CORNING, N.Y. (WENY)--  A roughly $20 million plan to convert a historic church on the north side of Corning into senior housing is one step closer to possibly being finalized.

The housing developer Housing Visions came back to the table and presented revisions of their housing proposal at a special Corning City Council meeting on Monday. 

They have been working to get approval to transform St. Vincent's DePaul church into a housing complex for roughly two years. After tonight's presentation to the city council, the council voted unanimously to refer the project to the planning commission.

Plans for a housing complex include the five buildings on the St. Vincent's church campus. There will be 45 apartments in total. The name of the housing complex has been changed from Parish Lofts to Parish Heights. Parish Heights will have 40, one-bedroom apartments, two. two bedrooms and two three bedrooms.

Thirty-seven of those apartments will be for seniors and eight for families. The church will be converted into a daycare facility to provide service for up to fifty children.

Corning Housing Partnership provided Housing Visions with $115,000 to help fund part of the project which also includes a new park called Punty Park and a pathway called Parish Path.

The General Manager with Housing Visions presented Monday evening and breakdowns a major revision to the housing plan.

"The major revision was adding green space to the overall plan because it's a historic development. A lot of the footprints need to stay in place and we got creative in looking at building footprints and how to minimize the footprints and shift the density over to one of the additions. That was where the neighborhood concerns were coming from. With the addition of that greens space and adding in a potential park and the walking connectivity for our residence and the neighborhood I think it's just a plus for the northside," Christopher Trevisani said.

It's been a long road to get to this point Trevisani said. He believes the plan now as opposed to the previous one is what the community wants to see.

"I think we are still addressing the housing needs in corning as a whole. We had to shrink one building by almost fifty percent and close a portion of Flint Avenue to build a park and pathway," Trevisani said.

He is pleased the council is referring the project to the housing commission and tells WENY News two things that have kept him up at night about this.

"When we get a lot of negative comments on what we do that keeps me up and then just some common misconceptions about affordable housing in general," Trevisani said.

Mayor Boland says it was a great feeling in the room Monday evening and explained this is what the Corning Community's northside needs.

"People came together that's what I was hoping a lot of us were hoping that and it was definitely shown tonight and that's very encouraging," Boland said.

As far as the next steps the council will refer the project to the planning commission. The planning commission will then review the proposal and have a meeting sometime in September. 

Once the proposal has gone through all the approval steps Housing Visions says they will break ground by end of the year 2023.