Matt Morrill of Mastway Development speaks Tuesday before a ceremonial ground-breaking at the site of former T.W. Dick offices and what will be the future Iron Heights development at 1 Summer St. in Gardiner. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

GARDINER — Developers, city leaders and housing officials broke ground Tuesday on a four-story affordable housing project near downtown that will replace a former industrial site.

The site of the future Iron Heights development at 1 Summer St. in Gardiner, bottom. Above, the former T.W. Dick office is shown at the site in 2015. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

The Iron Heights project at 1 Summer St., across Bridge Street from Hannaford and the rest of downtown Gardiner, will include 32 apartment units for people earning up to 60% of the area’s mean income. Construction is expected to be completed by the middle of next year.

Iron Heights is the third approved affordable housing project from Mastway Development in the last three years. Mastway also developed the 38-unit 99 Western Ave. complex in Augusta and the Tree Tops Housing project under construction in Stevens Commons in Hallowell.

Matt Morrill, the owner of Mastway, said his previous affordable housing development experience helped him secure funding from MaineHousing to get the project off the ground. He said he chose the location partially because it is within walking distance from a major grocery store and a bustling downtown, meeting many of MaineHousing’s priorities for affordable housing.

“The way they score applications is based on location, proximity to services,” Morrill said. “That was the crux for this site.”

City Manager Robert Peabody Jr., who was hired early this year and began working in February, said he thought the development was exactly what the city needed.

According to data from MaineHousing, almost half of Gardiner’s renting households are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing-related expenses. That reflects a larger trend in Maine: 46.9% of renters in Maine are cost-burdened.

An architectural rendering shows the Iron Heights project in Gardiner. Image courtesy of Matt Morrill/M

“We all know the housing shortage that’s throughout our state — it’s not just true for Gardiner — and we need affordable housing for our residents,” Peabody said. “It’s a tough rental world out there.”

Many of those struggling to find affordable housing are the people who work downtown, Gardiner Economic Development Director Melissa Lindley said. This project could help bridge that gap.

The T.W. Dick Co. Inc. building at 1 Summer St. in Gardiner seen in a September 2015 photo. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

“They could be our city employees,” Lindley said. “These are people that use our community and now they can live in it as well.”

Tuesday’s groundbreaking event was the culmination of more than a year of permitting and pre-construction approval processes. Morrill initially proposed the development 15 months ago, but longstanding environmental concerns on the site delayed progress.

T.W. Dick, a steel manufacturing business, abandoned the site in 2010. Four years later, after the city received a $400,000 grant to search the area for environmental hazards, an engineering firm found evidence of low levels of contaminated soil and hazardous material in the abandoned buildings.

Cleanup and soil capping efforts, funded by federal and state environmental agencies, have been ongoing since then. A previous proposal from MaineGeneral to build a medical facility on the site was abandoned in 2018.

Some 2,500 tons of soil are expected to be removed from the site and dumped in Augusta’s Hatch Hill landfill, a March engineering report said, an approximately $600,000 remediation process that would eliminate the potential health impacts on future residents.

Lindley said figuring out how — and whether — to move that soil safely and effectively took about eight months of planning and permitting work.

“There’s been a lot of stumbling blocks along the way, issues that needed to be figured out,” Lindley said. “So, to see it actually ready to go is something we’ve been working toward since January of last year.”

The site of the new Iron Heights development shown Tuesday at 1 Summer St. in Gardiner. The site was previously home to the T.W. Dick offices. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal