1. The planning team had many questions about housing, so Ms. Andrews spoke about the housing situation in the Bradford area from her point of view at the Office of Economic and Community Development (OECD).

1. There is a high number of tenant occupied, single family homes and a need for more high quality rental units. There are quite a few slum landlords in Bradford who do the bare minimum to maintain their properties.
2. University students do rent in the city and there are fraternity houses in the city as well. The fraternity houses generally have a high density and it isn’t clear whether code enforcement is checking the occupancy of them.
3. A nice home in the city costs $100,000-$150,000. Two examples of developments in this range are Northgate (built in the 1980s) and Colonial Heights (built in the 1990s). A newer development (Chelsea Lane) has homes that cost up to $400,000.
4. Based on the work that the OECD has done, Ms. Andrews would estimate that rehabilitation costs are about $35,000 per unit and lead paint removal is about $13,000-14,000 per unit.
5. Before block grant money can be used to demolish a home, the city has to determine that the cost of repairs would exceed the value of the property. So there is background work involved in order to clear blighted properties.
6. Section-8 housing, as designated and subsidized by HUD, must meet the requirements of the International Property Maintenance Code. So not all slum landlords even have properties that are eligible for Section-8 rental.
7. Ms. Andrews thinks that the conversion of more upper floors on Main Street to apartments is feasible. The OECD has a few and they don’t have difficulty renting them. The rents range from $335 to $550 per month. They also have property on the corner of Chambers and Main that they would love to renovate for apartments, but there are code and cost issues.
8. The main housing goal of the OECD is to build more moderate single family housing as well as some higher priced options. They also think that a townhouse development would be well-received by residents who don’t want to deal with the property maintenance involved in home ownership.
9. Ms. Andrews does think that some infill of housing is possible, especially in the Elm Street Area.
10. Code Enforcement has a listing of city landlords. Ms. Andrews is not sure whether they have tenant information as well.

2.  Despite the possibility of more residential units downtown, Ms. Andrews doesn’t think that a parking garage is needed. There is another lot planned to go across the street from the city hall lot. Also, 27 spaces will be added to the lot at Barber and Mechanic. There are no plans to tear down any buildings for parking, but there are still more places to creating spaces just off of Main Street. The city charges for parking, and that will help pay to create new spaces.

3.  Mr. Filoni wondered if multi-use infill is possible downtown. Could owners be pursuaded to cooperate so that elevator and circulation cores could be created at the backside of those new buildings to make old and new spaces accessible? This is a topic that will have to be explored further in the master plan process.

4.  Time will be planned in the future for Ms. Andrews to drive the planning team around the area to look at housing.

With no further items for discussion, the meeting was adjourned. The foregoing constitutes the major items accepted by the attendees. If there are any corrections or clarifications, please notify the architects.

Respectfully submitted,

MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni, Inc.

Amy P. Maceyko, AIA, LEED AP