plans to build a three-story, 44,010-square-foot building with 38 units<\/a> at Eighth and Walnut streets, a block south of PPL Center. It will replace a parking lot and parish house next to Life Church at 40 S. Eighth St.<\/p>\nJonathan Strauss, co-founder of Cortex, said the project will give residents a chance to live within walking distance from many downtown offerings. The private company specializes in affordable apartments financed by state and federal tax credits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen thinking about Walnut Square Apartments and thinking about the impact that this project can have and the vision that we wanted to have with this project,\u201d he said, \u201cit was important to us to basically check the boxes. We wanted to make sure that we were building in an area of need, and we wanted to make sure that it was in an area of opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what I really mean about opportunity \u2026 is an opportunity for the residents,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wanted to build an urban core that had accessibility to urban amenities like public transportation, social services, health care, so on and so forth. And most importantly jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strauss said rents will be based on the Area Median Income, an index calculated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that represents the midpoint of a region\u2019s income distribution. A one-bedroom apartment will start at $275 a month, while a three-bedroom will go for about $1,300.<\/p>\n
Broken down, Walnut Square will feature 29 one-bedroom, three two-bedroom and six three-bedroom apartments. Four units will serve households at or below 20% of AMI, with the remaining units affordable to households at or below 50%-60% AMI.<\/p>\n
Cortex will start taking applications a few months before completion, which is anticipated to be late summer 2026.<\/p>\n
The building will have a lobby, community room, and management and supportive services offices. The project is being designed to be energy efficient.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Nick Miller, D-Lehigh, said the project is an important step for the downtown and the first to feature affordable housing since the city\u2019s Neighborhood Improvement Zone was created in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen an affordable housing project since the creation of the NIZ program, and seeing a housing project like this, we\u2019re looking forward to investing in more,\u201d Miller said. \u201cQuite frankly, we\u2019ve seen the challenges across the Lehigh Valley\u2019s housing market, and it\u2019s really quite at the crisis level. A 63% increase in housing costs is not something that everybody can shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walnut Square is just outside the NIZ, but Strauss credited the projects in Allentown\u2019s unique tax subsidy zone for making it possible, and giving future residents access to amenities located there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important to us that we\u2019re building affordable housing that has proximity to resources that can promote socioeconomic growth for individuals,\u201d Strauss said. \u201cWith this project in this city, we can accomplish that. We are steps away from resources like the Social Security office, the post office, the Da Vinci Science Center and the PPL Center. There\u2019s a ton of amenities downtown that these residents will be able to have at their fingertips.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project is being financed through a $1.43 million low-income housing tax credit from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency for a 10-year period. In addition to the tax credit funding, Cortex also benefited from a $2 million grant from Allentown<\/a> and around $600,000 from Lehigh County, both from American Rescue Plan coffers.<\/p>\nAllentown-based Cortex Residential was co-founded in 2021 by Strauss, who previously worked for prominent city developer City Center Investment Corp.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllentown is home for us,\u201d Strauss said. \u201cIt\u2019s where we have our corporate office and we\u2019re really, really proud to be a part of the revitalization and redevelopment of downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a need for affordable housing in the Lehigh Valley, Wednesday\u2019s groundbreaking for the Walnut Square Apartments in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-25991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25991","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=25991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}