A new Blue House Project development called St. Joseph Cottage Courtyard will provide so-called missing middle housing, which is a need laid out in Springfield's comprehensive plan, Forward SGF.
Blue House is a project of the Drew Lewis Foundation that promotes homeownership in the Grant Beach Neighborhood. Blue House rehabs dilapidated, foreclosed and abandoned homes and sells them at an affordable rate to those enrolled in the nonprofit’s RISE program.
The St. Joseph project, in the 1100 block of N. Campbell Avenue across from St. Joseph Catholic Church, will include the renovation of a two-story turn-of-the-20th century home facing Campbell as well as the renovation of two additional homes on the property facing Scott Street.
"The little bungalow, we'll actually have done probably at the end of the year, and we'll sell that one as a residential," said Amy Blansit, executive director of the Drew Lewis Foundation. "So it had been a law firm, and then they had used it for storage for years. And then we've converted it back into a really cute little bungalow."
They're converting the brick building into mixed use. One side will be living space and the space beside it will "be left more of a white box for commercial. And so you could have living on one side and business on the other," said Blansit.
They’ll add a flat top roof deck to the brick building for outdoor living space. And they’ll build two additional structures — possibly duplexes or a duplex and two separate units —- and everyone will have shared land and parking.
"Our whole thing is, you know, 1 — saving these amazing historic houses, making sure that they're affordable for families," she said. "We do — 60, 65% of our houses go to low to moderate income owners, and then we do another, whatever the difference, 35% to individuals that actually have higher socioeconomic status to intentionally blend socioeconomic communities."
Blansit said projects like this one foster a sense of community. Blansit has been intrigued by courtyard communities since a visit to San Jose, California in her 20s. "It was...older individuals on the front porch and kids playing and them all talking, and just the sense of community was so strong." Twenty years later, she's hopeful Springfield is ready for it.
To ensure that those who buy the homes actually live in them, she said purchasers have a five-year right of first refusal. If a person doesn’t live as a primary resident in a house for the first five years, the Drew Lewis Foundation can buy it back without the person gaining the asset they gifted them. They do that, Blansit said, "to protect that asset that our donors have given us or that we've put into the house."
Donations help make the homes affordable once they're renovated. The St. Joseph Cottage Courtyard is made possible by a gift from Beth and John Raidel and the Jeannette L. Musgrave Foundation.
