LORDSTOWN Village takes new look at housing for seniors

Money was allotted for the project about 12 years ago, but the plan was shelved.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
LORDSTOWN -- The village's newly resurrected Community Improvement Corporation is looking into new life for another old plan.
In 1990, village council appropriated $1 million for a senior-citizen housing complex, but the plan was abandoned later that year when some council members said they wouldn't support it.
The CIC, which regrouped a few months ago after several years of inactivity, is considering the senior-citizen housing idea again.
"It's really just in infancy at this point -- just something we're talking about," said Mayor Arno A. Hill, CIC vice president.
Doris Hays, CIC president, said the panel is considering working with a developer to design a plan.
"There are a lot of angles, and I'm not sure which way we're going to go with it," she said, adding that the CIC is exploring the legality of its involvement.
The village, one of the largest in square miles in the county, doesn't have housing designated for seniors. Older residents attend luncheons and other activities conducted throughout the week at the village administration building.
Demand: A 1990 study by a New Orleans company found that the village could support a 20-unit complex of one- and two-bedroom apartments for seniors, but that it might take three years to fill all of the apartments. The study also found the market for senior housing in the village "very shallow." But it also found through a survey of village residents that they liked the elderly-housing suggestions.
Hill thinks the market is better now.
"We do have a lot of elderly residents in the village," the mayor said. "The need has grown greater with the population getting older."
Providing alternatives: He said the benefits are twofold.
"It would give people who don't want to move out of the village but don't want to care for their homes a chance to move into other housing," he said. "That would in turn also free up a lot of affordable housing for new people who want to move into the village."
Hays said although older people may want to remain in the village, without such a facility they have no option but to move out if they can't maintain their homes.
The New Orleans company that conducted the 1990 study recommended that the project be built on village-owned property.