It was 1:11 a.m. on May 11, 2014 when a call went out to 911. A woman in Union County, Ohio’s Windsor Manor East building, alerted the emergency personnel that her couch was on fire. It quickly grew, becoming a four-alarm fire that completely ruined the three-story building that had 45 of its 47 apartments occupied at the time.
What was eventually ruled as unsafe cigarette smoking led to quite the dilemma. With the building gone, the area had less affordable housing available for low-income seniors.
“We couldn’t repair it, we needed to replace it,” said Scott Hunley of the Showe Management Corporation that worked on the project alongside the Academy Heights Construction Company and Arbor Shoreline, Inc.
After three years of applying for federal housing tax credits, and Grow America providing $6.2 million of the total $8.4 million development cost, the structure was back underway. Now, thanks to the tireless efforts of the developers and their partnership with Grow America, Windsor Manor East is back and better than before.
2020 saw the building reopen as a vital part of the Windsor Manor Senior campus, near the Windsor Senior Center in Marysville, Ohio. It is now a two-story building offering 32 units (25 one-bedroom apartments and seven two-bedroom). The project seeks to help house low income seniors specifically by providing two units at 30% AMI (Area Median Income), ten units at 50% AMI, and twenty units at 60% AMI.
The building features a new elevator, a community room, laundry and fitness facilities, and a large patio. But it has a host of new benefits within each unit as well. These include new kitchen appliances, tub/shower combinations with roll-in showers for handicapped residents, resilient surface flooring, and even emergency call buttons.
Although the Windsor Manor area tragically burned, it bounced back quickly. Following its reconstruction, the building was completely occupied within four months of opening applications for residency. “It goes to show the demand for affordable housing of this nature,” Hunley said.
From the ground
