This March 22, 2017 photo, shows one of the classrooms inside the former 21,500-square-foot Transfiguration School Building in which the City of Detroit in partnership with the Archdiocese of Detroit is looking to redevelop. The former Catholic school building in Detroit near the border of Hamtramck has been vacant since 2005. The project is expected to cost between $4-5 million with hopes of turning it into a mixed-income apartment building with 15-25 residential units, 20 percent of which will be considered affordable. (Tanya Moutzalias /The Ann Arbor News via AP.)

DETROIT — Detroit is working with the Catholic Church to turn a former parochial school into a mixed-income apartment building.

Officials say the effort to convert the vacant Transfiguration School aligns with Mayor Mike Duggan’s goal to strengthen neighborhoods.

Detroit’s Department of Housing and Revitalization is seeking proposals from developers to turn the site in the Banglatown neighborhood into 15 to 25 residential units. Officials say that because nearly two-thirds of the neighborhood’s residents live at or below poverty level, about 20 percent of those units will be affordable housing.

The project is expected to cost $4 million to $5 million.

The former school served Catholics in northeast Detroit for 80 years until its 2005 closing.

The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/