{"id":3698,"date":"2023-06-22T08:50:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T12:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=3698"},"modified":"2023-06-22T08:50:07","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T12:50:07","slug":"riverfront-housing-eyed-for-decatur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/22\/riverfront-housing-eyed-for-decatur\/","title":{"rendered":"Riverfront housing eyed for Decatur"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is no question that affordable housing is a critical need for Decatur. It&#8217;s been reinforced over and over again by studies, speakers, developers, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A plan unveiled at Tuesday&#8217;s meeting of city council could be a way to ease the situation by adding riverfront housing on city-owned land along First St., plus the city parking lot just west and north of the Chamber of Commerce building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ron Storey (right in photo) and Curt Ehlerding (left) of the city&#8217;s redevelopment commission unveiled specifics of the plan to council and Mayor Dan Rickord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ehlerding said the commission \u201chas really taken this to heart and is moving forward on it.\u201d In fact, it is spending $50,000 of its own monies as \u201cseed money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Three tracts of land are involved: a) the empty (except for a small building in the back) one acre situated south of the Emergency Mobile Technologies building; b) the approximate 1.9 acres north from the Mobile Tech building to Monroe St.; and c) the 2.33 acres which are currently a city parking lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ehlerding underscored the fact that the housing, mostly apartments, would be \u201cmarket-rate apartments, not subsidized housing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the development would include a recreational area, such as a splash pad and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Commission officials have been talking about the idea with the Housing Resource Hub of Fort Wayne. It specializes in developing and implementing workforce housing strategies, housing development, and home-buyer programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have a desperate need for apartments in Decatur, a study showed that,\u201d said Ehlerding, a non-voting member of the commission who represents the North Adams School board, of which he is a member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He contended that one reason North Adams&#8217; enrollment numbers have dwindled is due to a lack of affordable housing here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ehlerding asked for council to join a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Hub in order to move forward with the riverfront development idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Council agreed, with the stipulation that City Attorney Anne Razo must first go over the MOU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com There is no question that affordable housing is a critical need for Decatur. It&#8217;s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-3698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/004B60923E96410EB37133FF2C7022C7.jpg?fit=596%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}