A proposal to complete long-stalled Humboldt Greenway housing that a neighborhood association said is too expensive won preliminary approval at Minneapolis City Hall on Tuesday.
A City Council committee approved the sale of 95 lots to Greater Metropolitan Housing Corporation (GMHC), a nonprofit that is partnering on the project with MyHomeSource as its contractor. MyHomeSource is a seven-year-old development company that's a subsidiary of real estate developer Alatus LLC.
The company wants to build 52 single-family homes and 11 townhouses at prices ranging from $280,000 to $300,000, before upgrades.
The committee's approval came after the Lind-Bohanon Neighborhood Association urged the city in August to select a more modest proposal by MSP Enterprises LLC.
"While GMHC had a good proposal, we believe that their price points are simply too high for the Lind-Bohanon neighborhood, and the number of homes they propose to construct in a short amount of time would lead to too many vacant homes in our neighborhood," the association told the city.
GMHC has a long track record of rehabbing existing housing with the city, and last year hit the $350,000 mark with a newly built home almost four miles away elsewhere in the North Side.
The company's plan offers less housing density than was planned for the area in 2000, which city staffer Cherie Shoquist attributed to a design calling for bigger homes.
Neighborhood leaders expressed concern that the higher-priced homes would sit empty on the market, and that they would eventually nudge the neighborhood in a more upscale direction. The neighborhood's median house value is $102,500.
