Friday, March 29, 2024

Weidner Apartments presents GFC numbers to Council

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CHELAN – Guy Evans and Financial Analysist Cody Vickery of Weidner Apartments talked GFC rates to the Chelan City Council during a City Workshop held on Dec. 4.

Evans began the presentation by saying, “I had a great conversation with Andy Baker about how to approach the new rate structure and I think there’s a way ahead that this could be a win-win for everyone.”

According to Evans the housing crisis in Chelan has many different components to it. “Weidner is here to talk about rentals through a for profit mechanism.”

Regardless of the for profit status, Chelan Mayor Mike Cooney asked, “is there a section of housing in other cities that is affordable rental units for profit?

Vickery answered, “you have for profit institutions that are trying to build affordable housing, they are going to utilize different avenues, the city, the state, to finance the development.”

As an example, Vickery mentioned a project that contains affordable housing in Minneapolis. “We were granted a tax increment financing (TIF) credit and 20 percent of our units are affordable,” he reported.

Last December, Evans came in front of the Council and presented the development proposal of 284 multi-family units at the Apple Blossom Center.

This time around Evans had updates for the Council and the public present. “Just to get everyone up to speed on where the conversation has been, we have an expensive infrastructure,” he said.

Weidner would be looking to spend $10,280 in GFC hookup fees in 2019, per unit. Evans stated that these are not practical numbers. “I reached out to Mike and said I have some ideas, we have this data set from Weidner’s water use down in Wenatchee.”

From there Evans contacted Andy Baker of FCS Group to discuss GFCs. “Based on this Riverside 9 data, the Weidner ERU water use would be of around 103 gallons per day,” stated Evans.

Coming in at a low peak water use, would then benefit Weidner. “That translates into .1 or water ERU … we find that the $10,000 number drops by half, it gets us down to $5,084 per unit,” Evans added.

Evans then asked the Council to allow Weidner to use the data from Riverside 9 in order to set an initial GFC. “In year one, two, three we are going to look at the actual numbers down there, and that’s when we are going to clean up the books,” said Evans.

That way the City can determine whether the amount paid by Weidner was enough, or if they would have to pay more. Evans believes Weidner would get a credit instead, because there’s already an irrigation system installed at Apple Blossom. “The Riverside numbers are paying for irrigation,” he explained.

In terms of the benefits this project brings to the City of Chelan, Evans mentioned that based on construction numbers and real-estate sale, a little over $300,000 in sales tax will made by the City. Plus an ongoing $66,000 in property and sales tax each year.

Council member Ray Dobbs, asked if there’s any way the development could contain affordable housing, Vickery, responded, “there’s room for us to have a conversation.”

The Council also discussed vacancy rates. “Even though we are calling this market value pricing, as soon as 300 units hit the market, that is going to add a significant amount of vacancy,” said Councilman Ty Witt.

“I think everybody gets it. I think everybody around the table gets it. People in the community get it. You go out there build 280 units, it frees up all these homes that are rentals now, lowers the cost of a home rental significantly,” said the Mayor.

The next step is to start conversations between the Council, Evans and Weidner Apartments.

Also in the agenda were the 2019 Budget and the FCS Water and Sewer Rate Reoslution, both will be adopted during the Dec. 18 regular Council meeting.


 
 

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