The effort to heal Boston’s Jackson Square after entire swaths of the neighborhood were bulldozed for a failed highway project 40 years ago is about to take another leap forward.
The developer of the first phase of an ambitious plan to recreate the once-blighted area into a thriving urban destination recently completed a 103-unit apartment building that includes space for about four retail tenants.
Jackson Square straddles the line between the city’s Roxbury and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods, both with their own claims to bustling business centers and triple-deckers full of tenants. It’s a buzzing little transportation hub in its own right.
But even decades after homes and businesses were demolished in the 1960s for an inner-city highway that was defeated by community activists, the area is still dotted with acres of vacant lots and underutilized buildings.
That landscape, however, is now significantly altered. The Community Builders, one of three Boston-based real estate developers involved in revitalizing the area, on Tuesday will cut the ribbon to open its $50.3 million project at 225 Centre St., which includes 35 units of affordable housing.
The project’s remaining 68 homes are market-rate apartments, ranging from one to three bedrooms. The one-bedrooms start at $1,700 a month; two bedrooms will start at $2,400 per month; and three-bedroom units will start at $2,800 a month.
“It’s a complicated project, but it’s exciting to see the difference already in Jackson,” said Noah Sawyer, Community Builders’ senior project manager. “It feels more like a place that connects neighborhoods now than a place people just drove through.”
While the 225 Centre ribbon is being cut, a different developer will simultaneously break ground on another project in the square. Urban Edge will officially put shovels in the dirt to begin work on a 37-unit mixed-income rental complex called Jackson Commons at 1542 Columbus Ave.
Urban Edge, a Roxbury-based community development group, operates about 1,250 units of housing already. About 75 percent of those are within about a quarter-mile of Jackson Square, said Chrystal Kornegay, president. The group’s project will involve rehabbing what’s known as the Webb building, a 100-year-old structure at the site. The project will include 12,000 square feet of commercial space as well.
After that, the next piece expected to be built is an all-affordable, 37-unit rental project at 75 Amory Ave. from the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp. (JPNDC). Then, Community Builders would build a 140-unit mixed rental and homeownership project at 250 Centre St. And JPNDC would build another project near 25 Centre, but those plans are still under consideration. Finally, Urban Edge will build a 38,000-square-foot recreation center with community space and a hockey rink that can be converted to a soccer or lacrosse field, said Kornegay.
“Folks who have lived through years and years of no investment, of uninvestment after their land was taken for the highway … these folks will finally get a place where things will be safe and lively and thriving in their neighborhood, really making Jackson Square a place to go to rather than a place to leave from,” Kornegay mused in a recent interview. “It’s going to be a healing, so to speak, after what happened in preparation for the highway. We didn’t get the highway, but we didn’t get much else either.”
A Grand Plan Unrealized
In 1995, several local community groups, the JPNDC, Urban Edge and Hyde Square Task Force included, started working on a plan for a major overhaul of the area.
Eventually, city and state officials, the local groups and a private real estate developer created a master plan for more than 400 units of housing, 60,000 square feet of retail space, 13,000 square feet of office space and 50,000 square feet of community facilities. That ambitious plan would be carried out in 14 different properties to be constructed over time.
However, after the recession put the $250 million plan on hold, the three development entities involved agreed “market conditions and available resources” would likely limit them to building just two projects apiece, according to Kornegay.
“The reprogramming of the initial vision was about … reality,” she said. “As we look at the constraints of development on what we’re calling Site Three [near 75 Amory] … the parking ratios and different things, those all end up driving … how much we can actually build there.”
Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com
