Artists may be getting priced out of their traditional Boston communities in the Fort Point and South End neighborhoods, but a new development in Hyde Park is hoping to fill the void and help establish the community as a new arts center for the city.
The 62-unit Lofts at Westinghouse Plaza, an artist live-work redevelopment project at a large industrial campus in Hyde Park, will bring the total number of live-work artist units across the city to more than 450 when complete, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
“We’re really entering a new frontier in Hyde Park,” said Jessica Shumaker, spokeswoman at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. “It’s kind of hard to compare different artist communities because space can really vary in size. Fort Point is always more expensive because historically it’s an artist community, and people are drawn to that. Hopefully, when Westinghouse opens, artists will flock to Hyde Park.”
New Coat Of Paint
Hyde Park may not evoke the same associations with artists as other Boston neighborhoods, but according to Jan Kenney, project coordinator of the Hyde Park Arts Initiative, the neighborhood has been on the map as an artist community for several years.
The new lofts will add to the growing list of art attractions in the Hyde Park neighborhood, from the recently opened 4,000-square-foot Menino Art Center on Central Street to Artists At Large on Walter Street. Riverside Theater Works, a performing arts center that offers youth classes and professional programs, is located on Fairmount Avenue, and the Sprague Street Studios is host to work-only rental studios for 30 artists.
“There is an amazing amount of activity here now, and I am thrilled with the Westinghouse project,” said Kenney. “I think a lot of Boston artists are being displaced and they’ve done a great job on restoring and renovating the Westinghouse building.”
The roughly 1,000-square-foot homes at Westinghouse Plaza will start at $189,000 for affordable units. One-bedroom condos start in the low $230,000 range, while two-bedrooms can go for more than $300,000, according to Carl Valeri, president of The Hamilton Co., the developer of the project.
The prices could be favorable compared to other artists’ projects around the city.
FP3, a recently completed condo project in the Fort Point neighborhood, has eight affordable units for sale ranging in price from $150 per square foot to $350 per square foot. Artblock Lofts and Townhomes in the South End has 28 market-rate units ranging in price from $170 per square foot to $180 per square foot.
Multi-Use Site
Built in 1908, the eight-building Westinghouse Plaza campus has served a variety of purposes over the years. At one point, more than 5,000 people worked at the industrial site for varying manufacturing companies, according to Valeri.
The building that will house the Lofts at Westinghouse Plaza is one of the larger buildings in the complex. The exposed brick-and-beam structure was once home to the fan shop of B.F. Sturtevant Co., an industrial fan manufacturer, Valeri said. The upper two floors, which will feature lofts when complete, consist of 80,000 square feet of space and have been vacant for more than 30 years.
Light industrial tenants operate on the ground floor and are not being displaced by construction, despite earlier concerns, Valeri said.
Work began on Building C in January. The industrial freight elevator was brought up-to-date, and the bricks and beams were power-sanded, Valeri said. The total construction budget is $12 million and the first units will be delivered April 1, 2009. The project is about 45 percent complete.
“The building has a total of 157 windows that are about 6.6 feet by 9 feet in size, that all had to be replaced,” Valeri said. “There’s a minimum of two large windows per space.”
The neighborhood’s median income falls below that of the neighboring areas of Roslindale and West Roxbury, allowing for a diverse range of people, housing types and social groups to live and work there, according to the Hyde Park Art Association. The median income for Hyde Park is $44,704 compared to that of Roslindale, at $46,846, and of West Roxbury, at $53,607.
In 2007, the median price for all residential property in Hyde Park was $310,000, compared to $545,000 in the South End and $374,000 citywide.
