It was a joyous day for a group of Notre Dame High School alumni who attended the ground breaking ceremonies for the $7.78 million renovation of the building into a 33-unit senior housing complex in Berlin, New Hampshire.
While many individuals and agencies were acknowledged for their work to bring the project to fruition, Mayor Paul Grenier noted none were more instrumental than the Project Rescue Notre Dame group. “It was their vision,” he said.
The city formally turned the building over to Littleton-based AHEAD, (Affordable Housing Education Development), which converted it into 33 one-bedroom apartments for senior citizens. Residents must have an income level at or below 50 percent of the medium area income, which comes to a maximum annual income of about $21,000.
In December 2014, AHEAD celebrated the completion of Notre Dame Apartments, a 33-unit Senior Housing project. It culminated a decade-long community-driven effort to rehabilitate the historic Notre Dame school. The former school has been converted to 33 units of service-enriched housing for low-income seniors.
AHEAD is proud of this effort, which is important not only as a senior housing project, but also as the centerpiece to revitalizing a distressed neighborhood. A group of Notre Dame alumni formed the “Rescue Notre Dame” group in 2003 to save the building, which had been vacant for many years and suffered damage from arson.
The City of Berlin, working with the Environmental Protection Agency, spent more than $800,000 to remove hazardous materials from the site prior to the building’s restoration.
AHEAD assumed management of the project from Tri-County CAP. The project’s $7.78 million funding package includes a $1 million loan from the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority and a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant. Former housing coordinator Andre Caron oversaw the remediation of the hazardous materials in the building. This process took about five years and over $700,000 (mostly from grants). In 2012, the remediation was completed and Tri-County Community Action Program agreed to take over as developer.
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Note from Storm: My thanks to Jim Wheeler, City Manager of Berlin for bringing this great project to my attention.