TOLEDO — Toledo officials spent Wednesday, Oct. 14, making a direct pitch to housing developers: the city has land, incentives and a track record of turning difficult sites into homes, and two recent projects that filled up the moment they opened prove the demand is real.
The inaugural BuildToledo Housing Development Summit brought housing and mixed-use development teams to the Glass City Pavilion on Riverside Drive for a full day on the city’s pro-housing initiatives, development incentives and the path from initial interest to permitting.
The city’s case rests on a pair of projects that together represent nearly $30 million in investment and 70 new homes. Both moved from groundbreaking to ribbon cutting in roughly 18 months, and both were fully leased by the time the ribbons were cut.
The Grand Townhomes rose on the former Driggs Dairy site at 1157 Grand Avenue, a vacant industrial property the city helped prepare using Community Development Block Grant resources to remove blighted structures and clean up the land. The result is 20 three- and four-bedroom townhomes, with rents starting just over $1,000 for three bedrooms and below $1,300 for four, serving households earning between 50 and 70 percent of area median income.
The second example, The Glen, turned an underused 3.66-acre slice of the former Southland Shopping Center parking lot at 3440 Glendale Avenue into 50 one- and two-bedroom apartments. Rents there start under $800 a month for the same income band, and it, too, was fully leased at its ribbon cutting.
City housing officials, including economic development leadership under Rosalyn Clemens, argue that land and opportunity are what should be drawing builders to Toledo: underused parcels the city can help assemble, public dollars that can close financing gaps, and private partners who have already shown the model works.
The need behind the pitch is straightforward. Workforce housing — homes priced for people who work in Toledo but earn too much to qualify for most assistance and too little for many new market-rate projects — remains in short supply across the city. Projects like The Grand and The Glen were aimed squarely at that gap, and their instant lease-ups suggest builders who follow them will not struggle to find tenants.
What happens next depends on whether developers take the city up on the invitation. Summit attendees were walked through where development opportunities are emerging and how the city can help move a project from idea to impact — the phrase the city used for the day — with Toledo officials hoping the next round of announcements grows out of Wednesday’s room.
