Larry B. Butler

Waterbury was recently awarded $8.7 million for affordable housing. This will have a positive effect on our city. It will create 337 new units of housing in our community.

It is part of a larger award to create affordable housing in Hartford, New Haven and Waterbury as part of the Department of Housing's Competitive Housing Assistance for Multifamily Properties program (CHAMP).

CHAMP provides developers and owners of multifamily affordable housing the necessary gap financing to create more affordable units in their developments.

Details about the two projects:

Waterbury: Enterprise Apartments and Abbot Towers, 187 units ($4.7 million): DOH will provide a loan of approximately $4.7 million to Enterprise Abbot L.P. to rehabilitate two buildings comprising 187 affordable units. The project will serve households with incomes at 25 percent, 50 percent, and 60 percent of area-median income. Both sites are approximately one-quarter mile from downtown Waterbury and include mass transit opportunities, the expanded UConn- Waterbury campus, and the Palace Theater.

Waterbury: Exchange Place Tower, 150 units ($4 million): DOH will provide a loan of approximately $4 million to Cornerstone-Bayview, Inc./NHPF, an affiliate of the NHP Foundation, to assist in the rehabilitation and preservation of Exchange Place Tower in downtown Waterbury. The development, which contains ground-floor retail commercial space, consists of 150 units that will be affordable to residents with incomes at 25 percent, 50 percent, and 60 percent of the area-median income.