TAUNTON — Now that Taunton’s Zoning Board of Appeals has ruled on the number of apartments it will allow to be built for the Union Block apartment project, it’s up to the developer whether it’s worth pushing forward with the $15 million investment.
When the ZBA issued its special permit for mixed-use development last Thursday night, it voted unanimously to reduce the allowable number of apartments from 38 to 36 on the second and third floors of three conjoined buildings listed as 1 Main St. and 15-25 Main St.
It set conditions: A total of 38 parking spaces for tenants must be designated, with eight facing against the rear of the buildings and the rest being used in an open area some yards away, just below the vehicular drive-thru known as Allan Avenue.
The ZBA also, according to chairman Dennis Ackerman, wants the developer to create an additional 15 spaces within walking distance of Union Block — in order to accommodate workers and visitors of businesses and offices on the ground floor of the buildings in question.
Phil Griffee wouldn’t speculate as to how he and other officials with East Boston-based Neighborhood of Affordable Housing Inc., also known as NOAH, will proceed.
Griffee, executive director of the nonprofit, redevelopment agency that purchases empty and underused properties — in order to create housing stock for low-income earners — said NOAH officials this week will examine documents presented by their local counsel, onetime Taunton City Solicitor David Gay.
One third of the “workforce housing” apartments, according to NOAH, would be set at market rate.
The rest would be subsidized and “affordable” — with just less than 10 percent, somewhere between three or four, of apartments set aside for “extremely low income” earners making less than 30 percent of Area Median Income (AMI).
More than half the rentals, NOAH says, would be for workers listed by government standards as “very low income” who earn less than 60 percent of regional AMI.
Monthly rates, based on current calculations, would range from $928 for a single-bedroom for renters in the 30-percent AMI category to $1,600 for a three-bedroom, market-rate unit.
NOAH originally planned to build 39 apartments but later agreed to reduce it by one.
By the time the ZBA issued its permit last Thursday NOAH wasn’t in a position to argue that 36 would be too low a number to justify the project’s viability, including the ability to pay its debt service.
That’s because the zoning board concluded and closed its hearing the week before without rendering a decision.
Griffee says contending with four ZBA meetings since November has made it more difficult for NOAH in terms of its funding process.
NOAH, he said, has until Nov. 8 to submit its project application to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
“Time is literally money,” Griffee said. “This only comes around once a year, so we’re scrambling.”
Griffee said competition is keen among housing developers like NOAH for government grants and tax credits.
He said he’s been taken aback by what he perceives as the zoning board’s resistance to a plan that has widespread support from local and state officials — because of its potential to help revitalize the downtown district of a ”gateway city” that for years has been dealing with economic challenges.
“It’s odd,” Griffee said. “You’ve got the mayor and some city councilors and the (Housing and Economic and Development) Secretary (Jay Ash) himself saying, ‘Let’s get it going.’”
“It’s a very strange arrangement,” Griffee said of the ZBA’s involvement and influence, which he says “doesn’t make sense.”
Ackerman said another condition issued by the zoning board is for two 800-square-foot rooms, one on each floor, to be built as a combination laundry room and recreational area for young children.
Griffee says it’s somewhat ironic the ZBA would insist on such a measure: “I think it’s a little bit of social engineering, and usually it’s the developer that does that.”
NOAH has said it has an option-to-purchase agreement to buy the empty space on the second and third floors with owners Jay Dorsey, who owns two attached structures, and Armand Tenkarian and Michael Keene co-owners of Taunton Antiques Center.
Keene declined to make a prediction as to whether NOAH will proceed with the project.
“What I can say is that I hope it does come to fruition,” he said.
Keene says he and Tenkarian are prepared to downsize their business to allow the apartments, as well as an elevator, to be built and installed.
Tenkarian says the Union Block name was adopted in 1860 two years after a fire destroyed the original buildings. The block, which is zoned “commercial business district,” now extends from Weir Street to Merchants Lane.
Griffee says NOAH probably could have avoided dealing with the ZBA, if it had previously been aware a deadline was looming for a ZBA permit issued in 2011 to the non-profit The Neighborhood Corporation.
That special permit was for the development of 36 market-rate, residential units with 50 tenant parking spaces and 10 off-site spaces for commercial, non-residential units. The project, however, failed to materialize.
Ackerman said NOAH will have the option, even after it submits its project-funding application to the state, to appeal to the ZBA to make some modifications to the permit conditions.
“We could tweak some of it later. We’ve done it before,” Ackerman, 75, said.
Property owner and developer Carlos Melo, who twice since 2013 has been denied a special permit to build apartments on the upper floors of 66 Main St. — where a methadone clinic operates on the ground floor — says downtown needs the NOAH project.
“It would be a shame if the developer walks,” Melo said.
“It would be a shot in the arm” for a downtown that Melo says “is the worst I’ve ever seen” in terms of store and building vacancies.
And he says any argument that apartments downtown create an undue burden for parking is “silly.”
Melo said if a business, as opposed to a housing unit, were to move in it would create an even greater need for parking during the day.
Ackerman previously said if the Union Block project gets off the ground the city would contribute $250,000 by means of its annual allotment of federal Community Development Block Grant funds.
Griffee has said construction would likely begin in 2019 if NOAH proceeds with the project.