Third Time A Charm For Veterans Home in Bensalem?

Despite two funding application rejections in as many years, representatives of the Bucks County Housing Development Corp. are not giving up on a plan to build an apartment building for disabled veterans in .

The project calls for a 40-unit, three-story independent-living facility on Mechanicsville Road, just north of Street Road. It would be on a 1.67-acre parcel behind the Street Road Shopping Center.

Project architect Nancy Bastian said in March, when the Zoning Board granted a necessary variance, that the BCHDC was hopeful of getting funding from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency by this past summer. After that, she said, designs would be submitted to the township for staff review, to be followed by a Township Council review.

This week she explained that applications to the PHFA were turned down in 2010 and 2011, with a third application filed this past fall. In the 2011 round of applications, she said, the PHFA awarded no funding to any projects in Bucks County.

“It's a very, very competitive and not-enough-money-to-go-around situation,” she said. “But the project has a lot of support.”

BCHDC Executive Director Charlie Diamond estimated this week that the project has a price tag of between $8 million and $10 million, and that $1.5 million in development tax credits is being sought from PHFA.

“We expect to know in March or April for sure,” he said.

Diamond said that after the last funding application was filed, PHFA officials visited the site last month.

“They loved it, especially its location next to a shopping center and the ease of bus transportation,” he said.

And while Diamond is “hopeful” of that funding, he said, “There will be investors ready to step forward” if it doesn't come through.

In addition he plans to talk soon to the Obama administration, “given their interest in veterans.”

“I will get people behind this,” he said.

Diamond said construction could begin in the late summer, with the entire project taking about a year to complete.

As he told the Zoning Board, Diamond said the project is especially important given the fact that there are 60,000 veterans in Bucks County, with 6,000 in Bensalem.

“This is a constituency whose needs have not been addressed,” he said.

Diamond said at the hearing that disabled vets would be the “primary focus” of the facility. But the board, which heard some neighbors' concerns, made its variance approval contingent upon occupancy being limited to “special citizens,” which is defined by township code as people physically impaired or at least 55 years old.