By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
ST. JOSEPH – Berrien County Commissioners heard about a new residential housing development as well as more plans to expand rural broadband opportunities at their weekly meeting last week. As has been the case for the last year, the meeting was virtual and available to the public via the county’s YouTube channel.
The residential housing development will be located on a 32 acre site bordered by M-63 and Enterprise Way in Benton Township. Berrien County Community Development Director Dan Fette told county commissioners that construction is expected to start soon on the $5 million project.
He noted that Benton Township officials have already signed off on the project. “They want us to undertake this project,” he said. “It’s consistent with their master plan and they’ve already done the rezoning of the property.”
Fette said the developers plan to build 10 four-unit buildings on the site. Each building will have two
three-bedroom and two two-bedroom apartments. He estimated that the two bedroom apartments would rent out at market rate for between $1,200 and $1,500 a month, while the three bedroom apartments would go for $1,800 to $2,000 a month.
“The developers are ready to break ground immediately,” Fette said. “They hope to be entirely done in 18 months and have all the units leased within 36 months. The apartments will be leased for a period of 10 years and then converted to private condos.”
The matter was before the county board because commissioners were being asked to approve the Harbor Woods Brownfield Plan for the site which is believed to be contaminated with arsenic. Having the brownfield plan in place will allow developers to get $1.1 million in assistance to clean up the site as well as pay for infrastructure improvements.
Commissioners welcomed news about the project. “It’s encouraging to see this development,” Commissioner Teri Freehling said. “Entry level homes are scarce, it’s a really encouraging project. I appreciate the staff’s efforts in moving this project forward.”
County Administrator Brian Dissette agreed. “In a nutshell, what we’re looking at is the development of additional multi-family housing units that will be a benefit to the St. Joseph-Benton Harbor area and to the whole county,” he said.
Fette said the brownfield plan allows the developers to be reimbursed for cleanup and infrastructure costs and the taxes captured over time by the increase in property values will go into the county’s tax increment financing fund to help pay for other future projects.
Also last week, commissioners heard another report on rural broadband efforts in the county. Last week’s report came from Matthew Sams of Mercury Broadband, a Kansas-based company that plans to undertake three initiatives to expand high speed internet into rural parts of the county.
Earlier this month, commissioners heard a similar report from Cassopolis-based Midwest Energy representatives on their plans to do similar work in Berrien County.
Both companies took part in a recent Federal Communications Commission auction for the rural digital opportunity fund and won the right to receive federal funds to do work in Berrien County.
Sams said last week that his company began in 2007 in Kansas and started working in Indiana in 2014 in the Fort Wayne area. They’ve since started working in communities near the Indiana-Michigan state line including in the South Bend area.
He said his company will be targeting locations in all parts of the county, but mainly in the central and eastern half of the county. He said they will be putting equipment on existing towers as well as building their own. They will also be installing fiber optic lines to help get internet service to businesses and homes.
He said his companies will have sites going live in the third quarter of this year and be ready for customers by the end of September. “Every quarter there will be construction,” he said. “Most will be in the second and third quarters of 2022 with the last of the customer access sites by the end of 2022.”
He said service his company will provide won’t have data limitations and will be capable of supporting 100 megabit download speed. He said will offer competitive pricing to new customers.
Increasing access to rural broadband internet service has been a major focus of the county board for more than a year, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and more adults and students working and learning from home. More and more public funds are also becoming available, including money for such projects in pandemic relief legislation.
Dissette reported last week that he tentatively plans to bring the results of a rural broadband survey done this winter and spring to the county board at their May 6 meeting. The board is not meeting this week since it is a fifth Thursday.
Last fall, the county hired the non-profit Merit Network to conduct a survey of county residents in order to get more accurate data of where the rural broadband need is in the county. Merit made the survey available online to county residents through late March and has been tabulating the results since then.
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