The Curve rises from former mobile home park
MOORE — A nearly 50-year-old mobile home park wiped out by the May 20, 2013, tornado, in one of Moore's poorest neighborhoods, is finally being replaced with the city's first lowincome housing development.
Construction on The Curve Apartments, with 244 units, started last month at the former site of Royal Park at SW 17 and Janeway Avenue, where nearly 200mobile homes were destroyed.
The city bought the 14-acre property nearly 2½ years after the EF5 tornado flattened an estimated 1,150 homes and killed 24 people including seven children at Plaza Towers Elementary School, lessthan a half-mile northwest of Royal Park.
Financing for the $50 million apartment complex includes a $15.96 million subsidy from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery fund, and a $19 million loan from Freddie Mac, arranged by Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital LLC, the commercial and multifamily mortgage banking subsidiary of Enterprise Community Investment Inc., Columbia, Maryland.
Bellwether Enterprise said the loan, with a 15-year term and 35-year amortization, with one year of interest only, closed this week.
“The city of Moore is admirably rebuilding after such a destructive event, and Bellwether Enterprise is very proud to support the community and its residents in this process,” Bellwether Enterprise President Ned Huffman said. “We are always driven by our mission to provide flexible financing to our
clients and positively impact local communities, and when we can do this for clients who are doing great work for their community, it's a win-win.”
The Curve will have three buildings totaling 244 units — 219 affordable and 25 market-rate units — plus 4,650 square feet of commercialretail space in one of the buildings. Amenities will include green space, a business center, fitness center, swimming pool and common outdoor grilling area.
Kahley Gilbert, grants manager for the city of Moore, said Moore has some HUD Section 8 housing by voucher in different rental projects, but The Curve is its first low income housing tax credit project. Moore has no public housing or housing authority, she said.
At public hearings where some residents objected to low-income” housing replacing the mobile home park, a spokesman for TAP-architecture, which designed the master plan for The Curve, said no one would be able to tell by looking that it was low-income. BGO Architects, based in Addison, Texas, designed the apartment buildings.
“There is critical need for affordable and workforce housing across the country, and it is particularly devastating when a disaster depletes the existing housing stock,” said Jon Killough, senior vice president of Bellwether Enterprise. “It was important to our team to assist the development team and the city of Moore to finance this project, and we're thrilled to see it all in motion.”
Killough, vice president in Bellwether Enterprise's Montgomery, Alabama, office, and John Roberts, vice president in the Dallas office, arranged the loan for the borrower, The Curve Apartments LP, using Freddie Mac as the lender. The Curve Apartments LP is an asset-specific affiliate of a joint venture between Belmont Development Co. and Rise Residential Construction, with 42 Equity Partners LLC as the low-income housing tax credit investor.