URBAN REVITALIZATION/Affordable housing key to downtown rehab

In recent years, corporate downsizing has cost Rochester, N.Y., thousands of manufacturing jobs. That could have created havoc, but the city’s 10-year Renaissance Plan is helping to minimize the problem.

The plan, adopted in 1999 by the city council, targets 11 areas for growth: economic development, public safety, housing, education, land use/zoning, human services, parks/recreation/open space, public infrastructure, transportation and cultural resources. A collaborative effort of city residents and staff, it has resulted in a resurgence of interest in downtown housing and has helped create a high-tech downtown with a flourishing urban core.

Last fall, Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization devoted to recognizing communities that demonstrate leadership in promoting neighborhood planning, gave Rochester its “Most Livable” designation. The group honored the city for:

• earmarking funds for housing and development in severely troubled neighborhoods; and

• agreeing to share power with local communities through a Neighbors Building Neighborhoods (NBN) program that gives residents more direct involvement in city planning efforts.

• Anthony Square is the linchpin of Rochester’s revitalization efforts. The suburban-style urban neighborhood was built on the site of a low-income housing project on Main Street that dated to the 1960s. “It was old, beat-up and derelict,” says Tom Argest, commissioner of community development for Rochester. “It was a really bad area — lots of police calls, poor housing. It’s hard to describe how bad it was.”

  A unique agreement between the city and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development smoothed the way for the neighborhood’s redevelopment. Under the agreement, HUD turns its foreclosed properties over to the city rather than selling them. Rochester has 90 days to sell the properties; if the city does not sell the properties, it must buy them.

  The agreement offers the city three main benefits, Argest says. “First, it allows us to control about 600 properties a year,” he says. “Second, we can sell those properties more rapidly than HUD could. Finally, it allows us to focus our priorities on sales to owner/occupants. Before we started doing this, up to 50 percent of the sales of foreclosed properties were to investors. In the last six months, we have sold an average of 30 properties a month, 72 percent to owner/occupants.”

  Rochester worked with Monroe County and a number of groups — including the public housing authority, the affected neighborhood and the non-profit Housing Opportunity Program (HOP), which is developing affordable rental units at Anthony Square. The rental property is being designed to conform with properties across the street. “The units have a really nice height to them to mirror the 18th century commercial structures on the other side of the street,” Argest says. “And they have brick facing because the buildings across the street are brick. A lot of thought and energy went into planning how the rental units would look.”

  Along with the rental units, Anthony Square will be home to 23 single-family dwellings. The designs used for the homes are the products of the city’s Home Expo program, a competition in which contractors, designers and builders create model homes that are then put up for sale. Thus far, nine of the 10 Anthony Square models have sold, and houses are being built on the remaining 13 lots. The houses will sell for $90,000-$95,000, but subsidies for moderate- to low-income residents can drop the price dramatically.

  The $10 million project has been credited with drawing homeowners back to the city. Argest says plans now call for another housing development across Main Street from Anthony Square and the refurbishing of the nearby Susan B. Anthony home and historic district.