METUCHEN, N.J. — Walk the halls of the Senior Residence at St. Peter the Apostle and you can see remnants of the convent that once was.
The modest-sized rooms hold only single beds. The round-topped design of some windows hints at the stained glass that once filled their frames. The former chapel transformed quite handily into a library/sitting room. An old confessional now serves as a medicine closet.
The nonprofit organization Build With Purpose opened this 24-room, boarding-home-style senior citizen residence in River Edge in 2013, the first of what it hopes will be many other converted buildings like it in New Jersey.
The mission is to find shuttered buildings that can convert easily into housing for the state’s growing elderly population. The Metuchen-based nonprofit is already renovating another convent in Edison into a similar congregate home, and it has plans to open 100 new units of senior housing in 1,000 days, hoping to convert not only former convents but also decommissioned school buildings and some of the abandoned motels that line the Jersey Shore.
“We’re looking for the kind of real estate that best lends itself to use as senior housing,” Brian Keenan, president of Build with Purpose, told The Record newspaper (http://bit.ly/1seiNJZ)
Repurposing is the name this charity uses. But the strategy — also called adaptive re-use — is a trend that’s recently taken hold in New Jersey, although it can sometimes face as many financing and bureaucratic hurdles as developing a vacant lot, affordable housing experts say.
In Montvale, United Way of Bergen County is transforming a long-shuttered school into a 10-apartment senior building, a renovation expected to cost $1.6 million to $2 million because the building’s old classrooms are about the size needed for the one-bedroom apartments they are slated to become. Building from scratch could have cost more like $3 million, and “this is certainly greener,” said Tom Toronto, president of the organization.
Similarly, three Burlington County schools were converted into senior apartment buildings in the past few years by an ecumenical housing organization.
