A Bangor housing agency is expected to buy land from the University of Maine at Augusta to build 50 affordable apartment units for seniors.
The University of Maine System Board of Trustees is in the process of selling 4 undeveloped acres on Sunset Avenue to BangorHousing for the appraised value of $160,000. BangorHousing will use that land to build a 50-unit apartment building next to another building of the same size the agency is expecting to break ground on this fall, according to Cindy Witas, BangorHousing development director.
“It’s very exciting to have new housing coming in, but it takes so long to build, and we have such a need,” Witas said.
Final approval on the sale to the Bangor Housing Development Corporation, the nonprofit affiliate of BangorHousing, is expected to come during the board’s Jan. 29 meeting.
The two apartment buildings between Sunset and Texas Avenues will bring a wave of affordable housing for adults ages 55 and older and help ease the region and state’s dearth of housing. Though the units will be for seniors, Witas said, the new housing will create a trickle-down effect that eventually frees up housing of all kinds.
“If we have just one person who moves from a home into our unit, that gives a young family the opportunity to move into that home,” Witas said. “That young family was probably in an apartment, which will open up an apartment for another family. In that one instance, you’re really housing three people or families.”
The two-building project is estimated to cost $18 million, Witas said.
BangorHousing will first construct one apartment building on land between Sunset and Texas avenues the agency already owned, Witas said. Construction on that property, which will include 50 one- and two-bedroom apartments, is expected to begin this fall and wrap up in the fall of 2025.
All of the units will be priced at 60 percent of area median income, which is set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That means the building’s 48 one-bedroom apartments will have a monthly rent of $969 and the two two-bedroom apartments will have a $1,162 monthly rent, according to Witas.
The two new apartment buildings will also have walking paths that give residents easy access to the UMaine in Augusta campus, a nearby Community Connector bus stop and businesses along Texas Avenue.