LEWISTON – Florence Lacombe was the first person to get her name on the waiting list for the new senior housing development on Bates Street.

“I was born in Lewiston, and I can’t wait to get back to it,” she said.

She and another 29 Twin Cities seniors have about nine more months to wait.

Officials from the city, Community Concepts and other development groups kicked off the Bates Street Senior Housing Project Thursday morning.

Community Concepts crews are digging the foundation for a 30-unit apartment building on the former site of St. Dominic’s Regional High School. Dennis Lajoie, director of real estate development for Community Concepts, said work on the 35,000-square-foot, three-story building, should wrap up next February.

Community Concepts expects to begin work on an office complex on the same site in about a year and finish in 2009.

Lacombe, 78, lives in the Esplanade senior housing in Auburn, but attends St. Patrick’s Church on Bates Street, next to the Community Concepts project. She walks to church each Sunday and every holy day.

“I do, as long as the weather lets me,” she said. “It gets pretty cold walking across the bridge.”

The waiting list for apartments is already filled.

“That shows the need for this kind of development,” Lajoie said.

Units in the building will be available for people 62 years old and older who make no more than 60 percent of the median income for the Lewiston-Auburn area. That’s about $31,000 per year.

Mayor Larry Gilbert applauded the project.

“As our parents and grandparents reach the twilight of their lives, we strive to offer them a place to live that offers them both comfort and dignity,” Gilbert said. He said the new housing project would “do just that.”