friends would subsidize the cost of the building with revenue from its extended care and independent living facilities, while the rent for the apartments would rise each year to keep up with inflation and “offset the losses,” he said.

Friends has already invested $140,000 for Rogero Buckman Architects to design and redesign the apartment building before breaking ground, which is a risk in itself that Friends has to carry, Zalar said.

How the costs affect seniors
When Barbara Hardman first heard about Friends’ plans to build affordable senior housing on the Barr property so close to downtown, she immediately signed up for more information. As an elder resident with failing health, she thought that being closer to the grocery store, the drug store, and activities in town would allow her to maintain her independence longer and still be able to stay engaged with the community, she said in an interview last month.

But when Friends announced the projected rental rates for their apartments last month, Hardman realized that she couldn’t afford even the one-bedroom unit, let alone the two-bedroom apartment she had hoped would accommodate her German relatives when they visited.

For 45 years Hardman has lived in Yellow Springs, where she and her husband raised children, who are now raising their own children here. She would like to remain in this community where her friends and family are. But she just finished paying off her house last year, and with costly medical bills that promise only to increase, a failing housing market, and rising food and gas prices, she fears the risk of renting at the rate of $650 a month on a fixed income, she said.

So instead of downsizing to a more convenient location, Hardman has decided to stay in her house. “I can’t afford what they’re asking — for that amount I might as well go over to Hawthorne apartments,” she said, referring to an apartment complex slightly further from town but with lower rent. “I’ve put that behind me, and I think I’ll just stay here for as long as I can.”

Other seniors on the list of those interested in the apartments felt similarly. Ellen Duell, who has a 15-year fixed-interest mortgage on a house just outside the village, was interested in being closer to town and to the Friends Care campus where her husband is a resident. But she realizes now that she couldn’t afford the rent at the Friends facility.

“I withdrew my name from their list, even though I would have loved living downtown,” Duell said. “It would be a very good thing, but it should be more in line with the rents for similar apartments.”

According to Duell, who looks at rental rates in the local newspaper, $450 seems like a “reasonable” and “affordable” rate for a one-bedroom unit, and not more than $600 for a two-bedroom apartment, she said. She pays $681 a month now for a three-bedroom house with a garage, and as of now, she said, “it is more feasible for me to stay in my current arrangement.”

Twin Coach apartments in town are between $515 and $565 for a two-bedroom apartment, while Hawthorne Place apartments go for $495 for a one bedroom and $595 for a two bedroom, according to the classifieds in the Yellow Springs News. One private efficiency is currently being rented for $375 a month, and another privately-rented two-bedroom space is going for $625 a month.

Andrée Bognár, who is on the Friends apartment committee, has been very vocal about her desire to live in the new apartments, though the recent rental cost estimates have given her reason to pause. Still, she says, she is keenly interested in a place close to town that will accommodate her physical needs as she grows older and will allow her to transition easily to Friends’ extended care facility.

While cost is a concern to others as well, she said that many she knows can afford $600 a month, which was the original rental estimate given by Friends. But more than that, fewer and fewer will be able to pay, she said.

Others concerned about design
For senior Yellow Springs resident Camille Willis, the concern with Friends is less about cost and more about the design of the facility. The architecture is “ugly,” she said, and the interior layout with shared laundry facilities and an uncovered parking lot makes it seem like dormitory living, she said.

“I’m 64 years old, I have health problems and I have two more years to work until I retire. I’m downsizing to the next developmental stage, and I don’t want to feel like I’m sacrificing something,” she said. “I want to look forward to it.”

Having priced other senior housing facilities in the area, Willis found accommodations in Beavercreek that she thought were a great deal more attractive and comfortable for “just a little bit more money,” she said. But she wants to stay in Yellow Springs, with a dynamic community and friends she knows, she says.

But according to Zalar, the design of the building was intended to be simple in order to keep costs down. And yet, Friends has a “responsibility to the community” to maintain some aesthetic sense and to construct a building that, he said, wouldn’t fall down in 10 years.

The $650-850 rental rates were enough to produce a building that would be safe, include some environmentally sound properties, accommodate enough seniors to be worth the cost, and be accessible to most of those who expressed interest in the project initially, he said.

According to Webb, the Friends board and the apartment committee will go “back to the drawing board to examine all the options of increasing and decreasing the number of units, altering the building design, and examining the costs of each option,” he said. “It’s also possible we’ll keep the same design.”

“We have to determine how much risk we’re willing to accept,” Zalar said. “We have the time now to evaluate how much we’re able to subsidize on an annual basis and stay within the affordable housing range.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com