Holder: Housing project planned

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LUMBERTON — A $9.5 million senior/public housing project is expected to be under way within the next month in the northwest section of town.

Mayor Miriam Holder said Tuesday the city had been notified that the funding for a 48-unit, gated development to be named Azalea Gardens was to be made available within the next “two to three weeks.”

Holder said once the funding from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development clears, construction of the two-story facility could be completed in as little as four months.

“That’s what they said,” Holder said. “Everything is in place and ready to go.”

The development will be built on about 3.5 acres of property on Camp Avenue, across the street from the Rogers Childcare and Learning Center. It will replace about 40 public housing units at what Holder called the “Old Turnkey Old Folks Projects,” which had been torn down.

“It’s a pretty good deal, and it’s just so good to see things moving along,” Ward 4 Alderman Timothy Johnson said. “It’s going to help out a lot, and with the construction, it might mean jobs, hopefully, for some of our people.”

Azalea Gardens will be a “mixed financial senior housing development,” Holder said, featuring 25 senior units as well as 23 public housing units.

“That’s where the mixed financial comes in,” Holder said.

The development, with an estimated cost of $9,545,386, will feature a 1,500-square-foot clubhouse, which will include a community room, media room, business center and leasing office, Holder said.

“It’s going to be more a protected area and be gated so people can’t just run up in there,” Holder said.

The project is being overseen by the Mississippi Regional Housing Authority VIII, the same agency that provided oversight on the recently-completed, $2.1 million renovation of the 48-unit Frank Lee Homes public housing development about a half mile off Myrick Avenue.

Holder said Azalea Gardens had been in the works for almost the past eight years.

“This was started under the former administration, when I first took office (as alderwoman at-large),” Holder said. “We’ve been working on this for a long time.”

Holder said the wait will be worth it.

“Very much so,” she said. “We really didn’t have a place for our senior citizens, and now we will.”

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