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NuRock advances affordable housing development in Hollywood
Developer won $640K in a city loan, over a competing bid by Housing Trust Group
NuRock Companies is moving forward with its proposed affordable housing development in Hollywood with 134 apartments for low-income tenants.
The Hollywood City Commission voted Wednesday to lend $640,000 to NuRock in support of the developer’s application to Florida Housing Finance Corporation for federal low-income housing tax credits to finance the development. The total cost to develop the project, called Residences at Beverly Park, is $40 million, according to city staff.
The city loan has a 20-year term and an interest rate pegged to the Federal Funds Rate, the interest rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans, now about 3.8 percent.
The commission chose to support NuRock’s project on State Road 7 in west Hollywood instead of a competing 100-unit apartment development for low-income senior citizens that Housing Trust Group (HTG) wants to build in downtown Hollywood.
HTG plans to build a seniors-only affordable housing project called Paramount Place at 826 South Dixie Highway. An auto repair shop and a bar now occupy the 0.8-acre site at the corner of South Dixie Highway and Washington Street.
To finance their Hollywood projects, both Alpharetta, Georgia-based NuRock and Miami-based HTG responded to a request for applications from Florida Housing Finance for federal 9 percent low-income housing tax credits. The rules of the process required the city of Hollywood to commit at least $640,000 (the minimum amount the state agency defines as ”local support”) for either the NuRock development or the HTG development.
Several city commissioners said Wednesday that real estate development has been robust in downtown Hollywood, but sparse on the west side of the city in the State Road 7 corridor.
“HTG has put some beautiful projects in the RAC here,” said commissioner Idelma Quintana, referring to the Regional Activity Center zoning that covers much of downtown Hollywood. “As I look at State Road 7, there are many empty lots that have not received that same level of attention.”
NuRock plans to rent one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments at Residences at Beverly Park to tenants with 28 percent to 60 percent of the area’s median household income, which is about $54,000 a year in Hollywood, according to U.S. Census data.
According to city staff, NuRock has a contract to buy the 1.8-acre development site at 6015 Washington Street, now occupied by a vacant surface parking lot and a 28-year-old, two-story office building that includes a Wells Fargo branch. A price has not been disclosed.
The owner, FSADEC FL Holding LLC, bought the site in May 2021 for $2 million, according to county property records.
“The existing bank and office building will be preserved and integrated into the site with the new multifamily residential building,” according to a Nov. 7 letter to Hollywood City Manager Wazir Ismael from Paul Greilich, development and acquisitions manager of NuRock.
The 11-story apartment building at Residences at Beverly Park is designed to wrap around a new four-story parking garage, and it would include such common area amenities as a library, clubhouse, and community room.
At the commission meeting Wednesday, Greilich said NuRock will reserve seven of the 134 apartments at Residences at Beverly Park as permanent housing for tenants who previously were homeless.
NuRock’s Residences at Beverly Park will be about a mile south of another affordable apartment development on the southwest corner of Johnson Street and State Road, an arterial thoroughfare also known as U.S. 441. Pinnacle 441, an eight-story, 113-unit development by Miami-based Pinnacle Housing Group, is under construction.
HTG has been active in affordable housing development in Hollywood. The developer recently won conditional approval for a design and site plan for University Station, an eight-story, 216-unit affordable apartment project near a possible train station site along the FEC railroad.
HTG previously built an affordable housing development in Hollywood called Hudson Village, an eight-story, 96-unit building at 901 South Federal Highway.