A city neighborhood that has seen significant new housing development over the past two decades is about to get more.
Rochester’s Cornerstone Group and the city’s Land Bank are teaming up to build 15 single-family houses and attached townhouses in the JOSANA neighborhood north of downtown.
"Homeownership has become clearly a much bigger priority from the city and the state, the county too,” said Ryan Brandt, vice president of development with Cornerstone. “I think it's ... as unattainable as it's ever been, right?"
The affordable housing developer already has built 91 rental units in JOSANA, adding to the 60 houses built by Greater Rochester Habitat for Humanity.
JOSANA, which stands for Jay Orchard Streets Area Neighborhood Association, has seen millions of dollars invested not just in housing but in the Enrico Fermi School 17, a community building and the adjacent soccer stadium.
The housing, though, has largely backfilled a once-hollowed-out neighborhood where vacancy was tallied not in empty lots but in acres — equivalent to 33 football fields across 30 square blocks when the stadium opened in 2006.
“Looking south through the neighborhood, you could see all the way from West Broad to Jay Street,” Brandt said, recalling the view from the stadium bleachers. “You're looking through all these streets of just, you know, empty space.”
This will be Cornerstone’s first homeownership project, and the largest undertaken by the Land Bank.
Federal pandemic relief dollars, New York state and ESL Federal Credit Union, as well as the city, are helping to fund the $9.7 million project with both grants and loans. Construction should start in January. The homes will be all-electric with heat pumps, and will have an average sale price of $127,000, city records show.
The houses, to include a couple of ranches, several traditional, two-story homes with full basements as well as attached two-story townhouses, will be targeted to families making between 50% and 60% of area median income. Lots are scattered throughout the neighborhood. One of the houses will be ADA-compliant, and another is planned to be accessible for the hearing or visually impaired.
“There's still plenty of vacant lots and more opportunities there,” said Land Bank executive director Paul Scuderi. “It does not complete the JOSANA neighborhood, but it does plug in a lot of holes, that's for sure.”
