In a few months, the landscape of the Oakland Avenue community in North Florence will take on a different look.
The Florence Housing Authority is developing land off of Oakland Avenue for a 36 townhouse-style apartment complex.
"They're state of the art. They're gonna have amenities that some of the finer complexes have. So we're just excited. We think it's the beginning of, it's the beginning of four phases that we're planning to have here. I mean it will be a whole block," said Cynthia Williams, Florence Housing Authority.
Tuesday morning, Mayor Stephen Wukela, City Councilman Ed Robinson, County Councilman Al Bradley, Senator Kent Williams and officials with the housing authority held a groundbreaking for the project.
Housing officials say they've worked on this project for two years.
Earlier this month, they got state tax credits to help with funding.
"The tax credits are actually funded through state housing out of Columbia and then we look for partners. We had to find a syndicator that would actually buy the tax credits and we're working with Raymond James. They came in and they are our syndicators. We had additional funds that we needed the city of Florence is making available some in-kind work for us and they're also giving us some funds for the project. Our contractor has worked with us over the past year trying get the project off the ground. So he has he's been standing by basically for a year waiting for us to do this so you see in the back ground finally," said Williams.
The project cost about $5 million and the city of Florence provided $1 million of the funding.
"Obviously the north side of town has been underserved for a long, long time with inadequate housing and infrastructure. This is a major investment in the north side of town," said Florence Mayor Stephen Wukela.
The property that the complex is being built on once housed a 50 unit complex but it was demolished last year.
" We actually had 50 housing units, Royal Gardens Complex that we demolished. You can see it's demolished and they're all taken down now. So we have a number of residents that received vouchers from us, when we started demolition of Royal Gardens. We have a number of those people that want to be in this area. They want to come back to the area. So the vouchers will help them," said Williams.
The housing authority plans to build at least two more housing units to accommodate families and the elderly community.
They're also hoping to build houses to start a homeownership program.
