The Wakefield Senior Center is one of many Massachusetts developments established with the help of the Boston-based Community Opportunities Group.
The Community Opportunities Group, a Boston-based organization dedicated to helping the housing and community development needs of local municipalities, is now also working to manage its own exponential growth. The company was founded in 1979 with a specialization in HUD Community Development Block Grants, but has expanded both its services and its staff significantly since its inception to include a vast array of specialty needs for cities and towns looking for help.
“We were founded with the intention of helping small communities who did not have the local capacity or expertise in the area of Community Development Block Grants to begin accessing the funds available to them. That was the core of our business for a number of years and still comprises about two-thirds of our annual billing, but we have and are continuing to grow,” said Wayne Darragh, vice president of COG. “We’ve doubled our staff since I started in 1993 to 15 employees and we’re looking for new hires and, of course, new clients.”
The Massachusetts Community Development Block Grant Program is a federally funded, competitive grant initiative designed to help small cities and towns meet a broad range of community development needs. Assistance is provided to qualifying cities and towns for housing, community and economic development projects that assist low- and moderate-income residents, by revitalizing areas of slum or blight or providing aid in an emergency situation.
“We help communities to find projects that are eligible for funding, prepare the applications for them so that they will hold up in the competitive process and, if grants are funded, we seek a follow-up contract to administer funded programs and activities,” said Darragh. “There are numerous benefits for communities who take advantage of this and there’s almost no financial commitment. Take that, and realize that we’re talking about being able to access up to $800,000, and it’s not a bad deal.”
The broad range of projects that are eligible for CBDGs has lead COG to work on some varying, although all very consequential, projects. In the town of Blackstone’s High Rocks neighborhood, COG helped to bring a sewer system into the underprivileged community.
“Before we came in, this neighborhood was on a very shallow septic system, which was posing a real problem. We went through over three funding cycles to finance the $1.8 million project,” Darragh said.
‘A Real Impact’
In Wakefield, COG helped to establish the Wakefield Senior Center, which was a rehab of an existing surplus elementary school. CDBG funds helped to cover about a third of the development’s budget.
“It was a very challenging project, but the final product spoke for itself when all was said and done. This is the kind of thing we do that’s more personal, that has a real impact. It’s amazing to see people’s lives being made better,” said Darragh.
In addition to the CBDG side of its operations, COG also manages public construction projects; offers technical assistance in downtown revitalization, housing development and regulatory compliance; and works with small nonprofit organizations that need guidance in their growth.
One of the centerpieces of the organization’s expanding portfolio is planning.
“The planning arm is a growing arm and it has been for the past nine years or so,” said Judi Barrett, a project manager with COG. “We do a wide variety of work on that front: master plans for communities, district level planning, peer review work for boards and commissions, and helping communities sculpt a developer’s submittal to their advantage.”
Throughout all its work in the past 30-plus years, COG has gained a solid reputation for what it does.
“We provide a specialty service. Sometimes communities issue a request for proposals and are looking for services that way, but more and more we’re being called upon because of who we are. Communities have a problem and they know we can offer them a solution. That’s becoming the norm and it’s incredibly gratifying,” said Barrett.
During the past round of submissions, COG worked on seven proposals and all seven were funded. Over the last 10 years, Darragh estimated, upward of 95 percent of the applications it has worked on have been funded.
“Our track record shows that we’re really good at what we do,” he said.
Ultimately, however, COG’s work depends on communities first identifying a need for services and then knowing where to look to find help.
“I think there are quite a few communities who are not aware of the vast opportunities that are out there in terms of funding,” Darragh said.
Perhaps because of that, a great deal of COG’s clients are repeat customers. Of the 80 to 100 communities COG has recently been involved with, many of them have requested and received aid on numerous projects within the town’s borders.
“A lot of CDBG clients that we’ve been working with for a long time are running out of projects for us to do. We’re always looking for new clients to help,” said Darragh.
While getting the word out about opportunities is one thing that COG would like to see happen more, the experience of working with a client for an extended amount of time has its benefits.
“One of the neat things for us, both on a CBDG side and a planning side, is to have clients stay with us over a period of years,” said Barrett. “It’s an incredibly gratifying thing to be that involved and to watch projects come to completion, to see something you’ve helped to start truly start helping others.
