Each partner involved in rehabilitation of the MI College Apartment Complex in north Holly Springs had words of praise for the project and developers – the Wishcamper Companies & Rocky Mountain Development Group.

The physical rehabilitation of the apartment complex was celebrated at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday, Nov. 18, and the complex was renamed Spring Gardens Apartments.

The physical rehabilitation is the first step and the next step will be the transformation of the community, said Rick Wishcamper, president of Rocky Mountain Development Group. Wishcamper Companies and Rocky Mountain Development Group jointly own the property. The companies are privately owned.

“It is an amazing project – the culmination of a lot of work with many partners to make this happen,” Wishcamper said. “We are now the proud owner of this project.”

Before the apartments were rebuilt and the sewer lines replaced, 60 of the 100 units were boarded up, the sewer was backed up, and hazardous material used in the construction had to be removed.

“Quite simply, it was a very difficult place to live and the people who lived here suffered,” he said.

The property underwent a $6 million transformation, he said. Transformation of the community is the next step and will include a mentoring program for children ages 12 and 13, community gardens, and other programs to improve the lives of those who live in the apartments. The apartments have nice, safe playground equipment for children, a community center, and on-site security and oversight.

All units are currently occupied in the renovated complex, said Jason Spellings with Wishcamper Companies in Jackson. And there is a waiting list.

Mayor Andre’ DeBerry was pleased to see a dream come true and the fact that the apartments were rehabilitated a month earlier than deadline. He revealed how the project was dreamed forward locally.

“I was campaigning for my third term as mayor and walked through the complex,” he said. “I wept in the car when I left here on my way back home. I felt this should not be. How could we allow people in 2009 to live in deplorable conditions?”

By Chance, Rick Wishcamper and Jason Spellings were at Rust College discussing other projects and the mayor offered them a tour of the apartments – a drive-through, Spellings said.

“A few weeks later, the process began,” the mayor said. “This project moved with lightning speed. The Mississippi Development Authority and Housing and Urban Development and Wishcamper went to work. This is more than a physical project; this is intervention.”

Managers with Patton and Taylor Construction praised the City of Holly Springs for helping move the project along – the public works director, Holly Springs Utility Department, the fire chief and police chief.

Maury McPhillips with the Mississippi Development Authority, said the project was unusual in how partners collaborated. He introduced four residents who have lived in the apartments since they were built in 1972 – Clemmie McFadden, Patricia Hannah, Joyce Crain and Larry Boxley.

Hannah said she raised two children in the apartment complex – experienced hard times and bad times.

“But it’s been good,” she said. “I’m still here. In the beginning it was really nice and now it’s nice again.”

Crain, who started out in Apartment #1, said the apartments were beautiful when first built.

“It feels real good. I love the showers,” she said. “God couldn’t have done any better.”

Wishcamper recognized “Clencie Cotton with Rust College for planting the seed with the mayor” and the college and Bryan Shumway, “who got us up here.”

Shumway is vice president of Wishcamper Companies.

In explaining the partnership, Spellings said the Mississippi Development Authority provided a long-term, interest-free loan to the developer and that the city is the fiduciary agent. The property manager, Tesco Properties of Memphis, was already managing the property as a favor to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and will remain as property.

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Rocky Mountain Development Group founding partners Rick Wishcamper and Justin Metcalf introduced themselves to the city of Missoula when they purchased the Wilma Building in a high-profile deal in 2007.

The pair started their company in Missoula and initially focused on traditional development, creating condominiums and buildings. In between other projects, RMDG worked to rehab portions of the Wilma and slowly sold sections – mostly condos on the upper floors – to an association of owners. A project this summer restored, replaced or replicated portions of the downtown landmark’s intricate outside cornice.

But that was the group’s last bit of work on the Wilma. In fact, the Wilma may be the group’s final traditional development project. Wishcamper and Metcalf announced at the end of September they’re putting the Wilma Theatre up for sale. If it’s sold, the only remaining piece of the building belonging to RMDG will be its offices on the Caras Park level.

Wishcamper and Metcalf, along with vice president Mike Bouchee, have shifted RMDG’s focus exclusively to acquiring and rehabilitating affordable housing communities. In the past two years, the group has bought more than 2,300 units of affordable housing across the country. The company also bought property in Hellgate Canyon on the site of the old Missoula Athletic Club, where one of its new projects is under way.

It was a change precipitated in part by recession and in part because the returns are high and the inventory is readily available. But it’s based, too, the trio says, on a broader desire to create a better quality of life for those who depend on affordable housing. RMDG aims to build up community assets that serve and reward everyone, from investors to tenants.

“In a lot of communities, affordable housing is a pejorative label for bad neighborhoods,” RMDG president Wishcamper said. “Affordable housing done right doesn’t recreate the history that led to the stereotype and prejudice. It’s creating communities that serve all stakeholders.”

If that sounds like a sort of good-development evangelism, it is.

Take the 100-unit Mississippi Industrial College Homes Apartments complex in rural Holly Springs, Miss.

Holly Springs Mayor Andre De’Berry said the rat- and roach-infested complex had a 30 percent occupancy rate when Rocky Mountain Development Group bought it more than a year ago. A portion of one building had burned, leaving a gaping hole in the roof. Tenants were unemployed, single mothers struggling to get by.

“People literally were living in homes where the window casings were leaving the structure itself. You can imagine trying to heat something like that. Or even to cool it,” De’Berry said.

Wishcamper, who is in charge of the Holly Springs project and travels there monthly as the project progresses, said the kids living there were embarrassed to call it home.

When the economy turned on its head, RMDG was fortunate to have been holding only a small number of properties, Wishcamper said. What it did have was an expanding expertise in navigating the complicated world of low-income housing tax credits and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations. The company also had strong ties to national brokers. Wishcamper’s father, in fact, is a longtime developer, and has offered his advice and an occasional partnership with his own firm, Wishcamper Companies Inc.

Furthering the push into the specialized sector was the fact that there is a large surplus of affordable housing complexes in need of renovation. As interest rates dropped and buyers left the market, RMDG found it could buy existing complexes inexpensively, creating the chance to produce both big returns and better housing.

“I think that for all of us there was a period where operating the Wilma was really sexy, new, fast-paced. But to keep the doors open we had to get into real estate,” Wishcamper said.

*****

Rocky Mountain Development designed two primary lines of affordable housing business strategies: Metcalf specializes in straight acquisitions, the purchase of complexes that still have useful life and require less investment up front. Those deals are mainly financed by private investors and government-backed loans.

Wishcamper and Bouchee work on tax-credit acquisitions, which often rely on one-time funding streams such as stimulus program money and tax credits. These projects often involve dilapidated complexes like the one in Holly Springs.

RMDG purchased the foreclosed Holly Springs property from the Mississippi Development Authority for $1 – “We overpaid,” Metcalf said – after the city decided it wanted to work with RMDG to renovate the complex. A $5.4 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Neighborhood Stabilization Project grant was awarded to the project and RMDG added about another $1 million.

Work is now about 80 percent complete. The roofs are pitched, security guards walk the premises and several playgrounds have been installed. They’ve renamed the complex Garden Springs Apartments.

Not only did Rocky Mountain boost the self-esteem of tenants, business are starting to spring up in the area, De’Berry said.

De’Berry had toured a similar revitalization at another RMDG project site in Jackson, Miss.

“When I went there and saw this gated community with picnic areas, computer labs and a place for health centers, I was just blown away, and I saw that these guys were more than just business people. They were concerned about the people who live there,” De’Berry said.

RMDG has developed an entire resident services division to help tenants in all its complexes. Resident services are a key to success for both the project and those who live there, Wishcamper said. At the Industrial College Homes Apartments, resident services include the most basic of services, including helping tenants learn how to open a checking account.

Today, there’s a waiting list to get into Garden Springs.

“Three hundred to 400 people were literally standing in line to come get into the 100-unit apartment complex. It was astonishing to see, and (these were) people who wouldn’t even pass by or drive by (before the renovation),” De’Berry said.

******

RMDG’s local project will introduce Missoula to a new kind of affordable housing complex, based on the philosophy of community building ongoing in Holly Springs. The Silvertip Apartments complex under construction on East Broadway was funded by a unique deal RMDG helped structure.

“I spent my childhood down here playing basketball, working out, playing tennis,” said Bouchee, who is overseeing the Silvertip project. “We would put these, as a property, we would put them up against any property in Missoula in terms of amenities, quality and location. And they’re going to be extremely affordable.”

Low-income qualifying residents will move in, but so will middle-income and moderate-income residents. Students will qualify, too.

“It’s industry best practice to try to combine folks from across a broad income spectrum and age mix,” Bouchee said. “The more mix in a community, the more dynamic community you create and ultimately, the more healthy community you create.”

But structuring a deal to fund the large project and accommodate that range of qualifying residents was extremely complex.

RMDG began working on a deal in 2009, and bought the former athletic club property in 2010.

They had the vision and the qualifying property, but only a government entity could apply for HUD Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant money.

Nancy Harte, who works in the Missoula Office of Planning and Grants, worked with RMDG and the Missoula Housing Authority to write the grant application, which morphed into a 3-inch binder that ultimately asked for $5 million to build the 115-unit complex.

The HUD program is a one-time grant source that came out of a Bush administration program enacted when the housing market began to crumble. When Harte saw it come available, most of the nonprofit developers she usually works with weren’t in a position to work on a project that big.

“Rocky Mountain Development Group was at the table and said, ‘let’s explore this,’ ” Harte said.

The $5 million grant was the largest chunk of neighborhood stabilization money awarded in Montana and the only grant for a multifamily housing project. They also secured a $6.75 million loan from HUD’s Multifamily Housing Program. Missoula Housing Authority also provided $1 million to the project from funds secured by the sale of other affordable housing units.

Missoula Housing Authority will manage the property for RMDG and own 20 units, while RMDG will own the remaining 95 units.

*****

The private-public partnership was a first for Harte and for the Missoula Housing Authority, which usually works with nonprofit housing developers.

Missoula Housing Authority executive director Lori Davidson sees affordable housing projects becoming more dependent on public-private partnerships as the availability of federal grant money shrinks and the need for affordable housing grows.

“(Obtaining) grants to just build affordable housing is not enough to fill the affordable housing gap,” Davidson said. “Any sort of creative way to get funding, we need every one of them. We need to be thinking outside the box.”

The complicated Silvertip deal will be hard to duplicate, Wishcamper said.

But there’s always room for creativity and RMDG is on course to continue its rapid acquisition and renovation schedule. The group acquired $84 million of affordable housing in 2010 and wants to boost that number to $150 million through the first quarter of 2012.

That means Rocky Mountain Development Group will be busier than ever. Missoula Housing Authority already is forming an interest list for the Silvertip Apartments. Construction is ahead of schedule and RMDG hopes to have tenants in the complex by early next summer, Bouchee said.

Wishcamper is also set to fly to Holly Springs in mid-November for the ribbon cutting on the Garden Springs Apartments.

Sustainable development was always a part of RMDG’s mission, Metcalf said, but developing projects that better their communities has proved extremely fulfulling.

In Holly Springs at least, Mayor De’Berry says RMDG’s work has raised standards throughout the community, thus raising expectations of what tenants can do for themselves.

A Garden Springs tenant stopped to talk to De’Berry recently.

“They said to me, ‘Mayor, you told us you were all going to do something, You and the Wishcamper guys followed through on what you said,’ ” De’Berry said. “In Rick, I see a sense of community and sense of humanism that you don’t usually see in businessmen. I’m here to tell you, (RMDG) lives up to their mission.”

http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_3609590c-f7ae-11e0-a42d-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1b3Ny9h9K

Lincoln Garden Apartments, as quoted by WLBT News, “was once one of Jackson’s worst apartment complexes for crime and drugs”. In an interview with The Clarion Ledger, Ms. Verna Lee, a tenant at Lincoln Gardens, remembers telling a maintenance man, “I’ll be glad when I get out of here.” Only a couple of years ago, the apartment complex was in bad shape with several units condemned, Now, Ms. Lee would like to “stay here as long as I live.”

Representatives from the Rocky Mountain Development Group and the Wishcamper Companies of Maine saw the potential in Lincoln Garden, and acquired the property from its then owners. The companies had a goal of revitalizing the neglected property in hopes that it would give the entire community a facelift, encouraging other owners to take pride in their properties as well. Renovation of the property began immediately after the acquisition and took nine months to complete.

Since the $10 million dollar renovation project was completed, the apartment complex has become one of the most attractive properties in the area. Occupancy has increased from less than 50% to 100%. According the Lincoln Garden’s manager Taj Cole, “because the conditions were bad they [the residents] didn’t feel the need to keep them up before.” Many of the residents now take pride in their community and expressed their appreciation during the June celebration held for the completion of the 100-unit complex.

The development plan for Lincoln Garden was created in collaboration with local government agencies such as the Mississippi Home Corporation and political leaders. The result of this partnership led to the complete transformation of an aging and neglected property with high criminal activity into a stable community asset. According to Brian Shumway of the Wishcamper

Companies, “Our nation has a dwindling stock of affordable housing… We are able to use new tools that are available from the federal government and mix them with some of the old subsidies and really help empower people. And help them build a more productive life within the communities that they already live in,” Senator Hillman Fraizer of Mississippi concurs with Lincoln’s renovation by expressing, “…this investment is going to pay dividends in the long run, in terms of producing quality residents who will become taxpaying citizens and contribute to society.”

Thus far, Lincoln’s rehabilitation is having a great impact on the attitudes of the community members and leaders. Hopefully in the near future, other property owners will continue the revitalization project that Wishcamper has started. Besides, change starts with one!

NAHMA 2011 Communities of Quality Awards Competition

Communities of Quality Awards honor the achievements of affordable housing providers who have made an unprecedented contribution to the affordable housing industry by developing and maintaining outstanding properties that are safe and vibrant places to live.

The awards competition includes five categories:

■ Exemplary Family Development

■ Exemplary Development for the Elderly

■ Exemplary Development for Residents with Special Needs

■ Exemplary Development for Single Room Occupancy Housing

■ Outstanding Turnaround of a Troubled Property

In conjunction with the noted award and as an expression of gratitude, MHC will provide to an owner/manager of a HTC property selected as winner:

■ Certificate/plaque

■ Free attendance at one MHC hosted compliance training event

■ Special recognition in the “Spotlight” in the Compliance Connection newsletter

■ Three Noncompliance Fee Waivers

Application deadline to NAHMA is November 11, 2011

An elaborate system of beams and cables on the roof of the Wilma helps distribute the weight of the scaffolding. The last major repair at the Wilma Building in downtown Missoula is under way, and one of the historic theater’s owners said it’s proved to be the most difficult.

“This is the most technical thing we’ve done by far,” said Justin Metcalf, vice president of Rocky Mountain Development Group, which owns the downtown building.

In the four years since the development group bought the 90-year-old Wilma Building, crews have pressure-washed the exterior, resealed the brick and replaced windows – all relatively straightforward repairs, he said.

But completely redoing the cornice work along the top edges of the building just below the roof has taken months of design and planning, and will take at least two more months to complete.

“It’s a long time overdue for replacement,” said Adam Pfiffner of Pfiffner Design Build. Adam and his brother Tyler are general contractors for the project.

The cornice is completely rotten and overrun by pigeons and droppings, Adam Pfiffner said, and one of the cornice pieces was being held to the building with a single wire.

Crews were set to finish the scaffolding – a platform wrapping around the entire top of the eight-story building, which workers will stand on to replace the cornice – by Tuesday morning. The southbound lane of Higgins Avenue closed at 6:30 p.m. Monday so a crane could lift the remaining pieces of the scaffolding.

“This is the hardest part right now,” Pfiffner said of the difficulty of erecting the scaffolding.

The Pfiffners worked alongside Beaudette Consulting Engineers to come up with the most cost-effective and safe scaffolding design possible. Motors are typically used on scaffolding to move the platform up and down so work can be done on multiple stories, but because repairs are only being done on one level of the Wilma, they got rid of the motors – ultimately reducing the cost and weight of the structure.

“What they’ve done blows my mind,” Metcalf said. “It’s really innovative.”

When the scaffolding is complete, the existing cornice will be taken down along with the rosettes and corbels currently adorning the building.

Pfiffner Design Build is bringing in Western Sheet Metal to create an exact replica of the tin parts of the cornice, and the two companies will work as a team to install those pieces. Pfiffner Design Build workers will also restore and reinstall the original rosettes and corbels using plaster and pre-cast concrete.

The last step will be to take the scaffolding down, which the Pfiffner brothers expect to happen around the end of September.

Metcalf said construction won’t affect the actual theater in the Wilma Building or any of the events happening there in coming months.

Intern reporter Victoria Edwards can be reached at               (406) 523-5251         (406) 523-5251 or at victoria.edwards@missoulian.com.

Once in ruin, complex now a community bright spot in Jackson $10 million renovation completed at Lincoln Garden

6:13 AM, Jun. 23, 2011 

 Joe Ellis/The Clarion-Ledger

Verna Lee lifted her 91-year-old body from its seat with the aid of a walker, then smiled a smile that could melt hearts.

“I want to stay here as long as I live,” she said, welcoming a guest into her recently renovated Lincoln Garden apartment.

Thanks to the $10 million renovation, a poorly managed, crime-ridden apartment complex has been turned into a neighborhood showplace.

Tenants, employees and local officials celebrated the completion of the 100-unit complex on Sunset Avenue on Wednesday.

Ninety-eight of the units, comprising 15 buildings, are filled, including single-person residences such as Lee’s to families of as many as eight. Floor plans have one, two, three or four bedrooms.

Lee moved into the Lincoln Gardens in the early1980s, she said, and stayed there as the complex slid into disrepair.

By 2009, after some of the apartments were condemned, she told longtime maintenance man Joe Giles, “I’ll be glad when I get out of here.”

She told her niece not to send a check for the rent. “I was moving out,” she said.

“But thank God I didn’t. I’m so proud, I can’t find the words to show my appreciation.”

The Wishcamper Companies of Maine and Rocky Mountain Development Group acquired Lincoln Garden last year with the goal of transforming the neglected property. They accessed about $100,000 in tax credits through Mississippi Home Corp., a quasi-governmental hub organization for housing created by the state in 1988.

Lincoln Garden is the fourth low-rent housing complex Wishcamper has revitalized in Jackson over the past four years. Others are The Village in south Jackson, Madonna Manor in west Jackson and Commonwealth Village, just blocks south of Lincoln Garden

“I’ve been going by that complex ever since it was built,” said Ward 4 Councilman Frank Bluntson, who attended Wednesday’s event. “I saw it in its best stage and in its worst stage.

“But thank God these companies have done such a tremendous job.”

Taq Yumi Cole, Lincoln’s manager, said residents began moving into renovated apartments in December.

“They take pride in them,” she said. “Because the conditions were bad, they didn’t feel the need to keep them up before.

“But the people living in the first unit to be rehabilitated are keeping it in immaculate condition.”

Lincoln Gardens is more than a place to call home. Residents, who must pay 30 percent of their personal income as rent, can use a computer room with Internet access and other life-skills services.

“We teach people how to buy homes, so they can someday own their own home,” new resident services coordinator Michael Harvey said.

“We teach them how to dress for job interviews, what kind of questions to expect. And we run programs for kids to keep them occupied and show ways to keep parents and kids closer together.”

Programs and housing such as this will transform the neighborhood, Giles said.

The complex has gates that require key-card access after 5 p.m. and provides security through Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. But Cole said residents are trained to see to their own security, “so more money can go to services rather than security personnel.”

Lee sat comfortably on her couch in her new apartment and threw her hands wide.

“We’ve come a long way,” she said.

RMDG invests in real estate throughout the United States with a focus on multifamily affordable housing. Our affordable housing work involves the preservation of expiring-use properties, the repositioning of non-regulated properties into affordable housing and warehousing of existing regulated properties for future re-syndication.