Photo courtesy of Cruz Cos.
John B. Cruz III
President and CEO, Cruz Cos.
Age: 80
Industry experience: 67 years
After developing 2,200 affordable housing units and partnering on another 1,700 during the past half-century, Cruz Cos. is expanding home ownership opportunities in Dorchester and joining the development boom in Roxbury’s Nubian Square. John Cruz’ father founded a carpentry subcontracting company in 1948. After attending Wentworth Institute of Technology and joining the family business, Cruz helped the company transition into a general contractor in 1970, running the business from his father’s dining room table before opening its first offices in Roxbury. Cruz’ son Justin now runs the company’s property management arm, which will move from 434 Massachusetts Ave. to join the parent company at a consolidated headquarters at 280 Warren St. in Roxbury. The offices are part of a 55-unit senior affordable housing project nearing completion.
Q: How has the market changed in Dorchester since you began the Harvard Commons project, including 96 townhouses and single-family homes at the Boston State Hospital property?
A: We’re hoping from that track record, we can branch out and do more market-driven deals, whatever the area. The thing that’s super-important is, yes, it’s taken us about 10 years to build it out, but when we built this it was basically vacant. It was nothing but three-deckers in that area, going for $150,000 to $250,000 at the most. Our homes, when we started, were around $450,000, and recently we’ve gotten $1 million and a little over for some homes. So, we have raised the value of all of those three-deckers in that area, which were owned by people of color. I really feel good about the values of the neighborhood, but even more than that, the development proves what we always thought we knew. We overbuilt them size-wise, because we had people say the inner city may be a little risky. So, we purposely put a little bit more into them. It worked. We’re selling our last five houses. People of color will move into a minority area if you give them the same amenities they can afford and are available to them on the outside. I’m not saying anybody will, because you still have the issues like the quality of the schools, but again it showed the world that we weren’t as crazy as some people thought we were.
Q: What was the key to your concept for the mixed-income-and-NAACP-offices project at 135 Dudley St.?
A: Our response to the RFP won over seven others, and one reason was because of our reputation for putting people in the community to work: Whether it’s a tradesman on the job or more importantly, using minority [-owned] firms of color. We’ve always maximized that. We proposed two buildings: one a 5-story affordable housing, and the other a 10-story condo building. In the 10-story building, there’s 110 condos and 23 percent will be affordable. We’re introducing home ownership and making sure that it’s at all [income] levels. We’re excited about it because it shows that yes, you can do affordable rental housing, but you can also do market-rate. If everybody did a little portion of their project with affordable units for sale, we would have less of a housing crisis than we do. We’re waiting for the state funding through MassWorks, and that’s the last piece that we need.
I grew up for a while right in [the former] Dudley Square at 15 Ruggles St. Dudley was the second biggest commercial node in the city of Boston. It was very active and diverse. You had Black and Hispanic and Irish parts and two Irish dance halls. It had a large Jewish clientele. People would come in from the suburbs to shop at Ferdinand’s Furniture. Then, because of redlining and disinvestment, Dudley went down in a hurry. I’m sentimentally attached to it, and I’m hoping that we bring vitality back. It’s going to be very important to get this thing going.
Q: How are public agencies’ new diversity, equity and inclusion guidelines for development projects affecting wealth-building opportunities?
A: The game-changer was Massport, and they instituted programs where they wanted to see [financial] equity, not just construction workers or businesses. We all know there’s an income gap. This gave us an opportunity for developers to get in on the equity side, rather than the token programs that were out there before. Some people may not like me using the word token, but they did not get significant results. Once you get a person of color in as a piece of equity, they have a voice. Some may use it to say, “What are we going to do for diversity and inclusion?” because they’re on the team now. They were able to get more people in on construction and professional services, and that’s what we’re preaching. Most city and state programs leave it up to the contractor to do the dirty work and get the percentages up on the job. That shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t just pound bricks. We should be on the legal side, the environmental side, the consultant side. Massport proved it does incentivize the large white developers to make some economic contributions. Again, money talks. You can see the teams are much more diverse than they were five years ago.
Cruz’ Top Five Trips and Destinations
- St. John and St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
- Venice, Italy
- Amalfi Coast, Italy
- Rome, Italy (and Florence, Lake Como, the Puglia region, Sicily, Sardinia…)
- Safari camps in South Africa
