A blank space on the map of Manchester may soon be filled with homes selling for as much as $255,000.

Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority agreed yesterday to pass on $500,000 from the state's Growing Greener II fund to help the Manchester Citizens Corp. and Fourth River Development to reconnect Juniata Street through the site of the former American Electric plant, and rework water and sewer lines. The bill for clearing the site and putting in the first five of an eventual 31 houses is expected to be $3 million, said Mark Schneider of Fourth River. Much of that will be publicly funded.

"There's an awful lot of public subsidy," said state Sen. Jim Ferlo, a URA board member, before voting for the project.

Mr. Schneider said that connecting the two parts of Juniata Street will cost $1.29 million, and preparing the site is expensive.

"I think it will do good for the market in Manchester," said Jerome Jackson, associate director of the nonprofit Manchester Citizens Corp. He said that homes two blocks from the site already sell for around $200,000, and the addition of new housing could keep that trend strong.

Mr. Schneider said the homes would have three or four bedrooms and sell for $179,000 to $255,000. The development team is putting together a mortgage program to help lower-income buyers get fixed-rate loans with interest rates below 4 percent.

Groundbreaking could occur in March.

The URA board also voted to commit $2.75 million of its Pittsburgh Development Fund to cover cost overruns at the emerging $321 million Consol Energy Center, if ticket surcharges and other leftover money don't fill a gap. That's the final approval needed to cover the overruns.

The board also voted to pay Sal Williams Real Estate $240,000 for an option to buy property around the intersection of Dinwiddie and Colwell streets in the Lower Hill District. The firm must use the payment to make promised community agreements, and the URA gets to count the payment against the cost of the properties if it later buys them for their appraised value.

URA Executive Director Rob Stephany said there is not yet a development plan for the parcels.