The Connecticut developer who met the Altoona Redevelopment Authority last month to introduce her idea of building tiny homes in the city purchased a cluster of Fifth Ward lots from the authority land bank Friday to begin her project.

Roberta Hoskie of RH Realty Services of New Haven paid a total of $700 for the seven sloping lots, which are located a block west of the Donald E. Witherspoon Memorial Basketball Court.

Hoskie is waiting on a survey and an engineering report to determine how many houses she can build there, but guessed Monday that it could be eight.

The homes in the “micro-community” will likely be about 700 square feet, she said Friday.

Hoskie learned about Altoona through a friend of a friend and originally hoped to build standard-sized homes here, but reverted to the tiny-house idea after realizing that standard homes would be economically unfeasible. The city’s low average income wouldn’t allow enough potential buyers to afford the mortgages they’d need to pay the cost of construction, plus a developer’s profit, she told the board last month.

Hoskie at that time presented plans for a regular model with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, dining room and kitchen, and a smaller accessible model with one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, a combo kitchen/dining area, a utility room and a flex room.

The modular homes would likely be built by Pleasant Valley Homes of Pine Grove in Schuylkill County.

She doesn’t have a firm timeline, but wants to work “expeditiously,” Hoskie told the board.

Buying land from the authority is less expensive than buying it from the open market, said Community Development Director Eric Luchansky.

Hoskie doesn’t anticipate there will be a problem with the slope, because it isn’t “major,” and because engineers in Altoona are familiar with building on sloping ground, she said.

“I want to have a long-term relationship with Altoona,” Hoskie told the board. “A partnership.”

More renovations

Luchansky has been working with local home improvement outlets to buy material and appliances for three homes the authority plans to develop this summer on the former Garfield Elementary School property at 14th Avenue and

20th Street, also in Fifth Ward.

The authority is paying for the materials and appliances and for some of the construction costs so that it can use up the approximately $748,000 remaining of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act grant of $39.6 million before the hard deadline for spending that money.

EADS expects the authority can advertise for requests for proposals from contractors for the homes in April.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.