Updates

The September board meeting was primarily spent discussing the Emerson North proposal for which a motion was passed to draft a neutral letter to the city regarding NRRC’s position. Additionally, we received updates on numerous other developments and approved a staffing plan that will carry us through December of 2012.
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Several questions asked at the Community meeting on Sept 15th did not have time to be answered completely. The developer of the Emerson North project has taken the time to provide responses below. If you have additional questions you can email them to AJohnson@plymouthfoundation.org and we will add them to this document as they are answered.

Does the plan conform with allowed density? Isn’t the new education building four stories?
Yes, the Emerson North proposal conforms with allowed density for R-4 zoning. Our proposal to build 48 units does fall within the City of Minneapolis R-4 zoning provisions, including the provisions that allow for density bonuses. Density bonuses allow for an increase in a development’s density in instances where such a development furthers the City’s objectives, including underground parking and affordable housing.
The new Minneapolis Public Schools Educational Service Center is a 72 foot tall, 5 story building. It is 4 stories tall along Broadway, and a portion of the building more interior to the site is 5 stories tall.Why not do this project in Kenwood, Golden Valley or Edina? Why North Minneapolis?
Good questions. First, why North Minneapolis? The answer is twofold: First, we already own the land at 1808 Emerson where Families Moving Forward is currently located and it is already zoned to allow the housing we propose to build. Secondly, the damage to local housing stock from the tornado created an opportunity to use this land resource to create a tangible response to the well- documented need for affordable, high quality housing in North Minneapolis, made worse by the storm. We believe that neighborhoods need a mix of various types of housing — single family homes, duplexes and multi-family buildings. Different people seek different types of housing based on what they can afford, ease of maintenance, proximity to transportation and shopping and need for space.
Second question: why not somewhere else? PCNF looks forward to building homes in other parts of the city and the suburbs in years to come. Our partnering congregations assist us in selecting a viable site for development. For example, Mayflower Congregational Church gave us land from their church property to build Creekside Commons in the Tangletown neighborhood, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Southwest Minneapolis. Plymouth Congregational Church and Westminster Presbyterian Church helped us locate and purchase the land for Nicollet Square on the site of a closed business in South Minneapolis. We are about to break ground for a senior housing development near the Veterans Administration Home with the partnership of Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church and Minnehaha United Methodist Church. In the case of Emerson North, we currently own the land where the proposed development would be constructed. We believe that all people deserve high quality housing and that they should be able to select that type of housing in a neighborhood of their choosing.

Is the Plymouth Church Foundation willing to donate millions of their own dollars even if the project does not get funding?
Although we have “foundation” in our name, we do not have an endowment. Like other non-profits, we raise our operating funding every year. The majority of our annual funding comes from private sources: individuals, foundations and congregations.
On the capital side, we seek a combination of public and private funding sources for each project.  The largest source of funding is from the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program that provides tax credits for the equity invested by the corporate sector in affordable housing.

Is there anything that can be done to better integrate the design with the feeling of the old buildings – red or blond brick and early 1900s or Art Deco style?
We are in the final stages of selecting an architect for this project, and the drawings we’ve displayed to the public are only preliminary. We will work with our congregations involved in the development process as well as the neighborhood association on elements of design and look forward to collaborating on a building design that fits the neighborhood.

What was the percentage of community people that got jobs from the new school education building? What percentage will get jobs from this project?
The goal of the Minneapolis Public Schools Educational Service Center in building their new headquarters on West Broadway is that 30% of total project labor hours are to be worked by disadvantaged workers (25%-minority and 5%-female). Their goals for disadvantaged business participation were 25% of total construction contracts (15%-minority owned and 10% women owned).  The school board announced in June that they have exceeded their disadvantaged business contracting goal and that 54% of construction contracts have gone to minority or women owned businesses. Results of disadvantaged labor participation goals will be reported when construction is complete.
Our congregational task force will be voting on disadvantaged hiring and business contracting goals for the development soon. It’s our intention to mirror the hiring process the Minneapolis Board of Education used in the construction of its new headquarters. We anticipate that between 100 and 150 construction workers will be involved in building the development. There would probably be three or four permanent staff jobs created in property or program management.  It is also possible there would be a ripple effect of commercial growth and possibly job creation in the immediate neighborhood by adding 48 families to the customer base for local businesses.

PCNF claims that the presence of this facility will increase property values. Please cite cases and provide documentation to support your position.
The research indicates that in many cases, though not all, affordable housing developments do have a positive effect on surrounding property values.  High-quality, well-managed properties such as those built by PCNF tend to have positive effects. The National Association of Realtors website, “Field Guide to Effects Of Low-Income Housing On Property Values,” has links to recent research on this topic.
A 2008 analysis of more than 150 national studies included this finding: “Good management makes a difference. In one major study, good property management coincided with properties developed by non-profit community development corporations, less so with those developed and managed by for-profit developers or public housing authority. This tendency typically occurred in areas with well-established, high quality non-profit organizations such as Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, and the Bay Area of California. These nonprofit builders who have been operating successfully for decades may be more attentive to designing affordable housing that matches neighborhoods in terms of size, scale, design and amenities.”

It was mentioned that Northside has affordable rents. Where are they? The average rent for a three bedroom is $900. Is that really affordable?
According to RentRange.com, an online database of rental rates in various markets, the median rent for a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment in the 55411 ZIP code of Minneapolis is $1,044. The low for the same area is $900, the high is $1,350. So, our $950 rent is within the fair market rental range and reasonable for good quality housing in the area.
Often a low vacancy rate can drive rents up as supply decreases. A quarterly report by the Minnesota Housing Partnership released Sept. 14 indicated that in the metro area overall, the vacancy rate is 2.4 percent, a 10-year low. The report attributes this lack of availability to the foreclosure crisis that has caused some former homeowners to become renters.