As a local church and a Charlotte-based developer prepare to break ground on a $65 million mixed-use project in east Winston-Salem, more details have emerged revealing that the effort centers as much on a mission as it does on bricks and mortar.
At a time when Triad housing is in a crisis, especially at the affordable end of the spectrum, the Metropolitan Village project will focus on serving low and middle income populations, targeting especially “essential” employees or learners who can’t afford housing in the nearby Innovation Quarter and downtown areas.
Planned are 324 housing units overall, all at below market rates. The first phase calls for 198 units, with nearly half of those meeting what the city defines as affordable housing.
Meanwhile, the project also aims to open doors for economic mobility by providing key-man office and incubator space that can help empower entrepreneurs and artists and cater to the increasingly remote-minded workforce. United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, together with Charlotte-based developer Liberty Atlantic Group, also shared details Wednesday in an announcement about efforts to deliver health care to underserved communities, ensure diversity and inclusion in the building process and to mitigate the impact of the project on current tenants of the area.
Jaron Norman, CEO of Liberty Atlantic, told TBJ on Wednesday that Metropolitan Village seeks to go beyond traditional redevelopment where units are typically built and filled with residents in a way that maximizes value for the developer. Prioritizing the health and well-being of residents can also create value for those partnering and investing in the efforts, with the end result being healthier, more productive workers that serve the entire community.
“Everything we’ve done has been in line with the mission of the church, and that consistently points back to creating a thriving community of hope and health,” Norman told TBJ. “And so we’ve created all the partnerships necessary to create a thriving community of hope and health.”
As Triad Business Journal previously reported, Metropolitan Village will occupy an 8.2-acre tract at the corner of East Fifth Street and Highland Avenue, just east of U.S. 52. UMMBC is adjacent to the west side of the project, which would stretch from the church west to Northeast Woodland Avenue and would border East Fourth Street and East Fifth to the north and south.
The church began raising money to develop the project back in 2016, creating a community development entity to shepherd it. The church brought on Liberty Atlantic in late 2019, with the Charlotte developer guiding site development plans since 2020. Groundbreaking is now set for Sept. 22, with construction of phase one expected to be completed in about 18 months, Norman said. That would tentatively deliver phase one in March or April 2024.
“We strongly believe that investing in the redevelopment of this area is about so much more than just new buildings and living spaces and hoping change will come,” said the Rev. Alvin T. Armstead Jr., of United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. “We have an obligation to use this as an opportunity to tangibly improve the mental, physical, spiritual and financial lives of the people in our community.”
Norman noted that is “incredibly difficult” to find housing right now in Winston-Salem, or across the country, for that matter, and it only gets more challenging for people of low to middle incomes.
“This is a mixed income project. Some of the units are considered affordable. Some of them are what we call workforce units, which is just another layer of affordable. And then some of them are what we call essential housing. That being said, every single unit is below market rate,” Norman said.
Affordable housing can have different definitions. The city of Winston-Salem defines affordable housing as those at 80% percent of the area median income, and by that definition, about 50 percent of the first phase would meet that definition, Norman said.
“If you asked a HUD official, that definition would be different and probably a little bit broader. What we like to say is that the project is serving low to middle-income essential workers.”
He wasn’t yet willing to quote specific rates.
“We haven’t even started construction yet. Things change, and we don’t want to get pinned down on actual rent values. What I can tell you is, the Link Apartments, down the street from us — our rents will be substantially lower.”
A search of listings on RentCafe provides a range at the Link from $1,270 to almost $3,500 per month.
Even arriving at a median income can be a bit tricky where the project is located.
“If … you put a pin on our property and you draw a mile or two-mile radius around that and you call that the area, you have a multibillion dollar Innovation Quarter and in another half you have the lowest median income in the city,” Norman said. “So what is that area median income, just based on those terms? That’s a bit nebulous.”
By essential workers, UMMBC and Liberty mean employees working at nearby health facilities. Maybe they are nurses or nurse assistants or technicians, or perhaps maintenance staff or security guards at Innovation Quarter, Norman said.
“You know, the folks who work in the hospital but may make $40,000 or less and they are traveling out to Kernersville right now, the majority of them, because they do not have a place nearby that they can afford,” he said. “One of the problems we hope to solve is that Innovation Quarter needs to continue to add retail for it to grow. And the folks who work in the restaurants need housing. So this is a project that will benefit all of our local employers and workers together.”
The church and Liberty Atlantic have been working with residents of the Garden Courts housing community on the site since 2020 to prepare for the transition as new units are built and those homes are demolished to make way for the second phase, Norman said. The developers said that as long as tenants are compliant with their current leases, they will be offered larger, new apartments at comparable rates to what they’re accustomed to.
Another key element of the mixed-use project is economic mobility. The project will include co-living units aimed at local graduate students and adult learners, while also leveraging partnerships with academic, civic and health institutions aimed at empowering the workforce. Collaborations with financial institutions will provide on-site financial literacy and home-ownership classes. Organizers are not yet disclosing specific partners in the project, as Norman said agreements are still being finalized.
What he did add is that the project will include an incubator space of between 1,000 and 1,500 square feet that includes key-man suites, high speed Internet and full connectivity, alongside conference space, catering to entrepreneurs, artists and remote workers.
“We’ve paid a lot of attention to making sure that remote workers and the hybrid lifestyle that we see evolving as a result of COVID is met with open arms,” Norman said. “This is about workforce empowerment, about entrepreneur empowerment, and making sure we can provide a sort of a one-stop-shop … that benefits not just the folks in the community but the businesses and the overall Innovation Quarter ecosystem. That is truly based on entrepreneurship and innovation.”
Many community development projects involve some investment by cities or municipalities, which typically triggers thresholds for awarding contracts to minority-or women-owned businesses. Metropolitan Village is a private project, without the city investment that would set those parameters.
“The biggest difference here is on this project, UMMBC is a church that is an anchor institution in this community. They’ve been around for 130 years. And they hired us as a minority-owned and led development firm. And so what you see typically in other projects that have diversity and inclusion programs, it is because the project itself was not led by minorities. And in this project, we have minorities in key leadership positions across the board.”
Norman expects contracting to diverse groups to be higher than typical measures. D&I is foundational for Liberty, as one of the firm’s cofounders is Garland Burton, who spent some three decades leading diversity and inclusion efforts at UNC-Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University.
“What we’re trying to communicate is that it is inherently higher,” Norman said. “Today, we’re close to 80% to 90%. I think most people are trying to get to 30% in these in similar situations. So almost 80% of the dollars so far that we’ve spent and allocated to various contracts have gone to minority-owned or led or diverse companies.”
While the organizers are yet offering specifics, Metropolitan Village is also focused on making health-related services more affordable and accessible to underserved communities. That means pursuing partnerships with leading researchers and providers to examine social determinants of health at the neighborhood level and providing resources for healthier living. The organizers also hope to point area residents to careers in health and wellness.
What exactly the health services interface might look like and with what partners has not yet been disclosed, but Norman did say the intent is to have health-related services on site at Metropolitan Village.
“That is very broad because conceptually, we focused on addressing the social determinants of health, which goes into healthy communities, affordable housing, access to health care, access to healthy foods,” he said. “so we really looked at the spectrum of social determinants metrics to say, ‘Ok, here are things we can address with health-related services.”
Since being announced initially in March, the price tag for the Metropolitan Village project has grown from about $60 million to $65 million, and Norman said that’s due to a number of different factors. The scope of the project has increased slightly and changed in terms of owning land rather than using ground leases. Inflation also has become a factor, he said.
“Frankly, that number may continue to go up because we are looking to include an increase to streetscape improvements,” he said. “We’re trying to work with the city, as soon as we can get some money there, to help develop the neighborhood. So over time, we see that potentially going up, but right now, this is where we are.”
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