Warner’s planning board approved a 34-unit workforce housing project proposed off Exit 19, with some stipulations.
The board approved the project, proposed by CATCH Neighborhood Housing, in a 4-3 vote last week with conditions that include a required percentage of the ground-floor space to be dedicated to retail use and an annual recertification of tenants’ incomes, with those who make over 40% of their eligible income no longer qualifying. Other conditions entailed requiring safe salt management, documentation for de-icing and fire chief and fire marshal approval.
The project went before the planning board this June, one year after a similar project came to Warner but was rejected by the board. CATCH challenged the board’s decision in court and won — and came back with a downsized version from 48 units to 34.
Tom Furtado, president and CEO of CATCH, said he is excited for the project to be approved but said the details of the stipulations have yet to be clarified.
“I have an idea from being at the meeting, but until we get the final decision, it’s hard to say exactly what those conditions will be and how we will or will not be able to deal with them,” Furtado said in an interview.
During its Oct. 19 meeting, the board received the project’s final plans with Furtado and Alex Panagiotakos, COO and director of real estate and asset management, in attendance. Toward the start of the meeting, some board members said they believed the approval process had been stalled long enough, while others still had grievances with the proposal.
Debate initially began over the fire department’s access to the building in case of emergency. Board member John Leavitt said the Warner Fire Department had enough time to look over it.
“It seems like, to me, that people are looking for a reason to deny this application,” Leavitt said during the meeting. “In every meeting we come to, they come up with a new scenario.”
In 2022, a 24-unit workforce housing project was pitched by the site owner Comet LLC and Ranger Engineer Group, both of whom are involved in the current CATCH project. That proposal was withdrawn by the applicant in December 2022 before being formally approved.
Board member Pier D’Aprile referred back to that application process and said there are currently too many concerns with not only fire safety but with traffic as well.
“This applicant and this design is significantly different than 2022, and this is why I continue to struggle for one, can’t speak for anybody else,” he said in the meeting. “I think we’ve been too lenient with this app.”
Board Chair Karen Coyne made her first of two successful motions regarding retail space on the building’s ground floor. She drew from a state law that allows municipalities to make such an action with multi-family housing units on commercially-zoned land.
Coyne’s second motion, which also passed, concerned recertifying tenants’ income. The area median income in Merrimack County is $90,100 for a single person and $102,900 for a two-person household, Furtado said in the meeting. To qualify for a CATCH Housing unit, the applicant would need to make 50% or 60% of the median income, which is no more than $54,060.
CATCH already does an initial review and subsequent annual reviews of an applicant, Furtado said. But Coyne’s motion wanted to enforce reevaluating tenants if they made 40% above their qualifying income.
“If we’re going to have workforce housing, and it is going to be tax-deferred workforce housing, it should remain workforce housing for the tenants,” Coyne said in the meeting. “So it should not be that I can move in today, and regardless of how much money I make down the road, I can stay.”
Furtado said in the meeting that such a motion could interfere with the way CATCH receives its funding.
Panagiotakos, the COO of CATCH, said people should not be deterred from bettering themselves if they’re accepted into such housing.
“They do not want to discourage people from furthering their careers by saying, ‘I can’t work overtime because I’m going to lose my housing,'” she said in the meeting. “Could you imagine if you made $48,000 one year and qualified, and then you earned overtime and the next year you don’t have a home?”
Another motion proposed to the board would have put a moratorium on the Intervale District, the commercial zone where the project would live. The motion ultimately failed, but it theoretically would have put a temporary pause on development to allow the board time to update zoning ordinances and the town’s master plan. It also would have required a vote at a special town meeting.
The motion sparked debate over the need to update zoning laws in the wake of spurring development, with some members arguing that instituting a moratorium now could come across as reactionary to the CATCH Housing project.
Select board member Michael Smith, who sits on the planning board as a representative, said he does not have an opinion one way or another but would have liked to hear from residents first.
“I’ve seen what happens in this town; I’ve seen the mistakes that get pushed through by moving quickly,” he said in the meeting. “I don’t want that to happen again, and the rest of us pay for it.”
There are currently more permits out to the state, regarding access to roads and alteration of terrain, that they are waiting for approval on before going ahead with the project, Furtado said.
“CATCH is very excited to hopefully move ahead with a project in Warner,” he said in an interview with the Monitor. “We’ve been at the approvals for a couple of years now, and we think it’s going to be a great project, and we think it’s a great location for affordable housing.”
