Pictured is Steven Ald, Director of Real Estate Development for STEL, as he presents the Gateway Lofts project to the city council and answers questions. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

Southern Tier Environments for Living officials expect nearly everyone who lives in the Gateway Lofts apartment complex on Water Street to come from the city of Jamestown.

The question is one of several asked by City Council members in recent weeks that was answered during Monday’s council work session between meetings of the council’s Housing Committee and the full council work session.

The demand for housing is high, and Steven Ald, STEL director of real estate development said STEL was required to do a market study for the project, which had to show a capture rate in the market area of 20% or less, with a capture rate for this project coming in at less than 5%, meaning basically every tenant will come from the city of Jamestown. Ald added that there will be no restrictions as to where someone can come from, but it is most likely that all tenants will be from the city because of this demand.

Council members also asked how Gateway Lofts tenants would be charged for rent if they were from the city’s homeless population. Gateway Lofts has been billed as a piece of the puzzle to help the city’s homeless population.

“That happens a lot where we bring in someone and their initial form shows zero income and they are 100% subsidized at that point, but then we can project that in month two their caseworker will hook them up with DSS or employment or something and by month two or three they’re going to have income,” Ald said. “But up until they obtain income they are 100% subsidized.”

During the Housing Committee meeting, Ald began by discussing how the project originally started work back in 2017, and work was officially scheduled to start in 2020, when an investor pulled out during the pandemic. He also gave a general overview of the project, which is set to take over the Gateway Center building at 31 Water St.. The project will include putting 110 apartment rooms in the building, which is currently owned by Community Helping Hands, and is also currently mostly vacant besides the Community Helping Hands, Mental Health Association, St Susan’s and a used furniture store on the bottom floor. Some of the apartments will go to clients of the YWCA, Ald said, while STEL will be in charge of 40.

The environmental cleanup, income qualifications, zoning variances, more greenspace, a fence to protect the turtles that live near the river in that area, and a pilot agreement with STEL for city demolitions were all also discussed during the Housing Committee.

During the council’s work session Ald went into more details on a few things, including tenants of the building. That used to include BOCES during earlier iterations of the project, and Ald said BOCES may be a part of the project by the time it is built.

“BOCES had been a tenant previously and when we renovate the first floor they’re going to consider coming back, so that’s another possible beneficial use for the property,” Ald said. “We’re looking to have only not-for-profits or educational entities such as BOCES as non-residential tenants in the building, although we are in conversations with a pharmacy and a credit union as we think those things, even though they’re not nonprofits, would be beneficial to have on the property for the tenants.”

Ald addressed that most of the apartments in the building would be one bedroom, but some of the YWCA ones would be two or three bedrooms. Most would be for homeless women and children from the YWCA, with 50% of the units designated for the city’s special needs population in one way or another for both YWCA and STEL clients.

Other questions included the increase in price of the project to $77 million, which Ald said was because of new regulations, the need to satisfy the National Parks Service because of it being a historic building, and working to now have to make it more energy efficient. This includes things like spray foam insulation, which was not included in the original 2020 cost.

Also addressed was the vetting process for the special needs housing, the eviction process if that were to become needed, the pilot agreement with STEL for demolitions in the city, and the plan to have $640,000 from the city reallocated to the project.

One concern previously addressed by council that was brought up again was the potential for an increase in police call volume to the building, specifically if police are called to address one apartment multiple times.

“We move to evict them pretty quickly because when that kind of thing happens it’s disturbing the tenants in the building that are not problematic and we don’t want to lose those tenants because of the problematic tenants,” Ald said. “So, we are very aggressive with our evictions.”

Ald then discussed some similar projects STEL has done in Dunkirk and what challenges they faced there, including finding out that the main challenge was trying to rehabilitate an existing home instead of doing a demolition, which has changed their work now to only demolitions for their agreement with Jamestown where they will be entering into a pilot agreement for $350,000 to help with city demolitions.

Crystal Surdyk, city development director, said the city has also checked out other similar projects to the Gateway Lofts that have happened in Buffalo and Syracuse. Additionally, she said this project is something that has been in the works for a number of years and that due diligence was done at the time it was first presented to the city Planning Commission in 2020, including for some of the original big concerns for safety and things like school busing.

“We were very concerned about the school busing, and to their credit they went back and redid the site plan to accommodate better traffic circulation and to account for the busing and the safe picking up of the kids that are living in the building,” Surdyk said. “My understanding is, and I assume this is still the case, there is also a key fob system that will ensure that their tenants have access to the space they should have access to and there won’t be people able to just freely go in and out of residential areas.”

Staff and security will be on hand at the building 24 hours a day, seven days a week as well. Surdyk also addressed the building being in a “food desert” and how a plan is still on the table to work on that issue.

The estimated start time for the project is February of next year, and project construction is expected to take 14 months.