Housing Headlines

MANSFIELD --- Developers are seeking a special permit from the town so it move forward with its $35 million plan to transform the former Archer Daniels Midland chocolate plant on Oakland Street into a mixed-use development with 130 apartments,19 of them affordable.

WAREHAM --- Approximately 75 low-income people who have been living in Wareham motels could be displaced as of May 22 when the town's new board of health policies will require motels who rent to long-term tenants to upgrade their facilities with dining quarters and upgraded sprinkler systems. As of now, only one of the five motels in town that does long-term rents has complied with the town's new health bylaws.

MELROSE --- In an unusual move, Mayor Rob Dolan wrote a letter to the planning board expressing his opposition to developer Angus Bruce's proposal to build 13 single-family homes on a wooded 8.7 acres near Mount Hope Golf Course. Dolan also said the city would not be threatened by Bruce's counter plan to build 165 units with a Ch. 40B permit if the town didn't vote favorably on his proposal. The planning board subsequently voted down Bruce's proposal. (Melrose Free Press).

HYANNIS --- While acknowledging that supportive service for the homeless in most effective when done at home, a Barnstable town councilor who is co-founder of an organization that helps the homeless suggested temporarily sending the growing population of homeless off Cape for treatment while the community works on replacing the downtown Hyannis homeless shelter with a larger facility elsewhere. (Cape Cod Times)

LOWELL --- A long-dilapidated mill at a major gateway to the city would become an iconic building with dozens of new apartments and several restaurants, developer Sal Lupoli of Chelmsford told the Planning Board Monday in the first look the public got at the project.

GLOUCESTER --- Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken is looking to pump $1.5 million from the pending sale of the Fuller School property into the Gloucester Affordable Housing Trust, with an eye toward creating two affordable rental housing complexes — one geared to Gloucester’s seniors, the other for the city’s veterans. Fuller Mixed Use Ventures LLC, a partnership among the Cape Ann YMCA, Windover Construction and the Sam Park Companies, initially bid $5.1 million for the site but then agreed to add another $500,000 for the city’s Affordable Housing Trust to offset the Fuller group’s mixed-use proposal.