Business View Magazine | February 2018

74 75 well as a way to support the city’s parallel goals of introducing a mix of attainable, affordable homeownership.The result was a plan that had three phases of rental and three or more phases of home ownership development, serving a broad range of incomes that met the public policy goals of the city.” The Lofts at Southside is the city’s newest rental community.The $21 million Phase One of the project,which has been operat- ing for three years, consists of 132 garden, townhouse, and live/work apartments, eighty of which are marketed as “affordable” to individuals whose income is 60 percent or below the Area Median Income (AMI), with the remaining fifty-two units available at unrestricted market rate rents. Phase Two, begun in June 2016, has 85 apartments, with 58 units set-aside as affordable and 27units available at market rates.“That was very important for us - a mixed-income development that was built to high qual- ity standards, but allowed for a variety of income levels,” says Bennett.“We’re at full occupancy in the First Phase and for the Second Phase of 85 units, 65 have been pre- leased and currently 23 units are occupied.” The homeownership component of the Southside Revitalization Project is called The Bungalows.“Within the large hundred- plus-acre project area, there were a lot of DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA vacant and deteriorated properties,”Bennett explains. “The city used local and federal funding, along with private debt and equity that we brought, to create a mixed-finance transaction that tried to create a market demand in the neighborhood and to begin to attract families from diverse backgrounds.”Phase One of The Bungalows has been completed with the sale and occupancy of 48 architecturally designed, energy-effi- cient, single-family houses, each situated on one-third- acre lots. The Whitted School in the Southside Revitaliza- tion Project area, built in 1922, is a county-owned building that once served as Durham’s only black high school. DrewCum- mings, Chief of Staff in the Durham CountyManager’s Office, explains the coun- ty’s role in the Whitted School’s rehabilitation and repurposing: “The County Commissioners were happy to be able to play a role in Southside’s revitalization through the preservation of a building that did have great historical significance for Durham. It was the first, and the most prominent, black school from the pre-integration period, and although it had fallen into significant disrepair, and although the renovation was quite expensive, it was a very important building to