Ground has been broken on Project T, a housing development planned at the site of the former Mercy Hospital in Benton Harbor.
Speaking at Tuesday’s celebration, Harbor Habitat’s Erin Hudson said it took a community-wide partnership to make the project possible. She told us it all started out as a wild idea, to create affordable housing at the very site where many Benton Harbor residents were born. Nearly a decade later, she said to see construction start didn’t feel real.
“To see something that started off as an idea, as a dream, as something on a sketch pad, and then to now see them actually moving dirt and putting in the foundations that are going to literally change the trajectory of 28 families’ lives is quite humbling,” Hudson said.
Phase One of Project T will include 14 duplexes, or 28 homes for sale. The $8.8 million effort received support in the form of $2.5 million from the state and private backers. Hudson said it’s those funding challenges that required changing the plan many times, and Benton Harbor city leaders always remained on board.
Mayor Marcus Muhammad told us this is a great achievement for the city.
“All of the obstacles, which there were many, there were a lot of challenges,” Muhammad said. “And we had to use every incentive. From the state of Michigan, we had to use the brownfield. We had to stretch in some cases where we didn’t think we could go anymore.”
Hudson said her development partner, Renovare, helped push Project T over the finish line.
Phase One is expected to be finished next summer. Phase Two will include a four-story apartment building with 39 residential units and commercial space on the ground level. Phase Three would be five duplexes for Habitat families.
A visible and vocal symbol of the future building on the past at today’s ceremony was former Mayor Emma Hull, who spoke about giving birth to her first child at Mercy Hospital decades ago, then working recently as the Chair of the City’s Brownfield Committee to win approval for the Project T development plan.
