Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Services and Boston-based Mitchell Properties are redeveloping the Gerrish Avenue neighborhood, including the former Atlas Bedding Factory, into a mixed-income community of apartments and condominiums.
Construction of two residential projects that will help transform an industrial area in Chelsea into a mixed-income neighborhood with smart-growth features is set to begin later this month.
The residential developments will bring 120 new housing units to the city, including 53 market-rate lofts that will be targeted to buyers seeking an affordable urban alternative to Boston, in the Gerrish Avenue area.
The developments, located near public transportation, represent one of the first transit-oriented projects to be undertaken by a nonprofit community development corporation.
The new developments are key to helping Chelsea fulfill its plan of creating 1,200 to 1,500 new housing units in four years, according to John DePriest, Chelsea’s director of planning and development.
“It’s a mixed type of development with market-rate and affordable rental and ownership units, which is very important to us in meeting our goals of providing a variety of housing throughout the city,” DePriest said last week.
Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Services, a community development corporation that was started in 1979, plans to build 41 apartments and 26 condominiums. All of the rental units will be affordable to households earning 60 percent or less of the area median income. The condos will be designed for families, with 14 of them set aside for families earning at or below 60 percent of the area median income.
“The goal is really to develop a mixed-income community that gives people a range of housing opportunities,” said Ann Houston, executive director of the Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Services, or CHNS.
Houston said that in meetings with local business leaders, many indicated they had employees who weren’t considered low-income but who were nonetheless stretching to afford housing.
“Rental housing is very important to meeting the needs of Chelsea residents but we also think that it’s really important to have good ownership opportunities,” she said.
Located near five bus stops and a short walk away from a commuter rail station, the new housing projects already have garnered recognition from the state for their transit-oriented and smart-growth aspects.
The city was awarded $2.5 million in March from the state’s TOD [Transit-Oriented Development] Infrastructure and Housing Support Program to repave the streets, install new lighting and improve the sidewalks and pedestrian amenities.
“The area is what we call an area in transition. It’s an area with marginal industrial and commercial uses,” said DePriest.
The area, once home to box, metal fabrication and mattress factories, was rezoned as a residential district about 20 years ago in hopes of attracting residential development, but “the market wasn’t there just quite yet,” according to DePriest. The neighborhood needed infrastructure improvements, said DePriest, and some developers felt there was too much risk involved in redeveloping the area.
“We tried to interest a number of market-rate developers. Several looked at it but they couldn’t put a deal together,” said DePriest.
‘A Terrific Location’
The city worked closely with CHNS, which was able to partner with Mitchell Properties, a private development firm based in Boston, to redevelop the Gerrish Avenue area.
In June, the city designated the parcels that CHNS and Mitchell Properties are developing as a smart-growth zoning district under the state’s Chapter 40R law. The law offers cash payments to communities as an incentive to promote housing development near public transportation and in underutilized or abandoned properties.
Chelsea will receive a one-time payment of $75,000 from the state for creating the district and is eligible to receive $3,000 for each housing unit that’s permitted and built within the district. So far, four other communities – Plymouth, Norwood, North Reading and Dartmouth – have created 40R districts. The town of Lunenburg has received preliminary approval from the state to create a 40R district.
In Chelsea, the newly created neighborhood will be called the Box District. Eighteen of the apartments that CHNS is developing will be located on a parcel that formerly housed Janus Fabrications, a metal fabrication shop that went out of business. CNHS purchased the Janus building last April.
The remaining apartments, along with 26 condos, will be built at the back portion of a site that includes the Atlas Bedding Factory, which was purchased by the CNHS last August. The factory building most recently housed the Spring Air Mattress Factory, until that operation relocated to another part of Chelsea two years ago.
The condos will be designed for families, with 14 of them set aside for families earning at or below 60 percent of the area median income.
Houston said all of the buildings will be demolished with the exception of two historic 3-story red brick mill buildings that are connected, which were part of the Atlas Bedding Factory.
Those mill buildings will be transformed by Mitchell Properties into 53 lofts that will sell in the high $200,000s to low $300,000-range.
With high ceilings, large windows and open-floor plans, the buildings are ideal for lofts, according to Houston.
Houston said the apartments and condos that CHNS is developing should be completed by next September. Mitchell Properties is expected to start construction on the lofts in January.
“Creating a new neighborhood has certainly raised some unique challenges,” said Houston.
But Houston added that most of the challenges “have been mitigated by having a community that really was committed to fostering the development and helping to think through this to create a livable community.”
“It’s really a terrific location and we hope to convert what was almost exclusively industrial into this new neighborhood,” she said.
