Cecilia Rossiter made sure to check out campus before arriving in Lincoln this fall.
She walked up and down City Campus, caught a show at the Lied Center for Performing Arts and even bought a few Husker shirts.
But Rossiter isn’t a student – she’s a cellist and composer with multiple sclerosis living in Washington, D.C., but hoping to move into the new Liberty Village housing project east of City Campus later this year.
Rossiter was just looking for a house close to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s libraries, where she hopes to do medical research.
But to her surprise, Fernando Pagés, Liberty Village’s designer and contractor, was willing to build a house around her particular needs – one with wide doorways for her wheelchair and without a single stair step.
“He’s helping me so much with so many things,” Rossiter said.
Rossiter is one of eight people who have already reserved lots for the 20-unit Liberty Village project, a brainchild of Pagés and the City of Lincoln that will provide cutting-edge low- to moderate-income housing designed around the needs of multicultural and nontraditional homeowners.
The project, located between Vine and U streets from 23rd to 24th streets, is one of the first redevelopment efforts of the Antelope Valley Project.
The Antelope Valley Project is a 20-year plan to improve the neighborhoods north and east of City Campus.
Liberty Village is drawing financial support from Pagés, the city and the state, and it has even caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The project broke ground in June and will be monitored by HUD through its Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing. The project is only one in Nebraska to be monitored for the program, Pagés said.
“We’re testing out a number of innovative home-building technologies,” said Pagés, who owns Brighton Construction in Lincoln. “It gives a high level of quality control because we’ve got these technicians observing us.”
Among Pagés’ most innovative designs are those for multicultural and immigrant families.
In Vietnamese-American families, for example, it is often considered impolite to be seen or smelled while cooking, so Pagés designs houses for them with an outdoor-vented range hood and a partition separating the kitchen from the living room.
Many Arab and Hispanic families prefer to do their socializing not in the yard but on the roof. So Pagés is building houses for them with roof patios.
Omar Lisak, an Argentinean construction worker who lives in Lincoln, said he chose Liberty Village partially because of this type of innovation.
“I like that kind of deck on top of the garage,” Lisak said. “That will really make it more like a social area.”
Andy Vu, a realtor with First Choice Realty Team in Lincoln who represents many of Pagés’ projects, said Pagés works hard to listen to various ethnic communities’ needs.
“Fernando does a lot of investigation and research about minority people and what they want, and that makes a big difference,” he said.
Vu said he hopes the first of the houses – which range from 1,400 to 1,600 square feet and will sell for about $130,000 – will be completed later this year.
The housing is made affordable by government-subsidized home loans with rates between 1.9 and 2.9 percent, he said.
There are no restrictions on who may live in the Village, but homeowners will be required to live in their own homes, rather than rent them out, Pagés said.
“When neighborhoods are made up of homeowners, they tend to be a lot more stable and safe than when they have a lot of renters,” he said.
According to 2000 Census figures, the area east of City Campus around Liberty Village has the highest percentage of ethnic and racial minorities in Lincoln and one of the lowest median incomes.
Pagés said Liberty Village will address the needs of the area, and it’s the intellectual challenge of devising those solutions that excites him.
“There’s something about this type of project that inspires me, rather than going and doing a project in the suburbs,” he said.
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