CINCINNATI – Construction has been constant on College Hill’s Hamilton Ave. for years, thanks to a small Cincinnati-based company, hoping to change the face of city neighborhoods one historic building at a time.
The primary builder on the $9.5 million KeyMark Development, by the end of the year, 8K Construction will have added 26 affordable rental units and five commercial spaces to the neighborhood, one of the company’s largest projects to date.
The business started in 2009 when Michael Fischer and two of his partners purchased a dilapidated house in Northside for $8,000.
“We worked on that house and about 15-16 other single families from 2009 to 2016 when we decided to kind of formalize the arrangement and take a more long-term view,” he said.
That’s when Fischer said the business began considering larger projects like multi-use buildings and converting historic or abandoned buildings into affordable housing.
“Our mission was always to improve these neighborhoods to whatever extent we could,” he said. “It’s kind of grown to doing one building at a time to two buildings at a time.”
KeyMark was a jump to four simultaneous building projects, but Fischer said it was still in 8K’s niche.
“It’s not quite big enough to utilize bigger incentives like lower income tax credits, but it’s kind of too big to just be a bank debt and equity project,” he said.
Fischer believes there are enough Cincinnati developers competing for those LIHTC funds and that, while important, it’s also important to have builders willing to find alternative revenue streams to accomplish the same goals, even on a smaller scale.
That’s what he strives to do with 8K, using multiple sources like the Cincinnati Development fund, the Port Authority, Wes Banco, and new market tax credits to get the KeyMark project off the ground.
“They all kind of came together in this financing stack that was complicated but totally necessary to get a job of this size and this scale complete,” he said.
More than building housing and business spaces, however, Fischer said it’s also important to the company to focus on the right projects, ones they believe will make Cincinnati neighborhoods better.
“We strive to partner with like-minded community groups, and try to solve the problems of the community as best we can through real estate development.”
Fischer said he was attracted to KeyMark because there was a symbiosis in the work. The new commercial spaces would provide jobs and economic growth to the community while the affordable apartments, priced at 50 to 80% of the area median income, would give those workers places to live nearby.
As the project nears completion, the College Hill Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation, which will lease the buildings, said there’s already been an influx of interest in renting out the units as soon as they come online.
Sleepy Bee was the first KeyMark project to open in Aug. 2022, then Big Chill opened on New Year’s Eve and now Fischer said both apartment buildings should be ready for move-in by the end of the summer.