Board of Aldermen 09-28-2021 Page 10
Kyle Talente, President of RKG Associates
Well, | mean, that's a great question because if in the next few years only 100 units are built, to your question, it's really
not going to move the needle very much. However, the next few years you permit 20,000 new housing units in the City of
Nashua, that's going to change the market quite substantially. | guess my point of saying one to two years is what we
typically see it other communities that are as active as yours in terms of trying understand it and recalibrate based on how
the market is changing. If you see a substantial uptick in development and your staff who are all more than capable to
come back and say, hey look we just approved all these units at 80% of AMI, do you think we're going to be good there?
We should recalibrate and look at maybe either going higher, or lower, or whatever the market is saying. Then you can
do that at that point in time. There's no absolute number. My point is saying a year or two is based on our experience of
other communities with similar accurate markets as yours and size of markets is yours, so that you aren't going to end up
going too far down one particular housing type at the expense of not providing something else somewhere else. Does that
make sense?
Alderwoman Kelly
It does thank you. | would just say that | have a ton more questions. So if perhaps you could come to the next Human
Affairs Committee and have some more questions from the committee too. That would be great.
Kyle Talente, President of RKG Associates
| would be happy to accommodate that. Please work with Sarah and we can try and do the best we can to make that
happen.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thanks so much.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Questions? Alderwoman Lu.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you Madam President. You mentioned that this would be best or you want to focus on downtown. | just wonder is
that because of the cost of real estate in the downtown is less per acre? Why would this work best in downtown?
Kyle Talente, President of RKG Associates
Well so just to be very, very clear, we believe that there's the policy should look at all different areas of the city. We think
the downtown maybe should have a different set of rules than other areas of the city and it's not because the cost of land
is less, it’s because the cost to develop is more. And so as a result, the ability to provide one affordable unit, for example,
when | have to also provide structured parking is the impact of that on the cash flow or on the value of that project is
greater than let's say | did it somewhere else where I'm able to do surface parking because there's enough land and I'm
not trying to maximize the amount of developments that we create a walkable area, per se, or an urban scale walkable
area, per se. And So it's not that it should be focused on downtown as we think that maybe the city should consider a
different set of criteria in the inclusionary zoning policy for downtown because of the unique attributes that it has that other
areas of the city do not.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. May | follow up with a couple two others? Just another question | had is did you feel that the expected rate of
return was so high simply because of expectations that have been built over years? | mean or doesn't have anything to
do with risk, perceived risk?
Kyle Talente, President of RKG Associates
You know return expectations and risk are usually melded together in an open marketplace. They usually bounce out
because there is demand from a various number of developers so that it kind of hits that equilibrium - that 12 to 15% for
rental and that 20 to 25% for owner is where you have that consistency if you will where you have a lot of developers that
want to do business and a lot of folks that want to have that type of housing.
