LEWISTON — Councilors Tuesday welcomed a Lisbon Street development that would bring housing and retail to a row of vacant lots along the west side of the downtown street.

“There is a saying in urban design about the missing tooth syndrome, and boy, have we been missing a tooth here on Lisbon Street for some time,” Councilor Jim Lysen told developer Nathan Szanton on Tuesday.

Szanton and his company want to develop the seven empty lots on the west side of Lisbon Street between Pine and Ash streets, constructing a five-story apartment building with 71 units. The development will contain publicly supported affordable units and apartments with market-rate rents.

He also plans to leave space on the Lisbon Street level for retail or restaurant space.

It would replace a row of buildings destroyed by fire in 2006. The lots, between the Professional Building at 145 Lisbon St. and Centreville Plaza at 179 Lisbon St., have been vacant since then.

Szanton told councilors he plans to purchase all seven lots — five from the city and two from owner Tom Platz.

Councilors Tuesday night voted 6-1 to let Szanton’s company move forward with his purchase of the city’s five lots for $152,140. Szanton said he’s reached a similar deal with Platz for the final two lots.

Lysen said the empty lots are uncomfortable to walk past. The city has put up a chain-link fence to keep people out, but the lot drops off by a story between Lisbon Street and Canal Street alley. Those heights make it feel more empty, he said.

“It’s difficult to walk along that space that’s so empty,” Lysen said. “People just don’t want to walk past nothing. Your project is going to fill in a blank that’s been there for almost a decade.”

Only City Councilor Mike Lachance voted against the measure.

Lachance said he has concerns about providing low-income apartments and public tax support for the development.

“It’s been noted that low-income housing might not be appropriate in this part of the town,” Lachance said. “The goal, I believe, is to bring in market-rate housing, more affluent people down there — young professionals with higher income.”

Szanton’s plans call for building tenant storage, laundry and a fitness space on the basement level, below Lisbon Street, with retail space level on the Lisbon Street side.

The rest, including three stories above Lisbon Street and five on the Canal Street Alley side, would be 71 single-bedroom apartments.

The project is expected to cost about $15 million.

The project financing relies on getting affordable housing tax credits from Maine Housing, and Szanton said his group hopes to apply for those credits in October. They’d find out if they are successful in December and would plan to begin work in June 2017.

The building would be finished by the summer of 2018, he said.

He’s also asking for a 15-year tax increment finance district on the properties, which would return half of the new property taxes from the development back to his company.

Economic Development Director Lincoln Jeffers said the councilors should see the proposed TIF district in June.

The city would also allocate $325,000 of the federal HOME funds to the project, Jeffers said. HOME is a fund managed by the federal Housing and Urban Development Agency to promote affordable housing development.

Szanton said 56 of the units would be set aside for lower-income, or “workplace” housing for people earning between $20,000 and $34,000 per year. The remaining 15 units would rent at market rate.

Mayor Robert Macdonald said the plan has his support. He tried to help a developer get financing for a purely market-rate development last year, but couldn’t.

“We found out that unless you can get some help from the housing people, you can’t do the job,” Macdonald said. “This is not Portland. People are looking for prices here, and because of those constraints, that developer could not do what he wanted to do.”

Macdonald said the project is welcome.

“This is for the working people,” Macdonald said. “You can call them poor or whatever you want, but they are working people, and they don’t make all kinds of money. This will be a nice place for them, and hopefully they’ll be working downtown.”

Szanton said his company was originally interested in developing a city-owned lot near the intersection of Maple and Park streets, when City Administrator Ed Barrett suggested they consider Lisbon Street.

“At first, our response was no,” Szanton said. “We really are not retail developers. We are housing developers. But the more we got to thinking about it, the more we realized that it’s such a high-purpose site, and there is so much good to be done for the city, it overcame our reluctance. We decided to go for it.”

Those vacant spaces once held four historic buildings, dating back to 1895.The city took over the parcels in 2015.

The Szanton Co. operates six housing developments in Maine and New Hampshire and is currently building two more. This would be the company’s second in Lewiston. In 2012 it opened 48 units in Bates Mill Building No. 2 at the corner of Canal and Chestnut streets. The units have been full since, and there is a waiting list for tenants.

staylor@sunjournal.com