Phillips Lytle, GPI, and Southern Tier Environments For Living representatives present final plans for Gateway Lofts to the Jamestown Planning Commission (March 18, 2025)
The Gateway Lofts Project has received site plan approval by the Jamestown Planning Commission.
The $77 million project to rehabilitate the former Chautauqua Hardware building on Water Street into 110 units of affordable housing is being done by Southern Tier Environments for Living (STEL).
STEL Director of Real Estate Development Steven Ald reassured the commission and members of the public that there will be a nearly $3 million clean up of the brownfield site and inside the former manufacturing building as part an agreement with the State Department of Environmental Conservation, “If you’re worried about children, DEC is great. They may be business unfriendly. Children are at the top of their priority. They’re not going to let us put children in this building at any kind of risk.”
Ald said the New York State Housing Finance Agency is also involved in the project and has even higher standards than the DEC, “It costs more because they have higher standards for environmental things, energy things, all kinds of extra requirements [that a] for-profit developer coming in here to build apartments wouldn’t have to do. We’re going to have to comply with what New York State Housing Finance Agency’s higher standard.”
Ald said these standards are part of why the project is so expensive.
The Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency has approved a Brownfield Revolving Loan Fund loan of $325,000 to STEL to be used to install a sub slab depressurization system at 31 Water Street. This work is required by the DEC before development can take place.
Jamestown City Council will vote on March 31 on whether to reallocate $640,000 in HOME program funds from between 2020 and 2024 to help rehabilitate Gateway Center building as part of the project as well.
Ald added that if everything moves forward as planned, full financing should be in hand by the beginning of 2026 with construction starting in the first quarter of next year.
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