Leslie Reid

Leslie Reid
CEO, Madison Park Development Corp.
Age: 51
Industry experience: 28 years 

Neighborhood activists founded Madison Park Development Corp. in the 1960s to fight urban renewal and its demolition of Roxbury properties, and has spent decades rebuilding the neighborhood and its housing stock. Leslie Reid joined the organization in 2005 as a project manager and was named the new CEO in 2019, as the group looks to accelerate affordable housing production on long-neglected parcels. The organization is partnering with Boston-based HYM Investment Group on a proposed mixed-use development on the city-owned parcel P3 in Roxbury with 466 apartments and condominiums, including 144 income-restricted condos with abbreviated deed restrictions on affordability. 

Q: How important is the redevelopment of parcel P3 to attract large-scale private investment in Roxbury at that location and beyond?
A: It’s the largest city-owned parcel left in the neighborhoods of Boston, so it’s meaningful in that way. It’s also been vacant for many, many years. The new request for proposals really provides a great opportunity to get something going there. Having office and life science space as a significant portion is really a catalyst for the development. We believe that HYM has the experience and the track record to attract the investors and users for that space. It is high time that Roxbury benefits from the activity that’s generated by life science uses, and can support an extraordinarily inclusive housing portion. We’re close to the highway, we’re on the Orange Line, we have proximity to universities. We’re in a unique moment where this team is well-positioned to pioneer investments in Roxbury. 

Q: What was your introduction to the community development sector?
A: Back in 2005, I started [at Madison Park] as a real estate project manager, working on housing and commercial projects. My first project was called Ruggles Shawmut Housing, a preservation project for a brick building adjacent to our flagship property, Madison Park Village. It was a privately-owned Section 8 property and the owner was threatening not to renew the Section 8, and that would have resulted in displacement and loss of affordability. We were able to offer them an acquisition price and they transferred the property to us, and we got historic tax credits in addition to the usual debt and city and state resources. 

Q: How much has the neighborhood’s real estate market changed in the past 17 years?
A: In 2005, nonprofits were doing a lot of the development work because the market wasn’t there. In 2008, we were making incremental progress, and the recession just ended the market cycle all around. It’s interesting and in a lot of ways it’s gratifying that national developers are [now] interested in making investments into our neighborhood under the frameworks of the Nubian Square and Roxbury strategic master plans, which have input from the community about what is built. We’re in this unique moment where we’re catching the market cycle and the city is making sure there’s input into the dispositions, and it’s all coming together. It’s gratifying, because Madison Park was founded to rebuild what was taken by urban renewal. For many years, nobody wanted to do development. 

Q: How many projects does Madison Park have in the development pipeline?
A: We are a partner with the Boston Housing Authority and Preservation of Affordable Housing on the Whittier Choice neighborhood development, and they will be starting construction on phase three: 172 units and about 9,000 square feet of commercial [space]. That will include replacing former public housing but also adding in new affordable and market-rate units as part of a vision for a mixed-income community. 2085 Washington St. is the final phase of the parcel 10 redevelopment. The first two phases were a new Tropical Foods market, and in the second phase, Madison Park repurposed into 7,500 square feet of commercial space and 30 housing units. This final phase originally was envisioned as a commercial building, but after several years of trying to identify an anchor tenant and assemble financing, we were getting frustrated and so was the community. Three years ago, we pivoted to a residential development in partnership with Trinity Financial. It’s a great model of housing that’s becoming a little bit more familiar, where we mix rental and home ownership in one building. We have affordable and for-sale condos in the same building. We think it’s an inclusive housing program and a range of housing options. 

Q: How difficult is it to piece together financing for both rentals and home ownership in the same project?
A: It’s very complicated, and that’s part of the reason we’re partnering with Trinity Financial. We’ve had a longstanding relationship with them. They have done at least three projects with this model, and that was part of the rationale, because they navigated the complexity of this. It’s a model that’s becoming much more familiar to the tax credit investors and the lenders. The 2085 Washington St. project has both. It’s a model that has been evolving over the past 10 years. It’s basically a master condo with two condos inside. The rental component is one condo and the for-sale component is the other. 

Q: What does the new mayoral administration’s housing agenda mean for organizations like Madison Park?
A: The mayor recently announced $40 million [to create and preserve 718 affordable units] across the city, and she was very clear about how these investments support her agenda. The city has been increasing the amount of funding it’s investing to move a pipeline of housing development that meets the needs of the city.  

Q: What brought you and your family to Boston?
A: I was born in New York and my mom came to Boston looking for job prospects. She was a single mom and got a job as a social worker. It was just me and her and we did suffer from periodic housing instability. It’s not often I have colleagues at my level who have lived through housing instability and relying on public assistance to meet basic needs. It’s part of why I do this work, and why I think it’s important. 

Reid’s Five Favorite BIPOC-Owned Restaurants  

• MIDA 
• The Pearl 
• Darryl’s Corner Bar & Kitchen 
• Restaurante Cesaria 
• Soleil