State doubles grant funding for Sharon affordable housing project

SHARON — The Sharon Housing Trust announced on April 28 that a previous grant from the Connecticut Department of Housing of $1 million had been doubled, enabling the Trust to pursue its plan to develop a four-building, 10-unit affordable rental campus on North Main Street.

The group plans to use the funds for beautification and repair projects on the six occupied affordable rental apartments at 91, 93 and 95 North Main Street, which it bought in 2023, and unify those buildings with the currently unoccupied former town community center building next door as a cohesive affordable housing development.

While the Trust does not own the community center, it has an option to lease the building from the town at a rate of $1 per year for 99 years, which it plans to pursue after the closing of the grant that is anticipated to occur on June 30.

The exterior of the building will remain largely unchanged, but the interior will be redeveloped for the construction of four additional apartments.

A preliminary proposal for the project was received positively by the Planning and Zoning Commission, though the Trust must apply for official approval for its completed site plans for the whole development and renovated floor plan for the community center building before it can begin construction.

Landscape designer and Sharon resident Lynden Miller, who is known for the restoration of Central Park’s Conservatory Garden among other accomplishments, has donated a landscape design for the proposed campus.

Trust President Richard Baumann said that the project’s aesthetic presence is important: “Our goal is to make it not only good affordable housing, but a nice little showpiece that the town can be proud of right there on the main drag.”

Baumann said that the new funds have made the vision possible since an earlier grant application, submitted by the town for federal money to finance the renovation of the community center, was denied earlier this year due to the program being oversubscribed. The Trust’s own application to the DOH had already been approved, but the state responded favorably when the Trust re-petitioned with a proposal for the development in its entirety. The DOH approved the amended application, granting the Trust the total amount it had initially sought from both applications.

Baumann felt the project will offer some relief to a town where the definition of an affordable housing demographic is rapidly expanding.

“People are worried about trades people or folks who run the cash registers, but I think it goes higher and broader than that,” Baumann said. “Our need is acute.”