Portsmouth developer promises 20% workforce housing at The Tour restaurant site
PORTSMOUTH — Developer Mark McNabb is proposing to add 61 apartments aimed at city workers to an existing commercial site, where the Jerry Lewis movie theaters used to be located.
Representatives from McNabb’s team, who presented their preliminary plans to the city's Planning Board late last week, confirmed 20% of the units would be rented at work-force housing rates.
The project is planned to bring housing additions to the building that houses The Tour restaurant and formerly housed Tuscan Kitchen and Market.
Tracy Kozak, the architect for the project, said the 61 rental units will feature “a variety of apartment sizes from studios all the way up to … a couple of 5-bedroom (units).”
“Most of them are two bedrooms,” she added.
The smallest unit proposed for the site is a 418-square-foot studio apartment, and the biggest one is a 1,952-square-foot five-bedroom unit, Kozak, of ARCove Architects, said.
McNabb stressed he is seeking to add the residential units in the gateway district project — where the property is located at 581 Lafayette Road — to provide much-needed housing for Portsmouth’s workers.
“I am local, I live in Portsmouth … I’m not an out-of-town developer,” McNabb said.
He is trying to develop housing at a number of properties in the city that he owns.
“I think we have a responsibility if we can to build housing when we’re local,” he said. “We have to build housing if we want to employ people and keep them."
Building housing for workers is a cycle with a history, developer says
McNabb said “history repeats itself” and companies or developers are learning they have to build housing for their workers.
“If we don’t build housing as the textile industry had to, and the oil industry and other industries 100 years ago … if we don’t do that, people have nowhere to live,” McNabb said.
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He noted too that “the smaller the units we make the more helpful it is to getting affordable rates.”
“Most of the units in this (development) are very small to keep rents down low,” he said.
Work-force housing on site
Planning Board member James Hewitt asked McNabb to confirm 20% of the apartments would rent at 60% of AMI (area median income), which is Portsmouth’s work-force housing standard.
“That is correct, we will comply with it fully, with the 20%,” the developer said, adding, “I’m going to stick my neck out a little more.”
He did not specify a rental rate for the work-force units or the market rate units.
McNabb stressed the plan is to build “small units” to try to keep the prices more affordable.
In addition, he is implementing a program where he will waive the security deposit for all of the tenants if their rent is paid through their employer.
“I hope other people will follow the lead of some of the stuff we’re doing,” McNabb said.
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Asked if the non work-force units would be market rate, McNabb replied, “I have a lot of apartments downtown right now, ….I arbitrarily set rates so much lower than market.”
“They will be market rates by definition, but I don’t go for market rates,” he said. “We have a lot of J1s, we have a lot of local people and they just can’t afford market rates.”
A J1 worker is a foreign national who comes to the U.S. to work or study.
Thai restaurant opening soon at same site
Two residential additions are being planned for either side and above what is now The Tour restaurant and indoor golf facility, Kozak said.
The new apartments will sit on top of “one level of podium parking at grade,” according to Kozak, who said “there will also be an additional underground level of parking.”
McNabb mentioned a new Thai restaurant will be moving into the existing building, and will open “any day.”
The management of Five 81° Northeast announced plans in May to open the Thai restaurant this summer.
“It’s really spectacular inside,” McNabb told the board. “It’s the same group that owns Green Elephant downtown.”
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Parking requirements met, development team says
Hewitt also questioned the amount of parking proposed for the number of units.
“I noticed you are proposing 61 apartments and providing 54 parking spaces for those apartments. Do you think that’s realistic?” he asked.
Kozak replied, “I do because a lot of these folks don’t drive. We’re next to a bus stop, they’re J1s, they’re workers, they can’t afford cars.”
“If this same project were built in Dover you’d have to have between 102 and 116 spaces,” Hewitt said.
She told the board the new proposed mixed-use development meets “the required parking on site.”
“There is a restaurant and apartments and a little bit of retail, and office space,” she said. “It all shakes out that we have provided a total including underground, in the building, and onsite of 170 parking spaces, where 170 parking spaces are required.”
McNabb noted that in addition to meeting the parking requirements, the site features something that’s “quite unique.”
“The property owners here, back when it used to be a movie theater, they have reciprocal (agreements) where you can park anywhere” on the site or next door at the adjacent Bowl-O-Rama Family Fun Center.
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City Councilor Beth Moreau, who also serves on the Planning Board, credited McNabb for “trying to get rid of actual parking lots, and adding housing.”
“I think it’s extremely creative,” she said.
The presentation by McNabb’s team to the board came during the “preliminary conceptual consultation phase” of the project.
The phase “provides the Planning Board with an opportunity to review the outlines of a proposed project before it gets to detailed design (and before the applicant refines the plan as a result of review by the Technical Advisory Committee and public comment at TAC hearings),” City Planning Manager Peter Stith said in a memo to the Planning Board.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Workforce apartments proposed at The Tour restaurant in Portsmouth NH
