Ground breaking community planning

BOSTON --- Mission Hill Neighborhood Housing Services’ efforts to bring housing and economic development to the neighborhood reached another milestone recently as it celebrated the start of construction at Parcel 25, a vacant former MBTA parcel across the street from the Roxbury Crossing MBTA Orange Line station.

“I am proud to celebrate the new vision for Parcel 25,” said Mayor Marty Walsh at groundbreaking ceremonies on Nov. 12.  “This mixed-use center will bring even more residents and economic progress to Roxbury Crossing.”

Located near the corner of Columbus Ave. and Tremont Street, Parcel 25 Phase 1A will feature a new five-story building with three floors of residential units over two floors of office and retail. Mission Hill NHS worked with the community to develop an overall vision for the site and is developing the housing portion of Phase 1A and the ground-floor retail space.

The housing will consist of 40 affordable apartments while the commercial space will feature two below-market spaces for local “mom and pop” retailers and one market rate space. Eastern Bank – one of the project’s lenders – will open a bank branch in the market rate space.

“Eastern Bank firmly believes in this project,” said Joe Riley, Eastern Bank’s executive vice president for consumer banking. “We are proud to open a new branch in Roxbury and look forward to helping its residents and businesses prosper.”

The second floor has been broken out into a separate condominium that will be owned and occupied by the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership (MBHP), the state’s largest provider of housing subsidies and support services. MBHP will move all 155 of its employees from its downtown Boston location to this site and will occupy half of the first floor and all of the second floor.

The Parcel 25 1A groundbreaking was a proud day for Mission Hill NHS as the event capped a 12-year community planning process similar to the one it went through to envision and co-develop the One Brigham Circle mixed-use district back in 2003.

For Parcel 25, there was an initial phase in which over 140 Mission Hill neighbors attended 14 brainstorming sessions to identify potential goals and uses for the site, followed by a second phase of citizen task forces and workshops to develop consensus, refine schematic drawings and analyze the feasibility of the community’s preferred outcomes. The result was a detailed plan on how to develop this key transit-oriented gateway to the neighborhood.

“We are happy that the project truly reflects the community’s vision and addresses the goals people identified during our participatory planning process,” said Patricia Flaherty, executive director of Mission Hill NHS and a longtime neighborhood resident. “We are happier still that the City of Boston, the state, and our equity partners and lenders also supported that vision.  This would not have been possible without their willingness to work with us.  It’s not just about building a building.  It’s about rebuilding a community at Roxbury Crossing.”

Parcel 25 1A will feature nine one-bedroom, 22 two-bedroom and nine three-bedroom apartments affordable to households at or below 60 percent of area median income (AMI). Project-based Section 8 vouchers will support eight of these units, five for homeless or formerly homeless families and at three for families with individuals who have disabilities. The expected completion date is fall, 2017.

Parcel 25 1A is being funded primarily with federal low-income housing tax credits awarded by the state Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). DHCD is providing additional support through federal HOME funds, Community Based Housing program, Housing Stabilization Fund, Commercial Area Transit Fund and the state’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is administered by MassHousing. Additional state support came from MassDevelopment’s Brownfield Fund. Construction financing is being provided by Eastern Bank and Boston Private Bank. First Sterling is the tax credit investor.

MHP is using its bank-funded loan pool to provide $2.9 million in long-term financing. Since 1990, MHP has used this fund to provide over $1.1 billion in loans and commitments for the financing of 23,000 units of rental housing across Massachusetts. In Boston, MHP has used this fund to provide $270 million in loans for the funding of over 6,000 apartments. This is the first loan MHP is making to Mission Hill NHS.

“Mission Hill NHS has an impressive history of providing housing and economic opportunities for residents while at the same time working with the institutional forces like Wentworth Institute and Children’s Hospital to forge an overall sense of community that works to help the neighborhood deal with the natural forces of displacement,” said David Rockwell, MHP’s director of lending. “From the housing they’ve preserved to the economic development they’ve brought to Brigham Circle, Mission Hill NHS has done an outstanding job and we’re delighted to be a partner in bringing housing and economic development to Roxbury Crossing.”

The City of Boston is supporting this phase with $2.7 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds. Children's Hospital is supporting the development with a $1.3 million payment for housing creation. Parcel 25 is a former MBTA site that was conveyed to the City of Boston to create a development site that includes two city lots and land owned by Wentworth Institute of Technology. Future phases are planned to develop the rest of these sites.

“Now when I look out my window, I don’t have to be looking at vacant lots and negative activities,” said Maria Sanchez, president of the Mission Hill NHS board.  “This building and the phases to follow will completely transform this end of Tremont Street, and bring people, jobs, and businesses to the area. It’s exciting to see the change finally happening.”

For more information about this development and MHP’s financing programs, contact MHP Director of Lending David Rockwell at drockwell@mhp.net or Senior Loan Officer Alice Wong at awong@mhp.net.