The site at 31 Everett St. in Allston that currently houses the Legal Seafood corporate offices and fish processing plant will be redeveloped into 50 affordable rental units by the Allston Brighton Community Development Corp.
The commercial real estate industry may be suffering, but for at least one nonprofit development group, the softening market has been a boost in their efforts to create more affordable housing in Boston.
The Allston Brighton Community Development Corp. has purchased two adjoining industrial sites in Allston that it plans to develop into affordable housing as early as this fall. One of the sites – a 19,303-square-foot lot with a one-story building at 81 Hano St. – was purchased last July for $650,000 after several offers from the CDC were rejected by the seller, who was waiting for a better offer that never materialized. The adjoining site at 33 Everett St., which has been the home of Legal Sea Foods’ corporate offices and fish processing plant since 1980s, was purchased last June for $2.65 million.
In the process of bringing additional housing to the area, the CDC will be strengthening the residential fabric of a neighborhood where residents have long complained about truck traffic and other nuisances associated with living near industrial sites.
“We’ve been … aggressively pursuing these sites for some time, and I think we’re very glad to get these sites to develop,” said Robert Van Meter, ABCDC’s executive director. “We benefited from the softening of the commercial real estate market. [It] was a factor in us being competitive.”
The group recently demolished the building at 81 Hano St., which most recently housed BR Gale, a company that manufactured dust-collecting equipment. Decades ago, the site used to house an auto repair shop and at one point was the home of a metal refinishing plant.
ABCDC plans to build eight single-family homes and two two-family homes on that site. The homes will be sold for between $150,000 to $200,000 – affordable to buyers earning up to 80 percent of the area median income, or $59,000 annually. The estimated development cost is $3.7 million.
‘Intense Pressure’
The infusion of affordable units in Allston is needed, according to housing activists, because working families have had to compete with college students and professionals who flock to that neighborhood for housing. The demand has led to higher rents in the area, and even though the rental market has softened somewhat and colleges are building more dorms for students, the competition for affordable housing hasn’t lessened, according to Van Meter.
“There’s kind of intense pressure on the housing stock from both students and other non-family renters, and there’s hardly any affordable homeownership units available,” said Van Meter.
The CDC has tried to respond to the tremendous demand for housing in a part of Boston that offers few options for the creation of new housing. According to Van Meter, there are very few public parcels available, making it “impossible” to develop housing for low- and moderate-income people.
On the site that is currently occupied by Legal Sea Foods, which is leasing the space from ABCDC, the group plans to develop 50 rental units in nine separate buildings at an estimated cost of $11.6 million. The complex will feature 11 one-bedroom, 29 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom units ranging in size from 700 to 1,400 square feet. The monthly rents will range from $711 to $986, making them affordable to people earning up to 60 percent of the area median income, or roughly $44,000 annually.
John J. Woods, ABCDC’s director of housing development, said the projects will have “a major impact” on a mostly residential neighborhood that emerged around these industrial sites. “We’re re-knitting the fabric of the neighborhood,” he said.
Construction on both projects is expected to begin this fall and be completed by the fall of 2004. Even though the demolition already has occurred at 81 Hano St., the site will require environmental remediation, which can take up to six months, said Woods.
These developments come on the heels of another residential project that the CDC recently completed located about 150 yards away from the sites. In that case, the CDC rehabilitated 20 rental units at a complex called Hano Homes, preserving 15 of the units as affordable. The group received help for the project from many private and public agencies, including the Massachusetts Housing Partnership Fund and Harvard University, which provided $350,000 – through the Local Initiatives Support Corp. of Boston – to help subsidize the interest rate of MHP’s long-term loan for the project.
MHP and the LISC are also players in the new projects. According to Van Meter, MHP provided “predevelopment assistance” and is “anticipated” to be the permanent lender for the rental units.
For 81 Hano St., LISC and Boston Community Capital were the acquisition lenders. ABCDC also received financing for the project from MassDevelopment’s Brownfields Redevelopment Fund. For the Everett Street units, LISC and the Community Economic Development Assistance Corp., or CEDAC, provided acquisition financing, and the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp. provided low-income tax credits funding.
