Updates with full City Council approving loans.
A 72-unit affordable housing project that is part of the planned redevelopment of the Loretto Heights campus in southwest Denver will get a $3.3 million loan from the city.
The loan for the Pancratia Hall Lofts, which will be created in a historic building that was once a dormitory, was among three 1 percent interest loans that the City Council approved Aug. 24. The loans, initially okayed Aug. 12 by the Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee, total more than $8 million and would support 325 low- and moderate-income apartments.
A second loan, for $3.75 million, is for 150 units that are part of Viña, a $36.5 million mixed-use development next to RTD's 48th and Brighton N Line station that will include a new Clinica Tepeyac, the nonprofit community health center. The third, for $1.4 million, is for the 103-unit Capitol Square Apartments that would replace a building and part of a parking lot at 1295 Sherman, across the street from City O' City.
All the projects have been in development for years and are relying on tax credits and other financing as well as the city loans to allow them to offer housing below market rates. The city loans require the projects to remain affordable for 60 years.
City Councilman Kevin Flynn, who represents the district where Loretto Heights is located, said during the Aug. 12 committee hearing that it was the first time the city was investing in affordable housing in his district.
Flynn said southwest Denver was a part of town where affordable housing could still be found. The Pancratia project, he said, "is going to help us maintain that as things change in our city."
In July 2018, Westside Investment Partners paid $16.5 million for the 70-acre Loretto Heights, where Sisters of Loretto nuns founded a school in 1891. Westside's developer, ACM, is proposing a walkable neighborhood of businesses and market-rate and affordable single- and multi-family homes, including the Pancratia Hall Lofts.
Eighteen of the 72 two-, three-, and four-bedroom Pancratia units will be what is considered deeply affordable, for families earning no more than 30 percent of the area median income, now $27,000 for a family of three. The rest will be for households making up to 80 percent of the area median income, now $70,650 for a family of three.
Seven of the 103 one- and two-bedroom units at Capitol Square and 45 of Viña's 140 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units will be for families earning no more than 30 percent of the area median income, with the rest for households making up to 80 percent of the area median income.
