WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — In a push to secure its future as a regional theater company, Northern Stage has announced that it will break ground in July on a new housing development at the end of Gates Street.

The complex of 18 units, which will provide housing for visiting actors and theater artists, and resident staff, is designed by the Middlebury, Vt.-based Bread Loaf Corporation. Bread Loaf also designed the company’s Barrette Center for the Arts, which opened on Gates Street in White River Junction in 2015.

There will be 10 studios, six two-bedroom units and two one-bedroom units available to both staff and visiting artists, said Jason Smoller, Northern Stage’s managing director. Rents for staff will be subsidized, at around 30% below market rate, he said.

To date, Northern Stage, entering its 27th year as a theater company, has already raised $8.2 million toward the $8.5 million campaign.

The $8.2 million comes from donations from private donors and family foundations — none of whom are being named — with strong ties to the Upper Valley, Smoller said. The exception is the Hanover-based Couch Family Foundation which serves the Upper Valley and which is offering a 1-to-1 match for donors up to $300,000 through the end of August.

Northern Stage is now turning to local businesses, patrons and Upper Valley residents to raise the remaining $300,000 necessary to “get us over the finish line,” Smoller said. The Gates Street housing complex, which has received planning approval from the town of Hartford, should be completed in summer 2025, he said.

The cost of the development, which should be completed in summer 2025, is $8.1 million, said Smoller. Of the $8.5 million the company plans to raise, $6.2 million will go to the housing complex; $1.3 million will go to the endowment; and $1 million will go to the Impact Fund, which, a Northern Stage news release stated, will serve “both as a boost to the operating budget and an avenue for the company to make significant investments.”

The remainder of the cost of the development will be financed via mortgage, Smoller said.

“This is a calculated risk, and we do believe it is a financially sound plan. We know the value this housing will add.”

Discussion on building an apartment complex that would serve the company’s staff and visiting artists began in 2019, Northern Stage Producing Artistic Director Carol Dunne said in a phone interview: “It’s a living endowment for this company to continue to thrive in our region. After we built the Barrette Center and were growing our audiences, we realized our next job was to solidify the company’s longevity and stability. It costs much more money now to produce theater than before the pandemic.”

The campaign to build new housing comes during and as a result of an acute nationwide shortage of affordable housing, which “makes it harder to attract staff,” Smoller said. Since 2021, rents have increased by 18% in the apartments that Northern Stage rents in White River Junction, Smoller said. The costs of utilities, insurance and food, among other expenses, have also gone up.

Northern Stage has spent more than $400,000 annually on housing, Smoller said. On average, the company houses 150 actors, designers, technical artists and musicians over the course of its season, he added in an email. It is a mandate of the actors’ union that theater companies provide visiting actors with free housing that is within walking distance of the theater; and if the housing is not within walking distance the company must provide the actor or artist with a car.

Northern Stage presently owns three buildings in Hartford where it houses staff: two are multiplex houses and one is a mixed-use building of apartments and retail space. Northern Stage also has rented 16 apartments in Hartford to accommodate visiting artists; those 16 apartments will be returned to the Upper Valley rental market when the complex is completed, thereby bringing more rentals to a community in need of them, Smoller said.

And it should yield a savings in housing costs of $270,000 or more annually, Smoller said.

The housing crisis in the Upper Valley has hit all employers, said Jennifer Kaye Argenti, chairwoman of the Northern Stage board, in a phone interview.

“You don’t go a week without hearing about organizations losing recruits because they can’t find placement in the community,” she said. “It was really important to get a handle on this. It’s really important for us to offer competitive and attractive housing to recruit the people we need.”

Lexi Spanier, Northern Stage’s costume shop manager, was living in Nashville when she applied for theater jobs across the country. She narrowed the offers to a job in Bethesda, Maryland, and a job at Northern Stage.

The housing in Bethesda, near Washington D.C., was “prohibitively expensive,” she said; in contrast Northern Stage offered subsidized housing with utilities included, and snow removal in the winter. She has been on the job for about two years, and she and her partner currently pay $1,200 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in White River Junction.

The Northern Stage complex will not be the only affordable housing development in town.

This week saw the opening of the 42-unit Riverwalk Apartments, built on Maple Street along the Connecticut River. The apartments were developed by the construction company DEW Braverman with the agreement to sell the building to Twin Pines Housing Trust of White River Junction and Evernorth, a nonprofit organization that focuses on affordable housing in Northern New England.

“People want to have a positive impact on the housing crisis. Employers, organizations, and institutions are being more proactive in understanding they’ll have to play a more direct role,” said John Haffner, a specialist in affordable housing at Vital Communities in White River Junction.

“The fact that Northern Stage is a smaller employer and taking such a proactive role in developing such a project themselves shows how critical housing is to all employers,” Haffner said. A question yet to be answered is whether the 16 rental units currently leased by Northern Stage will be affordable once they return to the broader rental market, he said.

“One of the challenges in an aggressive market in returning those units is that it doesn’t mean those units are necessarily affordable,” Haffner said. “In a place like the Upper Valley, where th e cost of living is getting even worse, affordability is a loaded term.”

Argenti calls the development the culmination of a “long conversation and a long dream, so it’s really exciting to be at this moment and to have such incredible support from the community for this next big step.”

For Spanier, the calculus is simple. “I don’t think I could afford to live here if I wasn’t in company housing,” she said.

Nicola Smith can be reached at mail@nicolasmith.org.

A previous version of this story included an incorrect home base for the foundation.