Humboldt redevelopment plan aims to address workforce housing shortage

By Cameron Montemayor

A former longtime St. Joseph elementary school could become part of a solution to address a growing shortage of workforce housing in the city.

Real estate company MG Real Estate LLC, with support from the city and the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce, is planning to redevelop Humboldt Elementary School into new apartments, which will be called Humboldt School Apartments and Townhomes if fully realized.

The group has applied for workforce housing tax credits from the Missouri Housing Development Commission in order to make the project — estimated at around $25 million to $30 million — financially viable. Applications were due for submission Sept. 18 as part of the high-competitive selection process.

“They’re awarded in December typically,” Chamber president and CEO Natalie Hawn said. “It’s really all contingent on tax credits. If they get awarded the tax credits from the state, they’ll move forward on the project.”

New workforce housing tax credits would allow tenants at Humboldt to have an affordable rent rate within the range they make.

The Humboldt project will cater to mixed income households with approximately 20% to 25% of units being market rate. The building is expected to include up to 50 units of housing, a combination of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom loft apartments and two- and/or three–bedroom townhomes.

Plans also call for construction of an after-school program in the first-floor library space that will utilize the gymnasium space along with residents’ workout equipment. Developers are also eyeing a coffee shop.

“You have St. Mary’s Church there. It’s close to the bike trails. It’s right up St. Joe Avenue. So what a great area to have additional redevelopment,” Hawn said. “Then you’ve created this great community for young professionals to live and also hopefully spur redevelopment in that neighborhood as well.”

Located at 1520 N. Second St. next to St. Joseph Avenue, Humboldt was one of the St. Joseph School District’s original schools founded in the 1860s. The current building, which opened in 1904, has sat unused since it closed in 2017, landing on the real estate market in 2018.

Buchanan County GIS currently lists Humboldt Property Group LLC as the owner of the structure.

“The city has seen success in the past of adaptive reuse of these former school buildings. There are some good examples throughout the community where we have done similar projects,” said Clint Thompson, interim city manager.

One example is the former Hall Elementary School building at 2509 Duncan St. in Midtown, which was redeveloped into what’s now called HL20 Modern Flats.

If the project does move forward, Thompson expects it will be a joint public-private partnership, a strategy to help ensure the project’s success in the face of a challenging market for development.

“As you go forward and see how the city is working towards filling that housing gap, I think you’ll see more public private partnerships,” Thompson said. “I think it’s important to realize the importance of the city’s contribution and working with these private entities to ensure that the success of their project is not only accomplished, but also it meets the overall goal within the city.”

The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce has worked closely with MG Real Estate to help support a plan and provide resources for redeveloping the historic structure. The partnership is one example of heightened efforts to boost housing through the Housing Task Force, a group comprised of city staff, county commissioners and members of the business community created in 2023.

“To continue to have jobs, you have to have a workforce. And we were hearing from a lot of our employers that we really have some workforce housing shortages,” Hawn said. “We know we have plenty of market rate housing and there is really a missing middle in our community and an across the country.”

With many developers now incentivized to do projects that largely fall on opposite ends of the housing spectrum — typically low-income projects with help from low-income tax credits or custom high-end market rate projects — Hawn said the housing gap in the middle has only continued to widen and create supply and demand challenges locally.

According to U.S. Census data, St. Joseph has just 218 rental units for more than 5,600 households whose income falls between $50,000 and $75,000, as opposed to 7,510 rental units for 7,631 households in the range of $25,000 to $50,000.

The current shortage has put more and more pressure on new college graduates and young professionals looking to develop their career and find housing in St. Joseph while also balancing payment of student loans, forcing some to commit 50% or 60% of their income toward housing out of their preferred price range.

“But if you have a teacher, for example, that’s making $38,000 a year, they don’t qualify for low-income housing, but they can’t necessarily afford — if there’s a shortage of housing — market rate housing at $2,000 a month,” Hawn said. “We also had around 100 teachers last year that couldn’t find housing as they were coming into the school year.”

Along with teaching, the apartments would help support professionals in a variety of industries from nursing, law enforcement, engineering and other areas critical to St. Joseph’s long-term economic growth, such as new medical students joining UMKC’s School of Medicine in St. Joseph, a partnership with Mosaic Life Care.

“Making sure that we have safe, affordable housing for that professional that maybe hasn’t grown their career to a high-end job,” Hawn said.

MG Real Estate specializes in the redevelopment of historic structures, with similar projects completed in Kansas City like redeveloping the former City Hall building into lofts and developing the Historic Ellison Apartments and 915 Broadway Apartments.

Redevelopment of Humboldt school is just one phase of a greater goal to support and incentivize redevelopment of properties in the surrounding area.

“Phase two of that project would be to also do some rehabilitation of homes that’s needed in that neighborhood. So then that could really be an example of what it can look like,” Hawn said. “We would love for this program to also partner with a nonprofit and eventually look at doing rehab of homes.”

Both Hawn and Thompson said plans were presented to the neighborhood for discussion and many property owners were receptive to the proposal.

Officials also see the potential long-term benefits of the project for spurring greater housing development across the city. The hope is that Humboldt could be a launchpad to attract prospective developers and act as a blueprint for redeveloping other properties and neighborhoods.

“That includes redeveloping housing and looking at areas that we can do housing in Midtown, that looks at infill housing, executive housing, young professional housing,” Hawn said. “We have a need to really work at getting people to cultivate housing and kind of work with developers, whether they’re local or not. That might have an interest in investing in our community.”