By Beacon Staff
The tentative plan by Transitions DMC President Craig Fenton to purchase the Lincolnville Motel and turn it into 32 apartments to house the homeless and financially disadvantaged is on hold for now.
The sale and rezoning of the motel from commercial to residential was contingent upon a National Housing Trust Fund grant to pay for most of the purchase. Fenton said he chose not to file the application for the grant due to concerns that not everything in the application was properly in place.
The plan to convert the Lincolnville emerged just a few months ago, with a total purchase and renovation cost between $2.7 million and $3 million.
Fenton is currently pursuing other, less competitive grants.
“The application is mostly complete and will work for about any grant that has similar type of reason to exist,” Fenton said. “To put together a project like this in 90 days was overly ambitious, but it was worth a shot.”
Fenton is leading a committee comprised of officials and representatives from Burlington and Des Moines County to address Burlington’s homeless population. The committee will continue to explore ideas to help house that homeless population, which could include tiny houses, a renovation project into an apartment building elsewhere, or possibly even the Lincolnville again.
Fenton said a tentative offer from Transitions DMC had been accepted to purchase the Lincolnville Motel for $575,00, but that was contingent on the grant. Fenton said the motel could still be on the market by the time another project is formed, in which case it could be an option again. But not the only option.
“The idea is not to pin everything on that one project,” Fenton said.
Whatever form the project takes on, Fenton wants to stress that the apartments or homes wouldn’t be just for the homeless. They would be for anyone living under a certain income level. Fenton said he did not communicate that information clearly enough for the Lincolnville project.
“We have more than 34 people who need that assistance. They are not all homeless. Some of them are barely hanging on. They can barely pay the taxes on their home,” he said.
Fenton’s mission to provide stable housing for the homeless hasn’t changed. It’s just going to take more time, and maybe another location.
More than a dozen residents who live around the Lincolnville spoke out against the plan to convert the motel into apartments during a zoning commission meeting on June 21. A petition against the project had garnered 115 signatures from residents and businesses in the neighborhood.
“It needs to be done the correct way, with people welcoming it into their neighborhood, rather than feeling like they’re having something shoved down their throats. That was never our intention,” Fenton said.