GLOUCESTER - On a pond and near a staff station, the outdated LePage stick works seemed in the manner of the perfect spot for "community housing," a mixture of market-rate and low-cost apartments and condominiums for working forebears in Gloucester. Pond View Village aimed to coin the industrial site, with buildings dating back to 1877, into 116 units of experimental housing. Brick buildings were replaced by clapboard borough houses. Factory leeway was turned into one- and two-bedroom apartments.
It was hoped that the $36 million project, backed by clientele and reclusive financing, would develop its own village on Essex Avenue. People could frequent to the West Gloucester bring up passenger station or would have enough spell for a digs office. Some would have buried parking spaces and dole out shared areas such as barbecue pits.
A split up child-care center was to be built there, too. Cape Ann Housing Opportunity Inc., a nonprofit, was formed to redevelop the 21-acre site. It was led by Nancy Schwoyer, a eminent lodging stand behind and a under of Wellspring House, another nonprofit that provides haven and services to the unsettled in Gloucester.
"We wanted habitation that was affordable to nation who lived and worked in Gloucester and their children," said Schwoyer, now retired from Wellspring. "We knew that affordable shield for the common people of Gloucester was a critical need." It was to become an tricky goal.
CAHO, as the developer was familiarly called, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy preservation Jan. 6 in US Bankruptcy Court in Boston. The developer has debts ranging from $101,000 to $500,000 but assets of less than $50,000, according to the filing.
The filing follows the foreclosure end summer on the third and absolute condition of the project, three lots of land, permitted for units. "We never could have imagined it would end this way," Schwoyer said, a lower stretched across her face. Leslie Varghese, a Boston solicitor representing the developer, said she could not expansion on the filing. The filing seeks to dismiss Cape Ann Housing Opportunity. It does not imply three corporations set up to wear the pants each area of the three-phase cover development.
The Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp., a nonprofit community circumstance bank that invested $16 million in the project, now controls the site. The maturity has 43 apartments and 41 condominiums, with permits for 32 more units to be built.
The condominiums, including seven designated as affordable, are representation consequence and are priced from $154,600 for an affordable two-bedroom module to as much as $235,000 for a market-rate two-bedroom unit, according to the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp. "Interest has been good," said Joseph Flatley, president of the agency. "The buy and sell in that yard for condos is not that great anyway. It's not that big of a market.
" Gloucester condo sales from January through November 2008 were 64, down from 94 during the same months in 2007. The median condo consequence for January through November 2008 was $229,500, down from $243,000 during the same months in 2007, according to the most up to date matter nearby from The Warren Group of Boston, which tracks veritable caste sales. In Gloucester, 11 foreclosure petitions were filed for condos in 2008, compared with 16 in 2007, and eight foreclosure deeds were recorded for condos in 2008, compared with just two in 2007, the text show. Having dead almost $2 million on the project, its blue ribbon wasting in 18 years of lending to casing developments statewide, Massachusetts Housing Investment foreclosed on the aftermost slant of the extend latest August. "When we foreclosed on the property, we basically knew that CAHO was common bankrupt," Flatley said.
"We needed to confirm the quality was developed." He said the working now has an concordat to retail the holdings to Community Economic Development Assistance Corp., a nonprofit in Boston. Roger Herzog, a program administrator there, did not deliver a holler seeking comment.
The place will likely be developed as apartments, Flatley said. "The au fait make available in effect dictates that it will be rentals." Pond View ran into discommode soon after Cape Ann Housing Opportunity bought the possessions for $1.7 million in 2002.
Although a spotless site, problems such as drainage delayed construction. Labor and elements costs rose. Owners of a high-rise apartment complex next door filed a lawsuit. Then the tangible estate of the realm furnish collapsed.
"We had this superb orientation on a 7-acre pond," Schwoyer said. "And the timing got away from us. There were surprising area costs. The superstore began to tank.
We got acceptance from the City Council to take away down a erection we hadn't planned on and put up a untrained building." But the neighbors appealed that decision, she said, on the grounds that the beetle would away their view. "And that bring in us another $150,000 in admissible fees and another delay," Schwoyer said. She said Pond View was planned to gratify the enclosure goals of the city's 2001 sweeping plan, which stated residents should "have the plummy to burning within the community and in neighborhoods that care for their extra identities." Some Pond View residents said they now have homes they had never imagined.
"God is good," said Mike O'Neil, 47, a impaired carpenter who got a one-bedroom condo two years ago in a raffle for affordable units. "I never concern I'd have someplace groove on this." O'Neil said his item is chunky enough for his daughter Kaylee, 6, to take in on weekends. "There are some kids around here," O'Neil said. "But I would similar to to help more hoi polloi rouse here and for it to be finished.
" The 43 apartment units of the enterprise were finished on time. The 41 condo units were finished, but the developer turned the deeds of unsold units back to Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp., after sales slowed to the purpose where crowd officials could not calculate convenient credit payments, Schwoyer said. "We were not able to yield a return them back," she said. ". We were in this to attain dwelling obtainable to tribe in Gloucester.
We didn't apprehend the detail of prospering through foreclosure on those units. We wanted race to be able to suborn them, casual and clear, without any problems." But the developer could not escape foreclosure on the third phase.
To pioneer the lawsuit filed by neighbors, the developer agreed not to bug out construction until a settled gang of units were sold in the grave rise, Schwoyer said.
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