A planned affordable housing complex on East Main Street got a green light from a Chattanooga planning panel Monday as the corridor remains one of the city’s hottest for new residential units.
Vecino Group of Kansas City is proposing a three-story project that will offer 60 apartments at East Main and South Hawthorne Street on a site that long held fragrance scratch-and-sniff label manufacturer Arcade Beauty.
The company, which traces its roots to 1902 in Chattanooga, shifted operations to Amnicola Highway about 10 years ago and the city obtained the East Main site and has used it for warehousing and other purposes.
Tyler Yount, director of special projects in Mayor Andy Berke’s office, told the Chattanooga- Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission that 15 units will be set aside for people with mental illness. The AIM Center, which helps adults living with mental illness, will provide support services at the site, he said.
The city would donate the property that takes up the block for people with up to 60% of area medium income, he said.