Summit Housing Group closed on purchasing land from Keith Bell in the Lyons Valley Park subdivision, Town Planner Paul Glasgow reported at a Lyons Board of Trustees online meeting this Monday. Last month, the Board of Trustees approved a Development Plan Agreement from Summit for 21 townhomes and 19 existing platted single-family-home lots. All will be affordable rentals for households at 60 percent of the area median income (AMI), required and monitored through federal funding programs.
“They closed on purchase of land at the end of April. They are now the owners of the land,” Glasgow told Mayor Nick Angelo and the Board of Trustees, during a report from the Lyons Planning and Community Development Commission (PCDC) at the May 4 meeting. Since the end of 2019, Summit had been under contract with Bell to purchase both Tract A of Filing No. 8 for 21 townhomes and 19 existing platted single-family-home lots in the subdivision. Earlier agreements were focused on just purchasing Tract A for multifamily buildings. Summit first started the endeavor to buy land in Lyons Valley Park to build affordable housing more than two years ago.
All of the approval steps for the townhomes on Tract A were completed at a March 10 PCDC meeting and an April 13 Board of Trustees meeting. The approved development plan for “Lyons Valley Townhomes” on Tract A is for a total of 21 townhomes in five buildings: four two-story fourplex buildings and one two-story fiveplex building. All townhomes are two bedrooms.
At the online meeting on Monday, Glasgow said that Summit was preparing final versions of their documents prior to submitting a building permit. Summit has been meeting regularly with Glasgow and N-Line, the electric utility contractor for the Town of Lyons, Glasgow reported. He said he expected Summit will submit for the building permit in the next week or two.
The 19 single-family-home lots, like all other already platted single-family-home lots in town, don’t require a development plan like the multifamily Tract A, but they are subject to the typical Town of Lyons building permit process. For both the townhomes on Tract A and the single-family homes, an affordability covenant is required for 35 years by the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program and Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds that Summit received. The LIHTC and CDBG-DR funding both include extensive oversight.
Summit, based in Montana, is a development company that specializes in low-income tax credit and mixed-use developments. It develops and manages rental properties in six states, including Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. All rents for the Lyons Valley Townhomes and the 19 single-family homes must be set as affordable for households at 60 percent of the AMI or less. Charts for Boulder County presented at the PCDC meeting showed 60 percent AMI as an annual income of $47,000 for a single person, $54,540 for a two-person household, $61,380 for a three-person household, and $68,160 for a four-person household. Although Summit will probably not be able to take rental applications until construction is well underway, the property management website for Summit buildings shows what the applications are like for other rentals built by Summit, including rental homes in Longmont.