A 44-unit apartment complex, Wecoma Place, is now being built in Lincoln City. Representatives of Stewardship Development, the Housing Authority of Lincoln County, Cornerstone Community Housing, and Oregon Housing and Community Services gathered for a ceremonial ground-breaking event on Friday.

Other project partners include Umpqua Bank, National Equity Fund, Otak, and Walsh Construction.

Wecoma Place, now rising at 2133 N.E. 29th St. in Lincoln City, will be 100 percent affordable housing. The complex will hold a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units for people earning either 60 percent of area median income or less or 30 percent of AMI or less.

The four-story building will have an elevator, a community courtyard with raised garden beds, community space, and on-site parking. Units will have energy-efficient appliances and fixtures.

The site is close to public transportation, highways, schools, and several shopping centers.

Culturally responsive services and outreach will be provided by Cornerstone Community Housing, and supportive services will be provided by Community Services Consortium.

Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, housing disaster tax credits, and OHCS grants helped pay for the project. Also, eight project-based vouchers were awarded to serve very-low-income families and individuals. Lincoln City has granted the project team a property tax exemption and system development charge waivers to reduce project costs.

Construction is expected to finish in early 2024.

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Saving lives doesn’t necessarily have to be a utilitarian exercise; it can be artistic, too.

That’s the path taken by a recent landscape design project on the central Oregon coast carried out by Portland firm Shapiro Didway. The firm completed site master planning for the , which is housed in the historic former Delake Elementary School along congested Highway 101 in the middle of the popular tourist resort town.

The cultural center has hosted a popular farmers market for many years, but it has been held on the front lawn of the center at the edge of the busy, five-lane highway. This has proved hazardous to market patrons in the past, and center officials have long been eager to fix the issue. That’s where Shapiro Didway came into the picture.

But what started as an ordinary project quickly morphed into a push for improved safety along with the creation of a pleasing aesthetic.

“Originally, (the plan) was to create expanded space for the farmers market, and take the chaotic parking lot and increase the parking and pedestrian safety and circulation through the lot,” said Jessel Champoux, a design associate with Shapiro Didway and the project lead. “But what came from the project was instead of just looking at it like that, we looked at the art component; how can we make the whole site function as the vision of the Cultural Center?”

As currently comprised, the site master plan calls for an estimated $1.6 million worth of construction work, including future streetscape improvements, a revamped parking lot and space and utilities for outdoor events and seasonal displays. The farmers market will benefit from an increased amount of space along with a new path that will allow vendors better access to stall spaces.

“The biggest concern at first is it’s just not a safe site,” Champoux said. “If you’ve been (to the) farmers market on a Sunday, it’s a little chaotic, and I think that’s what drove the project. It’s well attended by the public and they want to connect the site to other locations. Conceptually, there are a lot of ways they want this to be a hub.”

There’s also a strong public art component, from accent paving to permanent and temporary art displays to new building murals and outdoor classroom space.

The notion of beautifying what essentially is a hazard mitigation project was driven by input received during public outreach efforts early in the process.

“There are public art opportunities all over this project,” said Niki Price, executive director of the Lincoln City Cultural Center and chair of the city’s Public Arts Committee. “There is stamp/paint concrete, embellishing the walk, there are opportunities at every entrance. Really, the sky is the limit.”

The former school building was closed years ago by the Lincoln County School District because its sits in a tsunami inundation zone just a block from the beach. As a result, the building and grounds became quite neglected prior the city transforming the property into an arts center over a decade ago.

“There is part of the redevelopment that needs to be done just for safety and security and utilization,” said Price. “The other part of the development, which is the most exciting part for the Cultural Center, is to turn the rest of the space into programmatic space all the way around the building. It’s going to allow us to use our entrances and exits and the architectural features we have to much better advantage, to create small gathering places all around the building and spaces for public art.”

To get started, the city’s budget committee has approved inclusion of $256,000 for the center in the city’s budget for 2018-19, which is awaiting final approval. A small portion of that amount would be used to replace windows in the school building, as well as for additional design and engineering work on portions of the master plan. Most of the money, however, will be used for grant writing or as matching grant funds.

“Just construction alone is going to be $1.6 million,” Price said. “The next year is design and we start our capital campaign. We’re pushing fast, relatively speaking, to get in line for cultural capital grants and maybe funds from the Legislature. But without the city buy-in, we felt like we we’re dead in the water, so we were happy the city looks like they’ll put in the seed money.”

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Lincoln City, seeking an injection of economic vitality and workforce housing, is making available eight developable properties ranging in size from less than an acre to 6.5 acres.

The coastal city on Feb. 1 issued a request for expressions of interest in the properties. The city’s urban renewal agency is seeking a developer or developers to build workforce and mixed-income housing on certain parcels and mixed-use buildings on others.

“Much like other small coastal communities, we need workforce housing,” said Alison Robertson, director of Lincoln City’s urban renewal agency. “Of course, the more workforce housing we can incorporate the better, but we want to have mixed-income communities.”

The city cobbled together the properties over several years. Then officials waited for the economy to improve before offering it to developers, Robertson said.

Lincoln City officials hope the developable offerings will help jump-start the local economy.

“Attracting developers to the coast is always a challenge,” Robertson said. “There’s just not enough happening. So we’re all trying to entice them by putting our best foot forward.”

The largest of the properties available is a 6.5-acre subdivision known as Fernwood that was platted but not built. The site is vacant but with some infrastructure in place. A private road, Fernwood Loop, was built. Water and sewer lines are also in place and stubbed out to each lot. Conduits for electricity, telephone and cable are in place. A defunct development plan anticipated 65 townhomes.

The property is in the northernmost portion of Lincoln City. City officials anticipate offering the “roughed in” road in as-is condition with the expectation a developer would finish the road, although it has no known defects, according to the city.

Fernwood is zoned for single-family or multifamily construction.

Another property – the only one with a building – is a twin-bay fire station. The single-story building at 914 S.W. Fourth St. is zoned for general commercial use. Lincoln City officials envision an adaptive reuse project with a brewpub, a coffee shop or other food business in the building, possibly along with a bike shop or other tourism-centered business.

As with most Oregon coastal communities, Lincoln City has struggled to grow. The population of Lincoln County, which includes Lincoln City, Newport and other towns, has grown by only about 100 people per year since 2010. The county had 46,685 residents in 2016, according to a Census Bureau estimate.

Lincoln County has a large population of baby boomers who are rapidly reaching retirement age, said Josh Lehner, an economist at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

“Lincoln County is going through this transition, and it’s more pronounced than in most other counties,” he said.

In recent years, Lincoln County has had more deaths than births, although relatively strong in-migration has supported some modest population growth, Lehner said.

“The working-age population, although it’s shrinking today a little bit, we don’t expect it to shrink forever,” he said. “The outlook is bright or at least relatively bright. I think what Lincoln’s going through is more of a transition period than a permanent decline.”

Lincoln City’s overall residential vacancy rate is only 6.6 percent, compared to 8.6 percent in rural Oregon, according to the Census Bureau. Lincoln City also has many houses that are used part-time as vacation rentals or second homes.

Lincoln City is prepared to offer a variety of incentives to developers, according to the request. Sale or lease write-downs are possible, along with deferral or financing of system development charges.

Possible deal structures include standard purchase and sale, ground lease, joint venture or a sale and lease-back scenario, according to the offering.

“The city recognizes that we are not developers,” Robertson said. “We really are looking at private-sector and nonprofit developers to come forward.”

Responses to Lincoln City’s request for expressions of interest are due by 2 p.m. on March 15.

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