The Ursuline Sisters of Bedford Park are once again using land to fuel their mission of service.

Back in 1892, the Sisters acquired a plot of farmland in northwest Bronx County, an area now known as Bedford Park. They kept some of the crops on the land and sold them to provide for the all-girls high school they had started, The Academy at Mt. St. Ursula.

Now the Sisters are using their underutilized land for another purpose that will subsidize the Academy: the creation of a 240-unit affordable senior housing complex called Serviam Gardens. “Serviam” is the motto of Ursuline-led schools worldwide. It means “I will serve” in Latin.

The money from leasing the property will go directly back into the school, helping keep tuition affordable for local students in the future.

“Essentially, this is a huge piece of property in the Bronx,” said Sister Superior Pascal Conforti. “And as the neighborhood changed [becoming more low-income], we realized we needed to do this in order to subsidize tuition for our students.” It was either that, she said, or raise tuition and possibly price out prospective Bronx students.

The Academy predates the Sisters’ move to Bedford Park and boasts that 98 percent of its graduates go on to higher education.

Last week, on a beautiful Wednesday morning, the Sisters, along with their development partners and new tenants, the nonprofit group Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, which will lease and manage the new building with financial help from several government programs, held a belated groundbreaking ceremony for the project that amounted to more of a victory celebration.

“We’re not going to try and fool you into thinking this a groundbreaking,” said Fordham Bedford Executive Director John Reilly, pointing to the giant hole already in the ground where the new building will soon be constructed.

But Reilly and others did unveil one of the cornerstones for Serviam Gardens and several stakeholders spoke about the importance and “groundbreaking” nature of the project.

The $65.6-million project is one of three in the entire country to use a complex public and private financing package that included money from both federal and city housing programs. One of the others is a new outpatient building for Morris Heights Health Center (the other is a project in Seattle).

Initially, Fordham Bedford used money from the New York City Acquisition Fund, a program set up in 2006 to help nonprofit groups buy private land to preserve affordable housing, to lease the land from the Ursuline Sisters. (The acquisition fund is managed by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] and was funded partly by Enterprise, a national nonprofit with a heavy focus on creating and preserving affordable housing.) To supplement the city funds, Fordham Bedford used federal tax credits from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) low-income senior housing program.

The Bronx borough president’s office also contributed $2 million for the project.

Getting both city and federal agencies to work together was a victory in and of itself, said HPD Commissioner Shaun Donovan. “Each institution has different rules and regulations and they often don’t jibe,” he said. “It’s a real challenge, but I think we found the sweet spot,” meaning the right combination of available land, affordable housing programs and federal tax credits.

In his remarks, Donovan quoted both Howard Cossell and Martin Luther King, Jr. in talking about how important projects like Serviam Gardens are to the city and the Bronx specifically. He called the Ursuline Sisters’ efforts “miraculous” and spoke about the “blessed” nature of the project. Donovan said the city is halfway to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2003 pledge to create 165,000 new units of affordable housing in New York City.

Like all of Fordham Bedford’s new developments, Serviam Gardens will be built with the environment in mind. Some of the eco-friendly elements include a “green” roof, energy efficient electronics and appliances, insulated windows and bamboo flooring.

Low-income senior tenants for the building will be chosen from an upcoming lottery. Serviam Gardens should be completed and open for tenants by October 2009.

In an interview following the ceremony, Sister Conforti summed up the Ursuline thinking behind the project, saying, “The idea [for leasing the land] was not a mission to make money, but to use money for the mission.”