After more than a decade of planning, Milford City Council voted on Monday to approve site plans for two large housing developments on the city’s southern edge.
The two projects will total more than 500 new units, including garden apartments and townhouses, along with dedicated footpaths.
Cliff Mumford, a civil engineer working for one of the projects’ developers, says the new housing will help address a key gap in Delaware’s housing supply.
“This type of housing is really needed in the City of Milford," he told the city's planning commission last week. "This multifamily housing is called the ‘missing middle.’ There’s plenty of single-family housing and some apartments, but things in the middle like duplexes and townhouses - there aren’t a lot of them out there.”
Planners and developers often point to ‘missing middle’ housing as a component of a larger strategy to reduce housing costs.
Smaller homes in denser neighborhoods are generally more affordable than single-family homes on large lots. The two new projects will add to the relatively small portion of Milford zoned for medium- or high-density housing, though some older apartment buildings exist in Milford’s historic downtown.
The Cypress Hall development, roughly a mile southwest of downtown Milford, has been in the planning phase since 2013; Mumford says a construction firm has been awaiting the council’s approval of a final site plan to begin building.
The other planned development is located three miles southeast of downtown Milford – outside of walking range, but within reach of a bus stop.
Delaware plans to make American Rescue Plan Act dollars available to incentivize market-rate developers to set aside units in new properties as affordable housing; the developers behind the Milford projects did not respond to Delaware Public Media’s inquiries as to whether they plan to participate in that program.
