Developers break ground on $7.2M plan to turn former Transfiguration School in Detroit into affordable housing

The Detroit Housing & Revitalization Department announced today that developers Ethos Development Partners and Cinnaire Solutions today have kicked off the $7.2 million renovation of the former Transfiguration School in the Bangla town neighborhood that will see the historic building turned into affordable housing.
The Transfiguration Place Apartments at 13300 Syracuse will feature 19 units of affordable housing, all of which will be available at 60 percent area median income (AMI). These affordable rents are made possible through Michigan State Housing Development Authority Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, HOME Investment Partnership and Community Development Block Grant funding administered by the City of Detroit, and project-based vouchers through the Detroit Housing Commission. The inclusion of PBVs in this project will allow residents of extremely low-incomes (0-50% AMI) to also call Transfiguration Place home in the future. Seventeen of the units will be one-bedroom, with the other two being two-bedrooms. The units will be unique conversions of the former classroom space into living units and feature an abundance of natural light. The project, which is located in one of Mayor Mike Duggan’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund areas, is slated to be completed in 2022.
The City of Detroit issued an RFP for the site on the behalf of the Archdiocese of Detroit as part of a partnership developed to put historic but underutilized and vacant Detroit buildings back into use. Area residents were part of the RFP selection
committee, and the developer held multiple community meetings during the pre development process to ensure their feedback would be incorporated into the building.
“This project is about the community coming together to find solutions to both our need for affordable housing and the question on what to do with the many historic but unused buildings that dot our city,” Mayor Duggan said.
The two-story school building was designed by the architectural firm of Garstecki & Waier and built in 1926 to serve Detroit’s growing Polish population. The structure also served as the congregation’s church until 1950, when the adjacent church opened next door. The parish school closed in 2005, but the building was leased to a charter school until about 2014. It has sat largely unused since. The school is the oldest surviving piece of a six-building complex that was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. Historic details will be preserved, and the developers will also be able to tap historic tax credits for the project because of the building’s placement on the register.
The Housing & Revitalization Department is helping the development through $1.4 million in HOME funding and $500,000 in Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). Other financial help comes through the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program.