In April 2018, the Cottonwood City Council unanimously approved a plan to rezone 9.01 acres of land on State Route 89A, near Candy Lane, from Commercial and Industrial to Planned Area Development, allowing for the construction of a new housing development called Inspiration at Cottonwood.
Three years later, construction on Inspiration is expected to begin in June, after the developer, Bob Porter, of Sedona, successfully resubmitted his plan. COVID, as well as issues figuring out some construction loans, led to delays on the project, but Porter is looking forward to beginning construction in the near future, with the hope of the first homes for people to move into being completed in spring of 2022.
“COVID really took us deep,” Porter said. “We should have broken ground end of last February or March. But we’re persistent people.”
The planned development will feature 192 units for lease, ranging from 694-square-foot one-bedroom apartments to 1,181- square-foot three-bedrooms, with the most common size being two-bedroom units. There will be garages in some of the units as well, and each unit will have its own balcony.
The plans also include sufficient parking for the apartment units, trees and plants throughout the complex, a dog park, several picnic areas and a play structure for children. Additionally, the complex will feature a clubhouse, spa and swimming pool.
“It’s workforce housing,” Porter said. “We are building this for cops and firemen and teachers, and folks that work in the Verde Valley and need a place they can live in the area.”
Porter describes the housing development as “affordable, but not in the way of capital A affordable,” meaning that while he hopes to keep prices down to make the units usable for working and middle-class tenants, it is not classified as Affordable Housing in the official way used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has strict regulations on certain housing for rental to low-income tenants.
“It’s affordable, but no tests, no subsidies,” Porter said.
Porter is, however, getting some help from HUD, receiving a 221(d)(4) loan from the federal agency for $37 million, representing 82% of the cost of the $45 million project. According to HUD, “Section 221(d)(4) assists private industry in the construction or rehabilitation of rental and cooperative housing for moderate-income and displaced families by making capital more readily available.”
However, the HUD loan process has been a major reason for the delays that kept Inspiration from starting construction in 2018 as originally planned.
“In late 2018 and early 2019, before we could make our final HUD submittal, we had to do quite a bit of ‘value engineering’ to reduce costs,” Porter said. “That entire process added four to six months to our schedule. When we finally received our initial HUD approval in the spring of 2019, we were approved at a 4.65% interest rate, and interest rates were dropping sharply. So we made the decision to resubmit to HUD in order to achieve a lower interest rate, which we were ultimately successful in doing.”
The project also required developing a partnership with Fain Signature Group in Prescott Valley, which recently completed a project using similar HUD funding on the other side of the mountains. According to Porter, the project was ready to start in early 2020, but was postponed after that by COVID.
The city of Cottonwood has long been seeking more affordable housing stock for a growing community that not only has a large workforce but also supplies workforce to nearby Sedona. At the 2018 meeting, city officials praised the project as exactly what the city is looking for.
“If they’re following through with what they’re proposing, I think it will be good, because you hear a lot right now about the lack of housing and the availability of apartments,” Cottonwood City Planner at the time Scott Ellis said at the meeting in March of 2018. “From what I hear through the grape- vine, there’s waiting lists at just about every apartment complex in town, not just in Cottonwood, but everywhere in the Verde Valley, and this is definitely a much-needed development.”
Porter praised the city government in its process for getting these units approved, saying it was one of the smoothest processes he had ever dealt with.
“I’ve been doing this a really long time and this is the first time that I’ve ever done a project and the city council actually thanked me,” Porter said.
In the long process of getting these units built, Porter is following the desires of his late wife Cheryl “C.C.” Porter, who wanted a development like this built, but died in 2013. Porter is also continuing after the death of his business partner Bill Jump, who died in January.
“She’s still a loud spirit. She’s not going to let me not do this,” Porter said of his late wife. “She inspired me to finish this.”
With the close proximity to Verde Valley Medical Center, Porter expects that doctors and nurses will be among those interested in these apartments. He also has indicated interest in partnering with the hospital to temporarily house visiting physicians, making an exception to his goal of 12-month leases for the other units.
