EASTON, Pa. — Easton City Council introduced legislation Wednesday night increasing affordable housing requirements for developers.<\/p>\n
The changes focus on what is called “workforce housing,” which has been amended “that are affordable to households based on various income-based guidelines.” Those income-based guidelines include studio\/efficiency units should be affordable to households making no more than 75% of the median income, one-bedroom units with same criteria at 80%, two-bedroom at 90% and three or more bedrooms at 95%.<\/p>\n
This would apply to all new multifamily housing developments within the city containing 10 or more dwelling units that also utilize any form of public funding, participates in the Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance (LERTA) or other tax incentive programs.<\/p>\n
A section governing workforce housing requirements would be altered in this legislation. Currently, all developments within the city that meet the applicability standards have a minimum 10% set-aside of the total development units requirement. With the amendment, that number would increase to 25%.<\/p>\n
For example, a development with 40 studio units, 80 one-bedroom units, and 40 two-bedroom units should provide 10 studio units, 20 one-bedroom units and 10 two-bedroom units of workforce housing.<\/p>\n
With the percentage increase, the in-lieu fee option would also increase. For example, should a developer want to be a 100-unit property and designate no units as workforce, the fee would increase from $10,000 to $25,000. The in-lieu fee shall be reviewed every five years by city council.<\/p>\n
COA OK’d<\/p>\n
City council approved a certificate of appropriateness for a building featuring condominiums.<\/p>\n
The structure, known as The Lynden, calls for a seven-story structure at 101 S. Third St. featuring 73 condominiums and more than 2,540 square feet of first floor commercial and retail space. The condominiums will be comprised of 15 one-bedroom condos, 36 two-bedroom units and 22 three-bedroom units and penthouses, which have balconies. Officials with the application noted there would be a gym and bicycle room on the first floor.<\/p>\n
The proposal, offered by developer Basin Street Industrial Development LLC, also features 43 parking spaces on the first floor with an entrance on South Bank Street. The building’s south side will have stepped-back corners and balconies along Ferry Street. Floors two through six will have brick veneer in two or more colors. In addition, there will be several different configurations of large windows in the apartments.<\/p>\n
A further property inventory shows the street level will have a different wall material from above and include storefront framed glass areas typical of mixed-use buildings in Easton. The building will have a corner retail space with a corner entrance. The condo entrance will be located along South Third Street and have full glass doors and several glass side lights.<\/p>\n
There is currently a two-story building on the site that includes a Fidelity bank branch on the ground floor. That building would be razed as part of the project.<\/p>\n
City council’s approval was based on the historic district commission’s recommendations.<\/p>\n
Historic District<\/p>\n
The legislative body removed a resolution under new business involving the city’s historic district commission.<\/p>\n
The resolution supported repositioning the historic district commission as the initial review body for applications subject to HDC consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. — Easton City Council introduced legislation Wednesday night increasing affordable housing requirements for developers. The changes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,60,4958,6290],"class_list":["post-205388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-city_township_county_councils","tag-easton-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}