Charlotte Street developer hopes to break ground next spring

Hinge Homes could break ground next spring at 125 Charlotte St. if it secures state funding to complete its land purchase from the city.

The city of Rochester chose Hinge Homes after a competitive request-for-proposals process that drew four responses. It will lead the project in partnership with the Housing Council at PathStone, development consultant Patrick Tobin LLC and CJS Architects. 

The project is scheduled to be completed in 2028, pending final approval of the sale to Hinge Neighbors next spring. The sale is contingent on funding from Homes and Community Renewal’s Block by Block program, says Shawn Dunwoody, executive director of Hinge Neighbors, a nonprofit launched in 2018 in an effort to bring community voice to development.

Hinge Homes, an offshoot of Hinge Neighbors, aims to expand affordable homeownership opportunities by constructing 11 townhomes, nine of which would feature fully accessible, ground-floor accessory dwelling units. The development is expected to house 20 families. Each home offers a stoop or porch. 

The Block by Block funding would cover $4.2 million of the project’s estimated cost of $6.85 million. Hinge Homes is securing construction loans through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, to be paid with $1.7 million in anticipated proceeds from sale of the units. Other funding will be raised with grants from the Rochester community.

Dunwoody describes the project as a natural extension of Hinge Neighbors, which he runs with Suzanne Mayer to connect and amplify residents’ voices on area development.

“Part of what Hinge has been doing has been working with neighbors on either side of the Inner Loop to create a neighborhood or a land use plan. In that, we listen to neighbors, and they stated that they wanted affordable homeownership,” says Dunwoody. 

Created in 2017 as part of the city’s Inner Loop East project, the 125 Charlotte St. parcel has always been slated for development, the city says. It was originally intended to be part of a larger mixed-use residential complex that included a parking garage. Proposals for the parcel over the years have also included a day care facility and headquarters for a local small business. 

The parcel is the only undeveloped land in the Inner Loop, which saw massive redevelopment in the early 2000s.

In September, as Dunwoody began looking for land, the city of Rochester issued a request for proposals for the parcel at 125 Charlotte St. 

In the meantime, community members in the surrounding neighborhoods used the parcel as a shared green space. Some of them protested plans to develop the land, arguing that it serves as the area’s only green space and should instead be turned into a public park.

Keep East End Green, a group of those opposed to the development, contest Hinge Homes’ claim that its project will retain 40% of the parcel as green space. They support more affordable housing in the area, but not at the cost of green space.

“Healing Inner Loop damage means building back thoughtfully—not repeating the same mistake of sacrificing green space for development,” the group says. 

The nearest public spaces to 125 Charlotte St. are Anderson Park, about a quarter mile away,  and Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial park, roughly a half a mile from the parcel. 

Dunwoody says that opposition to the project stemmed from a lack of understanding. The Hinge proposal includes publicly accessible green space along Pitkin Street, nine parking spaces, and additional green space at the center of the property, city documents state. 

“There was some initial pushback because people didn’t know what was going to be developed,” he says. “So once they heard it was going to be developed, they said, ‘No, let’s keep this green space,’ even though community members were told it was always going to be developed.”

Dunwoody says it has been an uphill battle with residents opposed to the development, noting that Hinge Neighbors is not a large developer but a nonprofit that works with the community.

Despite pressure from some neighborhood residents, on April 21, City Council approved the sale of 125 Charlotte St. to Hinge for $150,000 in a 7-2 vote, with Councilmembers Mary Lupien and Stanley Martin voting against. Dunwoody says Hinge met with each councilmember to explain the project’s goals.

“I think what happened was they adopted the ‘no development’ before they knew what we were developing,” he says. 

The Block by Block program offers nonprofit developers subsidies for small, concentrated new-construction infill projects of one- and two-family homes in Rochester, Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Syracuse, with the intention of easing the state’s housing crisis. A developer can receive up to $300,000 in subsidy for the construction of a single-family home and $400,000 for a two-family home.

Recipients of Block by Block funding are required to have experience in affordable housing development and in guiding first-time buyers, earning up to 60% of the area median income, through the home-buying process. Dunwoody hopes to meet these requirements with the help of his project partners.

Hinge’s partners include Craig Jensen, an architect with CJS Architects; Patrick Tobin, an affordable housing developer; and real estate developers Mary Tilton and Amy Hecker.

“Hinge (doesn’t) have experience in development, but we have experience in community development, (the) outreach and marketing portions of that. So, our mission was to assemble (an experienced) team that could actually support what we’ve always been driven to do,” Dunwoody says.

The project also is pursuing funding from other sources, including bank loans and grants. Dunwoody has spoken with LISC New York, a nonprofit that works with state and local partners on sustainable community development projects, regarding pre-construction and construction loans for the project.

Dunwoody discussed Hinge Homes’ role in reversing the impact of redlining and in diversifying the neighborhood economically and socially. Prior to the revitalization work of the early 2000s, the neighborhood around the 125 Charlotte St. parcel saw little economic or housing development—a legacy of discriminatory practices that had long denied credit and insurance to people of color.

“This becomes a green lining project. One of the key things creating a neighborhood is you’re going to have a diversity of homeownership,” says Dunwoody. “They’ll have the townhomes diagonally right across the street (that) are $500,000, $550,000, $600,000. So now you’re going to have this diversity of income (in) homeownership, which is key.”

“The reason we chose this location for the prototype is (because) building affordable housing outside of poverty-stricken neighborhoods (with) the chance of creating wealth generation for those who have missed out is possible,” adds Suzanne Mayer, Dunwoody’s partner in Hinge. 

“Black and brown long-term homeowners in Rochester are often economically stuck, not just rooted. They own homes that don’t build equity, so moving up or out is harder. So, we are hoping to break that cycle in Rochester,” she notes. 

Dunwoody says the Charlotte Street project is just a first step for Hinge.

“How do we scale up to do larger projects?” he says. “How do we create affordable housing within the Marketview Heights neighborhood?”

He hopes this development project will serve as a prototype.

David Wazana is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort. 

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