The Frankfort Community Care Home, a business partner with Marshall County Partnership 4 Growth, had a vision to expand their non-profit through providing needed independent living senior duplex housing. The plans for the Frankfort Community Cottages were drawn up, but then came to a stand-still for nearly two years. The land across from the Frankfort Community Care Home and situated next to the Nutrition Center needed infrastructure first. The cost would be about $300,000 and neither the city of Frankfort, nor the Care Home could afford it.
Laura O’Neil, Administrator of the Frankfort Community Care Home, shared this with issue with Ellen Barber, Director of Marshall County Partnership 4 Growth. Jarrod Smith of JD Construction, a partner investor of the group, was also the developer and could not move forward with the build. So, Barber found the Moderate Income Housing Grant that would provide infrastructure as long as it was connected to housing, and presented it to her Board. They approved Barber and Smith to advocate with their investor partner, the City of Frankfort. After Barber and Smith presented the details of the grant to the city council last August, the council agreed unanimously to be the pass-through for the grant monies for the needed infrastructure. The Partnership would handle the coordination, writing and reporting of the grant with O’Neil and JD Construction.
Barber says, “The grant required proof of need, and O’Neil did an outstanding job of documenting the need for housing in Frankfort. There were numerous letters from employees who verified that they couldn’t live in the community near work due to lack of housing. There were statements from many older residents in town stating their housing had become unsafe for them and they needed senior-adapted housing. There were letters of support from city officials, the Frankfort Area News, and many residents.”
Other verification included the number of jobs available, but not filled due to lack of housing. This was documented by three local housing studies that Barber pulled from to show the lack of housing affected local employment. She explained that with eight new homes for seniors, eight homes in the community would open up for needed local use. JD Construction’s James Kroeger provided the number of jobs the build would create and provided the estimates of the build.
The KS Housing Corp recognized the Frankfort area housing need, and awarded the full amount of $300,000 exclusive to infrastructure in late November. Barber states, “We are really pleased to see that this million dollar project that was on hold, can now move forward. This is how we envisioned the Marshall County Partnership 4 Growth to work. The partners of our organization, public and private, all worked together to pull this off for the community of Frankfort, and now a new senior community is in the works to start in the spring of 2018. You can’t get better than that!”
FCH also received a $7500 grant from USDA for remodeling on the Nutrition Site located next to our Frankfort Community Cottages location. Work as already started on this site.
Congrats to Laura and everyone working on this important expansion!
