There may still be hope for a 70-home housing development north of Riverside.

After discussions between the Riverside City Council and APEX Development were left at a standstill in March, a new development agreement has been drafted for the Northern Heights Development project which would be situated on 28 acres of land owned by Yeggy Roetlin Farms, LLC and APEX Development. Mayor Allen Schneider comments on the proposal, “Right now we’re in the process of reviewing an agreement that they had submitted to the city on a proposed development. We’ve got our city attorney taking a look at that and an attorney looking over it for TIF (tax increment financing) funding as well and the expectation is that we’ll start to have a discussion and hopefully have a city council vote on proceeding with that in the next meeting or two.”

When asked how discussions resumed between the city and the developer Schneider responded, “Well, I don’t think we ever left the table. I think we’ve had discussions ongoing for awhile now and this is obviously a big project for the city so we want to do it right. We want to make it work for the city. We want to make it work for the developer as well so it’s taken a little time for sure, but I think we’re pretty close and we seem to have some interest from the city council in proceeding. So we’ll see how it goes over the next month or so is about all I can say to that.”

The agreement states that the city would pay at least $530 per linear foot for infrastructure improvements for the expansion in multiple phases throughout at least 2022. The city will also be responsible for the design and construction costs for concrete paving of Tupelo Boulevard to the entrance of the subdivision, as well as the design and construction cost of sanitary sewer, water, gas and electric utilities, cable and other improvements to the entrance.