A crowd of some 100, including community leaders and potential homebuyers, gathered to break ground Friday on Renaissance at Sanger Heights, a North Waco “pocket neighborhood” nearly 15 years in the making.
The 25-unit development will be located between 17th Street and Sanger Avenue, where Sanger Avenue Elementary School stood for more than a century before an arsonist set it ablaze in 2008.
Fourteen of the 25 single-family homes planned for the development are considered affordable, thanks in part to federal funding.
Grassroots Waco has worked on the project since 2012, when the city of Waco chose it as the developer. The community development nonprofit has built scores of homes for low- and moderate-income homebuyers elsewhere in Waco’s inner city.
Grassroots Executive Director Mike Stone underlined the significance of the project during Friday’s ceremony.
“This development honors the past while creating new opportunities for families to build stability and generational wealth,” Stone said. “The neighborhood is going to feature thoughtfully designed, energy-efficient homes centered around the shared green space … and a community park.”
Site work on the development should begin within weeks, with home construction to follow in November, Stone told The Waco Bridge on Friday.
Waco resident April Strickland said she’s hoping to move her family into one of the homes at Renaissance at Sanger Heights precisely for its community-centered design. “I fell in love with the concept of my kids being able to run across the street to the neighbors, or play in the front yard and not be worried about vehicles, just all the hecticness,” Strickland said.
Unlike most U.S. single family developments, Renaissance homes will face a sidewalk or a shared, car-free green space. Parking is served by two internal streets providing garage access. A large live oak tree on the site will be preserved as part of the green space.
“At this point, I’m not even going to look to buy a house again until Renaissance is done,” Strickland said. “That’s what I’m going to be saving for the next two years.”
U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Waco), who grew up four blocks from the project site, told the crowd Friday that his experience raising a son with Down Syndrome underscored the importance of affordable housing for disabled individuals.
“I need to know that there are communities like this,” Sessions said.
“We need to make sure housing is available for everybody, and that includes disabled people who, through probably no fault of their own, need help.”
In 2024, Sessions helped secure $3 million in federal funding for the project, which increased the number of affordable homes from six to 14. Affordable units are set at 80% area median income: About $71,000 for a family of four or $49,800 for a single person, as the Bridge reported last year.
Allison Allen, who lives in a larger Grassroots Waco home a few blocks away, told the Bridge she hopes to buy a Renaissance home and retire there after her last child graduates from high school.
“I want to live in the neighborhood, I don’t want a yard, I already am a Grassroots homeowner, and this is just the next phase of my Grassroots homeownership,” she said.
