Wadena West and Welch Place Apartments opened March 20, 2026 in West Duluth, adding 90 Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units for single adults experiencing homelessness through a paired development that is unusual both in structure and in execution. The adjacent properties were developed by Center City Housing Corp. as separate but coordinated deals.
Together, the 60-unit Wadena West and 30-unit Welch Place show how a nonprofit sponsor can assemble multiple state and federal subsidy streams, including Minnesota’s robust housing infrastructure tools and 4 percent Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), to build PSH at scale in a small to medium-sized metro area.
The two projects collectively show how the need for deeply subsidized, service-rich housing has spread to nearly every corner of the country.
“There is an ongoing need for supportive housing to meet the needs of people exiting homelessness or who may have disabilities or issues with mental health or substance use,” says Jill Mazullo, communications director at Minnesota Housing. “These needs have been well documented in Duluth.”
Although Wadena West and Welch Place are neighboring properties that both provide PSH units, the fact that both celebrated a grand opening on the same day was more coincidence than design.
Wadena West was conceived first, meant to address the city’s lack of housing capable of supporting single adults with significant needs. “The community need was evident,” says Nancy Cashman, executive director of Center City.
Separately, plans began forming for Welch Place, which was meant to replace obsolete units at Memorial Park, a nearby Center City property.
Although some may have been tempted to combine the projects, partners say that keeping the developments separate helped make the execution manageable. “If you did a 90 unit property, the amount of financing that you would need for that would be pretty significant,” says John Errigo, managing director of equity investing and NOAH fund manager at Greater Minnesota Housing Fund. “It’s probably a case where, if they did it all at once, it would have been too big of a financing request.”
Thus, even though they celebrated grand openings on the same day, right next to each other, serving the same populations, the two projects were nevertheless funded in different years and with different capital stacks.
Welch Place applied for a LIHTC allocation in July 2023, was selected in December 2023, and closed in March 2025 with a Total Development Cost (TDC) of $14.9 million. This included $4 million in Minnesota Housing HOME funds, City of Duluth HOME support, $610,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money through the city, about $250,000 in energy sales-tax rebates, a small general-partner loan, and a $5.2 million housing infrastructure bond award.
Additionally, Welch Place received a four percent LIHTC allocation from Minnesota Housing. This translated to $4.9 million in equity provided by Minnesota Equity Fund, a strategic partnership between local community development nonprofit Greater Minnesota Housing Fund and nationally active nonprofit financial provider Cinnaire.
“Greater Minnesota Housing Fund and Cinnaire are strategic partners, and Minnesota Equity Fund is the way that the two organizations collaborate to make sure that we’re making affordable housing investment capital available throughout the state,” says Chris Jillings, Cinnaire’s senior vice president for strategic communications.
Thirty Years of Supporting Sustainable Affordable Housing