LEWISTON — City councilors Tuesday should get a report on a successful signature drive designed to overturn a downtown affordable housing project.
But City Administrator Ed Barrett said he does not expect councilors to act on that petition drive or Phyllis St. Laurent’s effort to build apartments to replace those burned in the May 2013 downtown fires until later this summer.
“I don’t know for sure, but I’d anticipate the council will take action at their next meeting or one after that on whether to overturn their initial action or place the matter up for a referendum,” Barrett said. “I can’t say with 100 percent surety that it won’t be brought up (Tuesday) but I don’t think it will.”
Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
St. Laurent’s buildings, at 149 Bartlett St., and 110 and 114 Pierce St., were just a few of buildings destroyed in a rash of fires. She plans to replace the units lost with a single development of 29 units of single-bedroom, two-bedroom units and larger apartments.
St. Laurent is working with the Developer’s Collaborative, a group that has built projects in Lewiston before. It would be a $5 million project with subsidized rents and federal Section 8 housing vouchers tied to the development.
The project would be aimed at families making 60 percent of the median income — about $33,700 for a family of four.
Councilors approved St. Laurent’s plan in April.
Landlord Stanley Pelletier successfully collected enough signatures to force a public vote on St. Laurent’s project.
The petition needed 859 valid signatures to be successful and Pelletier and other local landlords collected 867, with another 48 signatures collected that were not verified.
St. Laurent could not be reached for comment but Jim Hatch, the developer working with her on the project, said the group assumes the matter will get a public vote.
“I feel like we are caught in some unfortunate politics here that really don’t reflect the reality of the situation,” Hatch said. “It’s not new housing coming in for new people, but that’s how it’s been characterized.”
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