168 homes on Block 418. You set the rents.
- Sheet
- SP-1 of 11 sections
- Submitted
- Oct 14, 2026
- Site
- 25,000 sq ft, MX-6
- Homes
- 168 on 12 floors
- Budget
- City ask
This response follows the RFP's section order. Each section is set on the City's own site sheet and two of them work. Move a home to a new income band and the whole budget follows.
Letter of transmittal
An RFP panel reads forty pounds of paper in the order it asked for. So the first thing we did was keep the City's numbering and put an index beside the letter. The cleverness goes in the drawings. The structure stays boring on purpose.
To the Selection Panel, City of Elverney Housing Office.
Block 418 has sat empty behind a chain-link fence for 19 years. Your RFP asks for the most affordable homes the site can carry, a street floor that serves the Tenter Flats district, and a budget the City can defend at a public hearing.
We propose 168 homes in a 13-story building on Orrel Avenue, with at or below 50 percent of area median income. The budget is . We ask the City for , which sits under the $24,000,000 cap in Addendum 1.
The hardest decision in this RFP is how deep the rents can go before the building stops paying its mortgage. We don't think you should have to take our word for where that line is, so we built the budget into the elevation. Section 2.2 lets every panel member move it and see the same math we used.
We've taken one exception and one partial, stated with reasons in Section 8.1. Nothing else in the RFP is qualified.
Adaeze Quade, FAIAPartner in charge, with Tomasz Merriott, Dana Whitlock of Ollery and the whole team named in Section 5
Authorized to bind the respondent for 180 days
A wide avenue on one side, back gardens on the other
The zoning district line runs right along the back of this lot. Everything we decided about the massing comes from what sits on each side of that line.
The issuer's reviewers think in sections and zoning tables. We read the lot the way their planner would before showing anything we like. Respect first, proposal second.
Stand on the avenue
Orrel is 100 feet wide and carries the Route 14 bus. It can take 13 stories, and a continuous street wall fixes a block that has been a fence since 2007.
Keep off the gardens
Zoning would let the bar sit against the rear line. We pull it 53 feet forward so the Lathe Street gardens and the row houses keep their afternoon. Section 2.3 shows the difference hour by hour.
Use what's already in the street
The 15-inch sewer and 12-inch water main under Orrel were replaced in 2021. There's a soil report in Addendum 1. We found no reason to add a basement, so we don't dig one.
One window, one home. Set the rents.
Pick an income band and paint any window on sheet A-201. The rent roll, the mortgage, the tax credit and the City's ask all move with your hand.
A subsidy memo tells the panel an answer. This elevation lets them find the line themselves. The first time a commissioner paints a floor to the 30 percent band and watches the mortgage drop, she trusts the rest of the numbers, because she moved them. Every window is one home so the mix reads as people in a building instead of a percent in a table.
Rents are shown for a two-bedroom home at 30 percent of the band's income for three people, less a $90 utility allowance, against the City's published three-person median of $96,000. The lender sizes the mortgage at 1.20 coverage, 6 percent, 40 years. The 30 percent band and the 80 percent band are what the numbers trade against.
A day of shadow
| Hours of sun | Rear line | Ours |
|---|
The neighbors at the hearing won't read FAR. They'll ask whether the garden goes dark. So the study scrolls like a day and answers with hours.
Ten bays on Orrel Avenue. Trade them.
Pick a use and tap a bay on sheet A-101. Each bay is 20 by 90 feet. A grocer pays the most and serves the most trips, childcare pays the least and fills the deepest need, and the mortgage feels all of it.
Community benefit is 30 points of the score and it's usually a paragraph. Here it's a floor plan with a price on each door, so the panel can see that the community room costs the building money and we kept it anyway.
Four meetings, four revisions
We held these before submitting, on our own time, with Community Board 6. Each one changed the drawing, so we logged them the way we log every revision on a sheet.
Lathe St. block
Row house owners worried about the bar sitting right behind their yards.
Bar moved 53 feet toward Orrel.
Tenter Flats School
Parents said the nearest licensed infant room is two bus rides away.
Childcare doubled to two bays, on the play yard.
Board 6 housing committee
Committee members said 80 percent homes shouldn't all end up on the top floors.
Every floor now mixes at least three bands.
Orrel merchants
Shop owners wanted the service bay off Orrel's busiest stretch.
Service moved to the Tenter corner, curb cut on the side street.
Half the homes go first to residents of Community District 6, as the RFP requires. The lottery opens seven months before move-in, on paper and online, and the office runs at the Tenter Flats School on two Saturdays.
A wall that keeps the bill down
Sustainability is 10 points. It's also the line a family feels in January. Change the wall on sheet A-501 and watch it change the budget in Section 6.
The building is all-electric either way, as the RFP requires. Heat pumps sit on the roof, and every home gets its own fresh air. The battery holds one elevator and the lobby for eight hours in an outage, which matters more on floor 13 than any number on this sheet.
The sustainability answer shares its state with the budget. Flip the wall here and Section 6 repriced itself. That's the point we wanted the finance reader to catch, because a green premium read alone looks like a luxury.
Three buildings for this City, on budget or close
The City's own inspectors signed off on all three. Call the project managers in Addendum 1's reference list, and ask about the one that ran late.
Who draws, who checks, who answers
Led Ferrow Court and Almery Homes. In every panel meeting, every City review.
Checks every sheet. Passive House certified designer. Twenty-one years of Elverney permits.
Runs the drawings from concept to closeout. Ran Bramling Street from the trailer.
Closes the financing and holds the building for the 60-year term. Ollery manages 2,140 homes today.
Sizes the heat pumps and signs the energy model behind Section 4.
Flat-plate concrete, no transfer floor at the street level, which is what keeps the bays flexible.
The whole budget, and one number for the City
The base building holds still. The four items below it each drop on their own, and each says what the City gives up. We'd keep all four. They add $5,100,000 to the budget and about $2,000,000 to the City ask, because the tax credit and the lower bills carry the rest.
Procurement can cut an option in a public meeting without asking us anything. We've seen proposals survive the last round because each line came off cleanly and named what went with it.
First move-ins in April 2030
The public review is the part nobody controls. We've assumed the full nine months and started nothing that can't survive a vote going the other way.
Compliance matrix
Every requirement in Part III, in the City's numbering, with our status and where it's answered. Filter to the exceptions first. That's where we'd start too.
Evaluation criteria
The weights from RFP Part V, and where each one is answered. Tap one to filter the matrix above.
A panel member scoring at 9 p.m. needs one thing, which is the page for criterion D. This table gives it to her and ties the score sheet to the matrix so she doesn't have to hunt.
Renata, Housing Commissioner
What happens to your ask if rates move before closing?
You have to stand behind this number for 18 months before anyone closes on it. The mortgage is the piece most exposed to the market. Each quarter point takes about $400,000 of debt out of the building, and we'd rather show you that now than at the closing table.
The first cushion is the room under your cap. The second is up to $1,800,000 of Ollery's own fee, deferred and paid from cash flow. We reach for those before we ask you for anything else.
Move the mortgage rate
Dov, Senior Underwriter
Does this hold up in year 15, when the credit is gone?
Coverage, years 1 to 15
Your office has seen buildings look fine at closing and go under the line by year 12, when expenses outrun rents capped by income. Run yours with the growth rates you trust, against the mix on the sheet right now.
We underwrite operating costs of a home, reserves included, and count only half the street floor's income. Ollery's last five buildings ran within 3 percent of budget in year three.
Priya, City Planner
Is this as-of-right, and why not one more floor?
It's as-of-right under the affordable bonus, with no variance and no special permit. The one action we need is the disposition itself, which goes through public review because the City owns the lot.
One more floor breaks the floor area limit and the height limit together. Try it. Twelve floors of homes is where the massing stops being a negotiation.
Add or take away a floor
Marcus, Community Board 6
Would someone on my block qualify, and what would they pay?
That's the question you'll get at the meeting. Type in a household and read the answer off the sheet, in plain words you can repeat.
Try a household
June, Chief Procurement Officer
Is the package complete, and can I check it without calling anyone?
Required forms, RFP Part VI
Tap each form as you check it. They're all in Section 11's printed package, signed where a signature is required, with the solicitation number in the running header on every page.
Status against Part III is . One exception and one partial are the ones to read first, and neither changes the price.
Addenda and clarifications
All three addenda are acknowledged. The panel's clarification questions are answered here with dates, so every member reads the same answer.
Addenda logs usually sit in an appendix and go stale. We made it a live act, because answering the panel's question on the page, in front of all of them, is a quieter way to say we're easy to work with.
Terms, open questions and the next step
What we're committing to, in plain words, and what's still unsettled.
The City keeps the ground
A 60-year ground lease at $1 a year, with the City holding the reversion. Rent limits run for the whole term, recorded against the property.
A proposal that holds for 180 days
Prices and team commitments stand through April 12, 2027. After designation, the budget moves only through a written change the City approves.
Open books
The City sees the development budget, every requisition and the annual operating statement. Developer fee is fixed at $5,800,000 and doesn't rise with cost.
A guaranteed price before closing
A contractor's guaranteed maximum price is a condition of closing. Costs over it fall on the owner and contractor, never on the City's subsidy.
What's still open
- The grocer has a letter of intent but no signed lease. If it falls through, the plan in Section 3.1 shows what the same bays can do instead.
- The State Housing Trust decides the $10,000,000 award in February 2027. If it comes in short, we'll return to the panel before asking for anything more.
- Exception R-27 on the lease term is unresolved until the City's counsel responds.
Next step, December 2 interview
We'll bring the sheets and run them live with your numbers. Marking this received records the mix you've set on this page as the one to discuss.
- Homes at 50 percent or below
- Total budget
- City ask
- Funding gap
Required forms, RFP Part VI
- F-1Respondent disclosureSigned, Adaeze Quade
- F-2Non-collusion affidavitSigned, Adaeze Quade
- F-3Addenda acknowledgment, 1 to 3Signed, Adaeze Quade
- F-4Participation plan, R-23Attached
- F-5Development budget, Section 6Attached
- F-6Lender and investor lettersAttached
- F-7Insurance certificateAttached