A month after the announcement of the biggest new manufacturing plant in East Chattanooga in more than a century, Chattanooga developer Bobby Adamson is making plans to build a $1.2 million apartment complex nearby.
Adamson Developers LLC plans to break ground early next year on a 12-unit apartment complex at 2207 Cheek St. to provide new housing in the East Chattanooga area. Known as the Mosaic, the new complex will include six one- and two-bedroom apartments that will be reserved for residents earning no more than 60% of the median income in Chattanooga, or $28,500 for a single resident and $32,580 for a two-person household.
Adamson said it will take about a year to fully develop and build the new complex.
To ensure the new apartments can offer affordable units for low- and moderate-income residents, Adamson's project will be aided by $240,000 from Chattanooga's Affordable Housing Fund, which the city established last year with annual appropriations from the city of $1 million a year.
Last month, the city Health, Educational and Housing Facility Board approved spending nearly $600,000 from the Affordable Housing Fund to aid the Chattanooga Housing Authority to renovate two of its projects and gave another $196,546 from the fund to Habitat for Humanity to build 15 Habitat homes in Alton Park.
Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter / Bobby Adamson poses at the Adamson Developers LLC office on Thursday, July 13, 2017, in Chattanooga, Tenn.The city board Wednesday agreed to provide another $240,000 from the housing fund to aid Adamson's project.
"We need more of this type of housing in our city," said Donna Williams, director of the city's Department of Economic and Community Development. "This will add to the improvements we're seeing around the old [Harriet] Tubman site."
In September, the Japanese automotive coatings maker Nippon Paint announced plans to build a $61 million factory on 20 acres of the vacant 35-acre site of the former Tubman housing project, which was once one of the biggest public housing developments in Chattanooga.
Once in full operation, Nippon plans to hire 150 workers and the city is creating a tax increment financing district to allow the extra tax revenues paid at the new paint factory to be reinvested in the area to pay for infrastructure and other improvements to foster development on the rest of the Tubman site.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.