News

Developer seeks OK for four-story, 60-unit senior housing project in city

By Lightning Reports, Published: February 19, 2022

Hendersonville could get 60 senior apartments on Sixth Avenue at Oak Street if the City Council OKs a rezoning change by an Ohio developer of tax-credit projects.

Columbus, Ohio-based Woda Cooper Companies plans to combine six lots across from the Pardee campus and YMCA for the four-story 63,360-square-foot building on a 1.6-acre piece of land. City planners will host a Neighborhood Compatibility Meeting on the project at 2 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28, in the City Operations Center Assembly Room, 305 Williams St.

"We've been wanting to be kind of in the Asheville MSA for a while," Clay Cooper, of the Woda Cooper Companies, said Friday. "We thought given the real estate that a senior property was probably the better option." He said there are no occupied structures on the property.

Wodo designs, builds and manages the tax-credit developments that it owns. "We're not there to build it and flip it," he said.

The company owns and manages 300 properties across 16 states including several in North Carolina.

The proposed senior apartments on Sixth Avenue West is the third affordable housing project in the city that is seeking the OK to qualify for tax-credit financing. Tax-credit developments for either seniors or working families require rents to be below market rates, serving people and families with an income of around 80 percent of the county's average.

The Housing Assistance Corp. has filed a rezoning request to allow 60 apartments and 20 single-family homes on 19 acres at 780 Sugarloaf Road and 524 E. Prince Road.

Stephen Drake of WDT Development filed an amended rezoning request that would change a previously approved development at 2620 Chimney Rock Road. The new applications seeks a rezoning to permit a four-story, 90,073-square-foot apartment building with 78 units on approximately 4.64 acres.