Work is set to begin this week on the first new multi-family housing project on the Lake Champlain Islands in more than 15 years.
South Hero’s Bayview Crossing will have 30 mixed-income apartments for people ages 55 and older. Most units will have one bedroom, and some will have two.
The 33,600-square-foot facility will be owned by Cathedral Square, a South Burlington-based developer that operates more than two-dozen senior living communities.
“It’s a proud moment for the Islands,” said Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle.
There has been a push to build new senior housing in Grand Isle County since at least the early 2000s, said Robin Way, the executive director of Champlain Islanders Developing Essential Resources, a South Hero-based nonprofit.
Better known by its acronym, C.I.D.E.R., the group provides transportation for seniors and people with disabilities as well as meal delivery and social opportunities.
The organization will also have an office in the new building.
Way said when C.I.D.E.R. was created in 1993, the Islands did not have a large enough population to justify building additional senior housing. Locals decided that resources would be better spent improving the ways people already lived.
But that’s changed as the number of people living there has grown. Since 1990, U.S. Census data shows the local population has increased about 37%.
Grand Isle is also Vermont’s second-oldest county, according to census data.
There are few options for senior housing on the Islands, Way said. Local seniors who need assisted living often need to move off-island to Franklin or Chittenden counties, or to New York State.
“People don’t want to leave,” he said. “There’s a real sense of place here.”
Access to affordable housing is also a challenge, Way said, in part because there are so many second homes on the Islands.
Six units in Bayview Crossing will have project-based rental assistance and be available to households making between 30% and 50% of the area median income.
Four units will be rented to people making 50% of the median income, and 14 will be for those making 60% of the median income. The other six will be available to households making between 60% and 100% of the median income.
The area median income for a single person living in the Burlington metropolitan statistical area, which includes South Hero, is $67,200.
Rent at Bayview Crossing will include utilities, laundry and access to social services.
A community project
One challenge planners faced was finding a site that could accommodate a large septic system, Way said. South Hero does not have a municipal sewer, and he said the Islands’ bedrock makes it difficult to install septic tanks in many places.
The building will be located off Route 2 in the town’s village, near the Champlain Islands Health Center and Worthen Library.
“There’s just a great little hub of community activity,” said Cindy Reid, Cathedral Square’s director of development, of the site. “It’s all walkable.”
The project required construction of a new water line, because an existing 2-inch pipe could not support new housing units and the planned fire sprinkler system.
Reid said a new, 6-inch line from South Street to the Bayview Crossing site should be completed next week. Work was funded by federal and state grants.
“It’s going to help serve other, current users,” she said of the new line, “as well as provide infrastructure to help incentive other development.”
Way said the entire project should be completed around September 2022. More than 60 people have so far put their names on an “interest list” for the housing, he said.
Sometime next spring or early summer, there will be a meeting with everyone on the list to discuss further details about the units and the application process.
The C.I.D.E.R. director said he’s excited for construction to get underway. When he looks back, he realizes the new housing can’t come online soon enough.
There’s a slideshow on his computer of pictures from the two decades he has worked with the organization. Some include people who have since died.
“People,” he continued, “who sure could have stayed longer — and safer — in the Islands if this had happened 10 years ago.”
