Banglatown school redevelopment includes affordable housing, blight plan

Earlier this spring, the city released an RFP to repurpose a vacant Catholic School at the Detroit-Hamtramck border. The city recently announced a developer and plans that will help improve the neighborhood.

Ethos Development Partners and Building Blocks Nonprofit Housing Corporation will lead the $6.4 million project, which will transform the school into a 23-unit apartment building with one and two-bedroom units. The developers will also build a third floor onto the two-story school. All units will be affordable housing at 60 percent of the area median income.

Ethos and Building Blocks will acquire the building from the Archdiocese later this year.

The plan also calls for the demolition of 18 vacant homes near the school, which will help with health and safety in the area and open up the possibility for future redevelopment.

Ethos and Building Blocks will also organize resource fairs to connect community members to programs and services like the city’s 0% Interest Home Repair Loan program and the Detroit Land Bank Authority’s Side Lot Program.

Principals from Ethos Development Partners led the $50 million rehab of the Bell Building on Oakman Boulevard, which now provides 155 units of Permanent Supportive Housing for formerly homeless individuals and serves as the new corporate headquarters for the Neighborhood Service Organization.

The Transfiguration School is located near Mound Road at Luce Avenue. The project will be funded through HOME funds, historic tax credits, and low-income tax credits. Construction should start by fall 2018, with a projected completion in late 2019.