Olmsted Green, which will be developed by Lena Park Community Development Corp. and the New Boston Fund on the old Boston State Hospital site, will be a 42-acre “urban village” that will include abundant green space and diverse housing opportunities.

After years of reviews and starts and stops, plans to redevelop the former Boston State Hospital site are slated to come to fruition when a development team breaks ground on an expansive residential project featuring a mix of townhouses and apartments in April.

Known as Olmsted Green, the project is expected to create a 42-acre “urban village” that incorporates green space, provides diverse housing opportunities and offers onsite social services programs.

“We like to think about it as creating a whole new community,” said E. Lorraine Baugh, president and chief executive officer of the Dorchester-based Lena Park Community Development Corp., which in partnership with the New Boston Fund is developing Olmsted Green.

The project, located near Franklin Park and the Arnold Arboretum, has been praised by community activists and regional planners who have watched the hospital site languish mostly unused for more than two decades.

The development team went through a lengthy public process to develop a plan for the site, meeting with community leaders to hear their concerns and respond to their needs.

“It’s a chance to create a whole new neighborhood,” said Thomas Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, which is helping Lena Park by providing homebuyer classes to local residents who may be interested in purchasing a home at Olmsted Green.

“It will be attractive to a lot of folks not just from one or two neighborhoods [in Boston], but five or six neighborhoods that abut the area,” said Callahan, noting that the project touches parts of Mattapan, Dorchester, Roslindale, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain and Roxbury.

“It’s the residential version of South Bay,” added Callahan, referring to the shopping center that borders Boston’s Roxbury, Dorchester and South End sections and draws consumers from a mix of city neighborhoods and South Shore communities.

‘The Sweet Spot’
Olmsted Green will include 287 market-rate townhouse-style condominiums with two and three bedrooms, ranging in size from 900 square feet to 1,800 square feet. Prices will start in the high-$200,000s and go up to $450,000.

Located a quarter of a mile from a number of bus stops that connect to the subway and commuter rail system, Olmsted Green will attract a broad cross section of Boston residents, according to Kirk Sykes, president of New Boston Fund’s Urban Strategy America Fund.

Sykes said renters who are ready to purchase their home, residents who have been priced out of neighborhoods like the South End or Jamaica Plain, and nurses and other medical professionals who want to live near the Longwood Medical Area will all be drawn to the newly created homes.

The homes are priced to be affordable to those earning 80 percent to 120 percent of the area median income. According to Sykes, over half of the residents living within a three-mile radius of Olmsted Green fall into that income category.

Sykes predicted there will be strong demand for the townhouses, even as the residential real estate market has softened. “We feel like we are hitting the sweet spot,” said Sykes. “There are not that many townhouses available at that price point.”

Noting that Franklin Park, which is located across from the proposed project, is in the geographic center of Boston, Sykes said Olmsted Green is “going to give people an opportunity to rediscover the heart of the city.”

Greg Burton, owner of Burton Associates Real Estate in Dorchester’s Codman Square, which will be marketing the homes with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, agreed that the new homes will attract plenty of buyers.

“I think there’s significant demand for units of this type,” said Burton. “In the Boston area, there’s an aging stock of housing. Having something new, where you’re not having to deal with maintenance issues, is certainly going to be desirable and highly marketable.”

While there have been many condo conversions of multifamily homes in the city, “converted triple-deckers don’t compare to what we’re going to be marketing,” he said.

“This is a location and product that will be highly marketable,” Burton added.

Betty Stump, director of urban communities for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, said the homes will attract consumers who enjoy urban dwelling.

“[The development team] is doing an excellent job of creating a high-quality product in a neighborhood within a neighborhood,” she said. “It offers more than just a house. It offers a whole community.”

In addition to the townhouses, Olmsted Green will include 153 apartments for low-income households that will be built using low-income tax credits and an 84-unit apartment building for low-income elders.

Helping Elders At Risk Through Homes, an organization formerly known as the Committee to End Elder Homelessness, is building the senior housing.

Beth Babcock, president of HEARTH, said the group approached Lena Park about developing the senior housing two years ago.

“We’re always on the lookout for sites within Boston that might lend themselves for our kind of housing,” she said.

Half of the apartment building will include assisted living units, where residents will receive three prepared meals each day. The other units will be for seniors who can live independently but may need occasional assistance with meals or other tasks.

About 35 people, including personal care attendants, will work in the building, said Babcock. HEARTH is currently applying for a mix of federal, state, city and private funds to get the project going.

Babcock said she is looking forward to working with Lena Park, which plans to create a job training and education center onsite, to train personal care homemakers who will be able to work with seniors living at Olmsted Green.

“It is a great opportunity for us to be part of a larger campus where we can partner with the other organizations that are going to be there,” said Babcock.

Babcock said she also is pleased that the eastern portion of the Olmsted Green campus will house a 123-bed skilled nursing and mental health rehabilitation facility. The facility is being developed by Vinfen, a human services agency based in Cambridge that helps the mentally ill and retarded, as well as individuals with drug and alcohol addictions.

Babcock explained that HEARTH frequently works with nursing homes to get temporary assistance for elders and to admit seniors who have become too frail to live independently.

“That’s a great collaboration for us to have the nursing home there,” she said.

In addition to the housing, nursing facility and job training center that will be developed, Olmsted Green will feature a four-season athletic and recreation center and an 11,000-square-foot building called Heritage House, where the state Department of Mental Health will offer service programs for the mentally ill.

Baugh, the Lena Park president and chief executive, said Heritage House also will serve as a “commemorative setting” that recognizes the site was once used as a mental health hospital.

In fact, 15 percent of the new housing units will be set aside for residents with mental illness, according to Baugh, who added that the units will be scattered throughout Olmsted Green.

All residents will have a chance to enjoy nature and passive or active recreation, said Baugh, pointing out amenities like the nearby Franklin Park, Boston Nature Center and Sanctuary, Arnold Arboretum and the fitness center that will be developed.

‘A National Model’
The development team has worked with the Massachusetts Audobon Society and the group’s Boston Nature Center and Sanctuary, which opened on another part of the site three years ago, to protect the environment and preserve mature trees on the site.

“We are working with what nature has provided and creating a gorgeous setting for the building of a new community,” said Baugh, noting that some of the homes will abut the nature preserve.

The project will be built in four different phases, each one costing an estimated $35 million. In the first phase, which will begin near Morton and Harvard streets, 50 apartments, 60 townhouses and the nursing facility will be built.

In an interview several weeks ago, Baugh emphasized the fact that the project is being built because of a partnership that was forged between a nonprofit group and a for-profit real estate developer.

Baugh said Lena Park CDC spent two years preparing to submit a competitive proposal for the site. During the process, the community group decided to hire two consultants, Sykes and Glen Burdick, to look at potential development partners.

The CDC considered 19 developers, eventually choosing to partner with New Boston Fund in 2003. Baugh said Lena Park selected the New Boston Fund not only for its expertise and resources but also because of the firm’s commitment to the “social nature of this project.”

“I don’t think just any developer would have done this,” she said.

Added Sykes, “I don’t know that there’s another environment like this … This is a national model in the making in many ways.”