SHEFFIELD – The Sheffield Housing Authority, which operates the City’s public housing facilities, delivered an announcement Tuesday, that the final phases in a complete overhaul of the properties was soon to begin breaking ground. Shirley Whitten announced, “Today, we are here to talk about the final step in our renovation program to improve Sheffield’s Public Housing. The first step is a new office building here on this site for Manning Homes.” Whitten told the audience that the new building, the first in an overall re-imagining of the complex, will be constructed out in front of the complex, facing Northwest 17th. Street. Manning Homes, which is one of Sheffield’s oldest operating public housing communities is on the site of the giant iron smelters that operated in Sheffield at the turn of the 20th Century. The site was known for decades as, “Furnace Hill”. Manning Homes, over the years, has undergone numerous facelifts which have kept the property attractive and functional. But these new renovations to the apartment complex will be a complete overhaul. The project, helmed by architects and engineers, Joshua and Stevie Banks, of Ledford Engineering, Planning and Architecture, of Arlington Tennessee will be to modernize and completely re-work the attractive, but aging infrastructure of the buildings, as well as giving the buildings a total facelift.
The project, which will take over a year to complete, will start breaking ground for the new offices in the next few months. The time-frame for the work is somewhat uncertain, given the COVID-19 medical crisis. Once the new building is constructed, and final bids are completed for the overall housing facility, that portion of the work will begin, probably in early 2021.
The Quad-Cities Daily was on hand to take photos of the ceremony.