Colorado Springs church donates land to nonprofit to build apartments for low-income seniors – Colorado Springs Gazette

Churches and religious organizations entered the affordable-housing market decades ago, but with the dire shortage of low-income units in Colorado Springs, the traditional development model is morphing into a new way to meet the need.

Woodmen Valley Chapel’s community outreach program, The Center for Strategic Ministry, has donated 1 acre of land to the nonprofit Greccio Housing, said Stu Davis, president of The Center for Strategic Ministry.

The organization will build and operate an apartment complex in northeast Colorado Springs for seniors ages 62 and above.

The proposed three-story Sunrise at Shiloh Mesa, off Woodmen and Marksheffel roads, will feature 45 to 50 one- and two-bedroom units with elevators, property security and common areas.

The building will be adjacent to the church’s Woodmen Heights campus, which opened in 2005.

“This is a less common way to develop affordable housing — to work with congregations that have land,” said R. Lee Patke Jr., Greccio’s executive director.

Greccio has been providing inexpensive rentals since its 1990 founding by ex-nun Claudia Deats-Rodgers and now owns 581 units that house nearly 1,000 people. More than 75% of tenants have an income of 50% or less of the area’s median income, Patke said.

And, “We’ve got long waiting lists,” he said.

The pickier people are about location and unit size, the longer the wait, he said.

The approach Greccio has used for three decades — buying rundown motels, houses and commercial space, and rehabbing the properties for low-income renters — is tougher now, Patke said, given today’s real estate market.

“Land is a big cost, and it’s not always funded by normal funding streams,” he said. “Today, we’d be competing with for-profit developers.”

Greccio started doing projects in conjunction with churches and other faith-based organizations four years ago, he said.

“The volume and severity of the (affordable-housing) crisis seem to be much more at the tipping point than 30 years ago,” Patke said. “But for the individuals needing housing, it’s as much of a crisis today as it was 30 years ago.”

The senior complex will join a large mixed-use neighborhood on more than 110 acres of land that The Center for Strategic Ministry has owned since the early 2000s and in recent years has divested for development.

Under construction in the area are 73 acres of single-family homes, a 59-unit townhome community and 15 acres of retail, office, medical and commercial space, Davis said.

“We’re pretty eager to get out of the land development business and see this neighborhood, the Shiloh Mesa corridor, be completed,” he said.

It’s the first foray into affordable housing for Woodmen Valley Chapel, which serves about 10,000 worshippers on five campuses in Colorado Springs.

The idea came out of a brainstorming session The Center for Strategic Ministry’s board conducted to determine how they could help with affordable housing, Davis said.

“The reason that organization exists is to use the resources of the local church in creative ways to address community challenges,” he said. “We asked ourselves what role we could play and turned to Greccio Housing, a long-standing, trusted partner that knows what it’s doing.”

Church members also want to provide related support services to senior residents, perhaps meals or transportation, Davis said.

Greccio plans to apply in February for low-income housing tax credits through the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, Patke said. If approved, construction would begin shortly thereafter, with an 18-month completion schedule.

Neighborhood meetings to collect input on the project will be held beforehand, he said.

The estimated project cost hasn’t been determined, Patke said, although Greccio is building a similar apartment complex, the Atrium at Austin Bluffs, at a cost of just over $13 million.

That complex will open in October near Austin Bluffs Parkway and Templeton Gap Road and also is a collaborative effort with Rocky Mountain Land Trust and Partners in Housing. 

Greccio also is expanding a complex called Bentley Commons in southeast Colorado Springs, from 24 to 192 units. Groundbreaking is scheduled for the spring.

The organization intends to increase its inventory of low-income housing to 1,000 units over the next three years, Patke said, using funding from various sources.

“Demand is driving this,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of growth on the horizon.”