Horizon Homes: Housing complex getting new life
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By Tom Saul | Monday, January 07, 2008 |
A troubled northwest Davenport low-income housing complex has a new owner and will get a makeover to include construction of a new community center where job skills will be taught.
Ecumenical Housing Development Group purchased the 110-unit Horizon Homes complex. It has hired Des Moines-based Newbury Development Co. to refurbish and manage it in a $9.1 million deal that includes the reconstruction and new community center, said the Rev. Richard Pekora of the housing group’s board.
“We are looking at this as a significant attempt to maintain and improve a large block of low-income housing in Davenport,” Pekora said.
The complex in the 3500 block of West 42nd Street was built in 1976 and owned by the nonprofit group Horizon Homes of Davenport. In 2006, some aldermen called for it to be bulldozed, citing crime and blight problems.
The Davenport City Council eventually agreed to support an application to the Iowa Finance Authority for federal tax credits. It also offered a portion of the city’s share of federal housing rehabilitation money provided new owners agreed to conditions aimed at reducing crime, said Bruce Berger, the city’s housing rehabilitation manager.
Ecumenical Housing agreed to have an on-site manager, install security cameras and barriers to take care of traffic and parking problems, hire security patrols and make an effort to install a fiber-optic connection and other connections necessary to allow Davenport police to use their mobile precinct trailer at the complex, Berger said.
“The on-site manager is huge,” said Alderman Shawn Hamerlinck, 2nd Ward, who represents the area that includes the complex. “The tenants will have to have identification to show that they live in the complex. There have been a large number of people hanging out there who don’t live there, and many of them are causing the problems.”
Beginning later this month, the complex will get a facelift inside and out, said Frank Levy, director of finance for Newbury Development. That will include new roofing, siding, windows, furnaces, flooring, interior doors and appliances. Some units will also be made handicapped accessible. Two apartments will be added.
Construction of the community center will start this spring, Levy said. It will be used to house Head Start, health care programs, classes by Scott Community College and other programs.
“We don’t want people to just be warehoused there,” Pekora said. “We decided to take this on because so much low-income housing is being taken out of circulation or being turned into market-rate housing. This project is irreplaceable.”
Tom Saul can be contacted at (563) 383-2453 or tsaul@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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