What’s Happening With the Cherry Street Project?
Port Townsend’s premiere affordable housing project is an eyesore. One of the most expensive real estate developments in Jefferson County–over $2 million in public funds for eight apartments–is boarded up, uninhabitable and detracting from the quality of the neighborhood around it. Your tax dollars at work.
You would think this would be an issue in the current City Council races, especially in Mayor Deborah Stinson’s re-election bid. Her opponent, Monica Mick Hager, has leveled criticism about the city’s $17 million deficit and large expenditures on beautification projects while fundamental needs go unmet. She told this writer that in going door-to-door she frequently hears complaints about the Cherry Street Project. But she has not made much of an issue of it beyond those face-to-face meetings with voters.
In City Council meetings discussing the project, only outgoing councilor Robert Gray questioned the numbers and the soundness of the volunteer organization to which city leaders gave land valued at $600,000 and hundreds of thousands of dollars in nonrecourse loans, secured only by the city’s former property and the uninhabitable building itself. When he did raise a question or two, Gray almost apologized for having doubts and concerns.
The building that sat on the equivalent of stilts–known in the industry as cribbing–for over two years is finally on a foundation. But work has again ground to a halt. The only activity since the foundation was added in June 2019 has been a hurried and rather sloppy job of throwing up plywood across open doors and windows.
The surrounding area, after 30 months since the sixty-year old building was barged here in May 2017 at great expense from Victoria, B.C., continues to look like an open wound in the city’s center.
One neighbor complained to us last month:
I own the property directly in front of this building and have been completely ignored and avoided during this process the entrance and parking lot they currently proposed with no mention of my home comes across my yard and takes out part of my garage they also ffail to mention the land they are on is not nor has it ever been zoned for multifamily residential i find it absolutely disturbing that they are waiting til the last moment to inform me at bare minimal leaving me no where to turn to..where do I go for legal help?
Several times we have asked the group entrusted with the Cherry Street Project, Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, when they expect the building to be ready for occupancy. They have not responded.
Homeward Bound is the recipient of over $2 million in public support from Port Townsend taxpayers, in the nature of financial and professional services, as well as fee waivers and free utility work. Their $834,000 loan from the City contains a nearly $500,000 hidden interest subsidy that is an outright gift. They also received a direct grant of $30,000 just to get their act together.
Homeward Bound used to be transparent, providing public notice of their meetings and posting minutes on their website. That is what an entity funded nearly 100% by taxpayers should be doing. Those minutes, as we reported previously, revealed how very far the Cherry Street Project is from ever providing living quarters to any human being, and how they may not ever be able to complete the project, even with the City opening its wallet and donating its engineers and work crews.
They no longer invite the public to their meetings. They don’t post minutes. They don’t answer questions.
Neither The Leader nor the Peninsula Daily News have done any significant questioning of this project. Occasionally they publish a puff piece, such as their last fawning coverage that was initiated by Homeward Bound’s PR push. When would the building be finished, how much would it cost? Our incurious local papers didn’t bother to ask.
Though Homeward Bound won’t respond we will get answers to our questions. As we have been doing for the past two years, we have again filed public records requests with the City. Through previous public records requests we were able to report on the soaring costs of the project, the recognition by Homeward Bound that their cost projections and funding fell short of what it would take to finish the job and the City’s determination that it would have to provide professional project management to get the building out of the air onto a stable foundation. When we finish studying the latest communications between Homeward Bound and the City of Port Townsend, and the loan records, we will be back with some answers.
In the meantime, a picutre is worth a thousand words. The photo accompanying ths article was taken October 23, 2019, and shows what is happening with the $2 million Cherry Street “affordable housing” project.
Check out our previous reporting. You will find the factual basis for statements made in this post and more:
The Tragedy of the Cherry Street Project, December 12, 2018.
Cherry Street “Affordable” Housing to Cost More Than $2 Million, May 28, 2018