Contractors are convinced modular construction may be a future key to building enough affordable housing – particularly multifamily housing – to satisfy the growing demand for all types of residential units in the Boston market.
The trick, though, is overcoming a public stigma of modular housing and fears by some unions that modular construction could eliminate many trade jobs, contractors and construction executives say.
The issue of modular housing, especially multifamily projects, recently came to the forefront after the Grossman Cos. Inc. of Quincy and the Wayside Cos. of Boston announced that they purchased nearly an acre of Allston property permitted for an 80-unit, $26-million apartment complex.
In a release, the companies boasted that the 61-89 Braintree St. project would be the “largest modular construction project in the city of Boston” and designed to “ensure quality control, to fast-track the construction schedule, to provide tighter construction for greater energy efficiency and to reduce excess materials waste.” Executives declined further comment about the Allston project, saying the designs are preliminary. But the size of the proposed development is viewed as an encouraging sign by many industry officials who say modular construction could be an important piece of the puzzle in solving the region’s chronic problem of low supply and high demand for housing.
Usually associated with single-family homes and others projects, such as temporary school-building additions, modular construction has already been used in the Boston area for multifamily developments.
In 2013, Tocci Building Cos. of Woburn finished building a 56-unit apartment complex for Federal Realty Trust in Chelsea, using modular sections built in a Maine factory. In 2010, Tocci built a 54-unit residential complex in West Cambridge for AbodeZ, also using modular design and construction.
Bud LaRosa, chief business performance officer at Tocci, said his company is currently pricing a couple of other multifamily modular projects for unspecified developers in the area.
“A lot of people locally are interested in this,” he said of modular multifamily construction. “People are very interested in how modular works and its potential.”
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To be clear, modular construction – or the off-site construction of entire sections of buildings that are later transported to a site by truck and placed onto foundations by cranes – is not less expensive than traditional “stick-built” construction, industry sources say.
The real benefits of modular are twofold: The speed at which they can be built and completed, and the fact that modular construction projects can still proceed at nearly full speed during winter months, as opposed to traditional construction projects that often shut down during winter.
A typical modular single-family home, for instance, can be built and finished within three to four months, versus six to eight months for traditional stick construction, according to Donna Peak, executive director of the National Association of Home Builders’ Building Systems Council.
But Peak and others note that modular construction still has a stigma to it, dating back decades when modular construction was relatively new and considered boring and flimsy. Today, the industry has matured to the point where many people who walk into a home may not even know it was built with modular techniques, she said.
“Modular [now] is not the modular of 30 years ago,” said Mark Truman, a manager at Maine’s KBS Builders Inc., one of a handful of modular-building factories in New England. In recent years, KBS has built modular home sections for two multifamily projects in the Boston area, including the 84-unit Residences at Malden Station and The Flats At 22 apartments in Chelsea’s Box District. Truman said some New England modular factories closed after the housing market bust of the previous decade because they focused too much on modular single-family construction and not enough on the emerging multifamily modular sector.
Commodore Builders of Newton is currently constructing a $23-million, three-building campus for the Match Charter School in Hyde Park; two of the buildings are modular. The Match Charter development, which is expected to be finished by this summer, is one of many school projects around the state using modular construction for classrooms.
James Apodaca, senior project manager at Commodore, said his and other firms would like to get more involved in modular multifamily construction. The one challenge to doing so: Trade union opposition based upon the fear of losing jobs.
“There’s been some pushback against it,” Apodaca said. “Unions have not embraced it yet.”
Some industry officials say it’s only a matter of time before a modular-building factory opens in the Boston area, employing scores of local trade workers and speeding up the time modular home sections can be transported to construction sites.
“I’m convinced you’re going to see a lot more multifamily modular housing and activity in Massachusetts,” said Cliff Cort, president of Triumph Modular Inc. in Littleton. “I’m optimistic about its future.”
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