Redevelopment of Keene’s Roosevelt School, with new construction adjacent to the existing building, is poised to bring 30 affordable housing units to the city. (Courtesy of Warrenstreet Architects)
A handful of development projects around the state are receiving a financial shot in the arm, thanks to federal funding recently disbursed through the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA).
NH CDFA announced April 22 that it awarded $3.2 million in Community Development Block Grants (CBDGs) to seven projects, allocated through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This year’s recipients involve homes, health care and child care. They come amid the Trump administration’s sweeping fiscal and departmental cuts to the federal government and its looming tariff impact on construction materials, consumer goods and commercial equipment.
Those facts aren’t lost on NH CDFA Executive Director Katherine Easterly Martey, who told NH Business Review that some developments in this round will surely feel the brunt of tariffs more than others.
“Like many of the projects being redeveloped in this round, these are often rehabilitation projects,” Martey said. “Those are taking vacant or dilapidated buildings through a comprehensive community process and identifying them as a key project for a particular population that needs services, or a key property in a greater redevelopment.”
The awarded projects are scattered across the Lakes Region, Sullivan County, Monadnock Region and Upper Valley, and are all anticipated for completion within 18 months, per program guidelines, Martey said. They are expected to create new jobs, open 176 affordable housing units, and improve public facilities serving over 8,800 residents.
Martey added that most of the projects are built with sustainability in mind, both in terms of their community’s economy and buildings’ life spans. Many will use local labor during construction, and architects often seek to use reliable but cost-efficient components.
“The sweet spot about this program is that it is a block grant, so we have a certain level of flexibility in working with the projects to really try to get them to the goal they have and what they’re looking to build,” she said.
Keene
One project that exhibits that flexibility is Monadnock Affordable Housing Corporation’s Roosevelt School housing redevelopment. The corporation, an affiliate of municipal housing authority Keene Housing, received $750,000 in NH CDFA’s latest round of CDBGs. That’s the second CBDG for the redevelopment project in Keene.
The project is divided into two phases — Roosevelt School East and Roosevelt School West — with the first grant of another $750,000 issued last year supporting the East portion, according to Keene Housing Executive Director Joshua Meehan. Other funds have come from sources like the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston’s affordable housing program, with hopes to secure low-income housing tax credits through the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority in the months ahead.
Meehan said the project will add 30 new affordable housing units to Keene’s residential market for $8.4 million, but that’s without considering tariffs. He said Keene Housing aims to have bids out soon to beat those cost increases.
This project to bring more housing units to Keene by repurposing an old school and adding new construction has involved two phases, each supported by separate CDFA block grants. (Courtesy of Warrenstreet Architects)
Adaptive reuse will be undertaken on the former Roosevelt School on Washington Street to accommodate some units. The rest will be contained in new construction on the property surrounding the old school building.
“We couldn’t do the project at all without this funding,” Meehan said. “Finding funding for affordable housing development projects is really difficult, generally, and we’re grateful to get this project going when we are, because the future seems so uncertain.”
Right now, Keene Housing has between 2,000 and 2,500 households in the Keene area on its waiting list for future homes, about 900 of which are in the city proper, Meehan said. The majority of them make 30% or less of the area median income, which is $78,183 per HUD, so every resident will have subsidized housing costs to match that percentage.
Additionally, 11 apartments are intended to be set aside for residents who are either actively experiencing homelessness or at immediate risk, with five in East and six in West.
Keene City Manager Elizabeth Ferland called the Roosevelt School redevelopment a “win all the way around” and said it was a natural project for the city to focus on in applying for CBDGs. She praised its planned conversion of the former school facility and grounds, noted existing occupied homes surrounding the property create a construction challenge and expressed gratitude for more affordable housing in the city, especially for unhoused citizens.
“I’ve been very active in the (NH Coalition to End Homelessness), and it’s been trying to get creative for finding housing solutions for our unhoused population,” Ferland said. “When Josh told me about this plan, that was just another home run. When we place someone in a shelter, it doesn’t solve the problem or really get to the needs of the individual.”
Lebanon
Sixty-five miles north, another NH CDFA grant-backed project in Lebanon has a similar vision for a different vulnerable population.
Upper Valley-focused nonprofit Families Flourish Northeast is using its $500,000 in awarded funds to construct a 12-bed inpatient residential treatment center on the campus of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. The facility will serve pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorder (SUD), resembling two other similar inpatient programs in Nashua and the Seacoast Region.
But a key difference in these programs compared to other SUD treatment centers is their added support structures and safe refuge for children. That’s something Courtney Tanner, the founding board chair of Families Flourish, said can be the leading determinant of whether a mother with these disorders chooses to go into an inpatient program.
“This program will not only allow but will encourage women to have their children with them, and this will be the highest level of care one can receive in a nonhospital setting,” Tanner said.
Once open, the treatment facility will have staff on hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week, providing intense individual and group therapy sessions, case management services and job readiness training.
“This population is really complex,” Tanner said. “These women will come to us having navigated domestic violence, housing insecurity, food insecurity and having those co-occurring mental health conditions.”
Families Flourish Northeast will open an inpatient care facility at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, housing pregnant and parenting mothers experiencing substance use disorder and their children. The nonprofit is financing the project with a CDFA block grant and other funding sources. (Courtesy photo)
Bedford-based Sullivan Construction is the project’s design contractor, and for president and CEO Tom Sullivan, the chance to help create the center is somewhat personal.
“I’m a person in recovery, and this is really something very meaningful to me,” he said. “I feel like I can make a difference and hopefully support and help people going through difficult times.”
Sullivan has hired Casey Nagle of Whitney Blake Company as the project’s construction manager. The team anticipates work will begin in November and be completed by the end of 2026, with an estimated final cost of roughly $11-12 million, factoring in operating costs and grant applications to the initial construction cost of about $8 million.
Tanner stated that other awarded grants beyond NH CDFA’s block grant have been: $1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s World Development Fund; $1 million from the state Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery History (GOFERR); $500,000 through congressionally directed spending; and $1 million from the Northern Border Regional Commission.
Families Flourish is also in the running for an additional $1 million from NH CDFA for its Recovery Housing Program and $2 million from the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority.
“It’s going to take this type of funding stack to build a program like this,” Tanner said of the CDBG award and other financing sources. “We’re actively in conversations with local banks to support this project.”
The fall start period follows a series of recent approvals from the state Department of Environmental Services, the Army Corps of Engineers and the City of Lebanon.
Beyond the resources the center will bring to women needing care, City Manager Sean Mulholland added that it will also bring new job opportunities that Lebanon can accommodate due to ongoing separate developments in the area — a third downtown, as he put it.
“We just built a new roundabout up there and a multi-use path to be able to get people to different jobs and housing that’s right there. It’s a good synergy for us and fits into our master plan.”
Belmont
Where Keene’s project involves repurposing an old school and Lebanon’s project includes aiding area children, Belmont’s CDBG-backed project involves a bit of both.
The Boys & Girls Club of Central New Hampshire is partnering with Lakes Region Community Developers to restore the town’s 130-year-old Gale School after its 1980s closure, primarily converting it into an early learning center to open 35 new child care slots for Lakes Region families.
Belmont’s Gale School, shown here before construction begins later this year, is slated to be transformed into a child care center. CDFA block grants will help complete the project by adding a playground. (Courtesy of Lakes Region Community Developers)
Plans call for the interior to be completely renovated, while serious preservation work is being done on the bones of the building. Work follows a full-scale building move of the school from its original village center location to a plot of land at 60 Concord St.
“It’s not habitable in its present state. It’s an old building that has, over time, been modified with lead paint and there’s asbestos, so all of that needs to be remediated,” said Carmen Lorentz, executive director of Lakes Region Community Developers. “… It needs a new roof, and all the siding needs to be repaired and painted.”
Restoration efforts will be as precise as conducting a paint analysis to determine the building’s original paint color to be replicated. All in all, the costs come to $4 million for 12 months of construction work, to begin within a few months of April.
Lorentz noted that the rebuilt Gale School will also supply Lakes Region Community Services with a new program center above the child care center, offering resources to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, extending the organization’s work in Plymouth.
Meanwhile, NH CDFA’s recent CDBG appropriation of $210,000 is earmarked for adding a playground behind the school. It’s a small slice of the pie, but an important one, says BGC Central New Hampshire CEO Chris Emond.
“You have to have that for outdoor time for kids, no matter what age they are,” he said. “We work with infants and kids all the way up to high school. So the same kind of rule applies that they need to be able to go outside.”
NH CDFA awarded the project another $500,000 last year, focused on construction and labor expenses. Upon completion, Emond expects to hire six to seven staff members to provide adequate care and direct center operations.
“These funds are basically like the capoff of what was needed,” he said. “(Our existing) Belmont Early Learning Center off Route 106 has about 50 children there, with a waiting list, so we know there’s additional demand.”
