Lewiston's Tree Streets plan expected to leverage $100M in development

old triple decker housing lines a street with a large gothic church on a hill bheind

Photo / Maureen Milliken Lewiston's Tree Streets neighborhood, a working-class area for more than a century, will get a transformational makeover with a $30 million federal grant that is expected to leverage $100 million in other development money.

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By Maureen Milliken

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Three years ago, as the city of Lewiston embarked on an ambitious process that officials hoped would result in a $30 million federal grant, researchers talked to a focus group from the Maple Knoll Apartments.

The apartments, owned by the Lewiston Housing Authority, were 41 walk-up units in a four-story building that covered a city block. Built in the 1890s as two buildings, they were connected and renovated in the 1970s. By 2018 they were considered distressed, in such bad shape they couldn't be rehabbed.

Members of the focus group, which comprised more than half of the building's households, told the researchers that living there "was just one step up from homelessness."

"They would live anywhere else if they could get in or afford it," the study said.

While Lewiston has had a surge of downtown development in the past few years, including a variety of workforce and market-rate housing, that resurgence hasn't reached into the nearby streets that are home to some of Maine's most distressed housing stock and poorest residents.

Only 253 new units have been built in the 28-block Tree Streets neighborhood since 1990. At that rate of nine units a year, it would take 240 years to build what the neighbhood needs and what a "healthy urban" neighbhorhood produces in 50, according to the study "Growing Our Tree Streets."

Housing is only a part of it, but it's the first part, city, housing and health officials say. With that in mind, the city, as well as residents of the neighborhood, three years ago focused on a possible solution — a federal Choice Neighborhoods Implentation Grant that could support the nearly impossible task of replacing the area's lead-contaminated crumbling housing.

An initial $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2018 paid for research and community engagement, resulting in the 250-page study, an analysis that showed just what the problems were and how the money would be used. That study was the basis for the grant application.

Despite the odds — the $30 million grant has never been awarded to a city as small as Lewiston — the grant was awarded to the Maine city last week. Other finalists were Cleveland, Detroit, Camden, N.J., and Fort Myers, Fla.

While "transformational" can be overused, this is one case in which it may be an understatement. Over the next few years, 185 new housing units will be built in one of the state's poorest neighborhoods. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The plan involves replacing or rehabilitating nearly 1,500 lead-contaminated distressed and aging housing, catalyzing private development and finding ways to improve the health, opportunities and lives of the neighborhood's residents, more than half of whom live below the poverty level.

an old wooden apartment building with a big tree in front

Courtesy / Growing Our Tree Streets plan

Lewiston Housing Authority's Maple Knoll Apartments will come down once new housing is built, after the city got a $30 million federal Choice Neighborhoods grant.

Leveraging $100 million

"That $30 million sounds like a lot, but that's not what's building this," said Chris Kilmurry, executive director of the Lewiston Housing Authority. "We're going to be leveraging this to $100 million using tax credits and other sources." And that doesn't include expected private investment catalyzed by the work.

The "housing first" focus of the project will lead to its other goals, said Misty Parker, Lewiston's economic development manager. The plan follows the EmPath model of economic mobility, which sets a variety of standards, from housing to focusing on their well-being, for moving people out of poverty.

The city expects the process to spread beyond the 1.5-square-mile Tree Streets section. If the model shows the same success it has in other cities, parker, said, "we plan to keep it around."

The initial goal of the plan is for a new 66-unit residential building on Pine Street between Bates and Park streets that now has a parking lot, an empty building and another underused office building. Once that's accomplished, the housing authority's 41-unit Maple Knoll Apartments will come down.

The grant calls for 70% to go to housing, 15% for the well-being of the residents and 15% to beautification. The nonhousing parts range from things like creating safer routes for kids to walk to school, mentoring and support for job and education opportunities for residents of all ages, planting trees, fixing up parks, finding ways to ease racial tension, and also letting the rest of Maine know that the heart of residential downtown Lewiston has something to offer.

City Economic Development Director Lincoln Jeffers said that hundreds of residents took part in the work that lead to getting the grant.

"It's not about City Hall saying 'here's how to fix your neighborhood,' it's about the citizens envisioning what kind of neighborhood they want to have."

a rendering of a three story apartment building

Courtesy / Avesta

A rendering of Gauvreau Place, a 35-unit mixed-income apartment building Avesta is developming at 111 Blake St., Lewiston.

Avesta, other developers, on board

Parker and Kilmurry said that the city's work, which will be done by Avesta Housing, is expected to encourage other developers to undertake projects in the neighbhorhood.

Avesta was on board early, since they city had to show it had a willing developer on board as part of the application.

But the Portland-based nonprofit is also on board in actions. Avesta has already started its own project up Pine Street from where the first Choice project will begin.

"They saw the work that was happening and really wanted to do a project in Lewiston that complemented the redevelopment work," Parker said.

Avesta's Gauvreau Place, a four-story 35-unit mixed-income building is in the early stages. It will be owned by Community Concepts, a Lewiston nonprofit development association, and managed by Avesta.

The building at 111 Blake, near the corner of Pine, is being built on a site where two apartment buildings burned down in 2013.

“We are thrilled to be part of the incredible collaboration and vision for the Tree Streets Neighborhood and we look forward to assisting in the development of much-needed new affordable housing," Dana Totman, president and CEO of Avesta told Mainebiz.

The infill site holds great potential for the neighborhood, Avesta said in a news release about the project when it was first announced. "By partnering with Community Concepts and working closely with the city and other neighborhood groups to understand the vision for this neighborhood, Avesta is leveraging its experience as a developer to meet the needs and priorities of those who live and work in this neighborhood," the release said.

Parker said other private developers have also acquired property in the area. "We're seeing some of the strategic investment just starting to happen," she said.

She said other partners, like Raise-Op Housing cooperative, have made commitments for new investment. "While it hasn't been too too many so far, we're hopeful that these high-quality developers will continue to make plans to invest in this neighborhood."

a multi-colored map showing housing conditions in Lewiston's tree steets neighborhood with the majority of the housing in fair, distressed or failing condition

Courtesy / Growing Our Tree Streets plan

An image from Lewiston's Growing Our Tree Streets plan shows the condition of housing, much of it more than a century old, in the Tree Streets neighborhood.

Distressed Tree Streets housing to be replaced

Plans for the Choice program are to replace 92 "severely distressed" public and assisted housing units and also undertake "the systematic, block-by-block replacement of the century-old, obsolete, lead-poisoned tenements that now dominate the Tree Streets housing market," which includes more than 1,500 units, the plan says.

"In their place will be modern, safe, amenity-rich, and highly energy-efficient residences that a diversity of current and future residents can call home."

The team behind the grant has assembled 18 parcels of vacant land and structures in three neighborhood gateway locations to be used for replacement housing. Of the 185 new multifamily units, 92 will replace distressed housing, 38 workforce units will be built using low income housing tax credits and 55 units will be unrestricted.

In general, the sites targeted by the grant represent 100% of the family housing downtown controlled by the Lewiston Housing Authority. Two-thirds was built in the 1880s through 1920s as wood-frame mill-worker apartments, and all are severely distressed. Besides Maple Knoll, it includes:

Lafayette Park, a 30-unit public housing development with one to three-bedroom units in five two-story buildings constructed in 1982 on a 2.5-acre lot.
Tree Streets scattered sites, 21 public housing units in six buildings in the neighborhood between Maple Knoll and Lafayette Park. All of the buildings were constructed between the 1880s to 1920s and rehabbed for low-income housing in 1985.

The city has a five-year window to use the grant money, and Kilmurry said the projects will probably take most of that time, with the preliminary work that comes before construction, including getting it approved for low-income tax credits from MaineHousing.

The program connected with residents when the study began, and mentoring programs will include help with challenges related to moving from the old housing into the new.

Parker said that the infrastructure will have to be upgraded as well. "If we have this high-quality housing that's been added to the neighborhood, we want to make sure that the surrounding area is high quality as well."

The challenges can seem daunting, but those behind the Choice program say Lewiston, and the Tree Streets neighborhood, is more than those challenges, both the real ones and the perceived ones.

"My impression has always been that folks in Lewiston are not afraid of hard work," Parker said. "And they also understand that in order to do the work that they want to do, they have to do it together."