Peter Abair
The BIO International Convention was held two weeks ago in Philadelphia. It might seem an odd setting to get some insight on how Massachusetts might surmount its housing crisis, but read on.
The Massachusetts Pavilion at BIO was once again a popular destination for the 15,000 convention attendees from around the world. Of note was the presence of the “Life Sciences Corridor” in the pavilion. The corridor includes the MBTA Red Line communities of Braintree, Quincy, Boston, Cambridge and Somerville, joined together to market the region to life sciences companies.
The concept of the campaign was born in Quincy, where Mayor Tom Koch, Quincy Chamber of Commerce President Dean Rizzo and the city’s economic development chief, Nick Verenis, saw attaching Quincy to Boston and Cambridge as an effective means to grow life sciences in the City of Presidents. Despite four stops on the Red Line, Quincy is relatively underrepresented in the life sciences.
Quincy has long made a strong case for itself as a destination for life sciences and these efforts have directly led to this new regional effort, but its economic development activities are not just focused on the life sciences. Quincy is one of the state’s mid-sized cities that is gamely trying to redevelop its city center in a manner that realizes the central tenants of the new urbanism movement.
For these “mid-cities” to once again be true centers of commercial life, they must also be places where people work, live and play. At the center of Quincy’s plans, redrawn when its initial master developer withdrew from the project last year, is housing. It begins with 169 units of housing with a building called West of Chestnut, sponsored by Quincy Mutual. A trio of additional investors, who plan additional housing and commercial investments approaching $100 million, joined the Quincy Center project earlier this year. The idea is straightforward – new housing will bring in young professionals and empty-nesters interested in urban experiences, and it will support adjacent commercial investment.
A New Direction
The housing crisis in Massachusetts is well-chronicled on these pages. The state’s supply of housing grew by just 0.2 percent between 2010 and 2013, while the state’s population grew by 2.2 percent. The statewide median single-family home sales price increased more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2014, according to data from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. It’s simple math. Pricing goes up as supply declines. This has been a stubborn reality in Massachusetts for too long, but it just may be broken by our mid-sized cities.
New England town government, with volunteer boards and commissions, town meetings and town votes on development projects, make for difficult environments to sustain housing planning and development efforts at any sizeable scale. Even towns that identify sites for new housing can be thwarted in good planning efforts by unfriendly Chapter 40B developments that usurp local zoning and undermine the local advocates of affordable housing. Cities are a different matter. Mayors with four-year terms, larger planning and development staffs, and bigger commercial bases from which to draw support, are better enabled to develop more ambitious plans for center city development that includes housing as a centerpiece.
To the north, in Haverhill, new housing has been the cornerstone for a resurgent downtown, ripe with fashionable pubs and eateries that are drawing customers from the small towns of northern Essex County and southeastern New Hampshire – as well as from the hundreds of new housing units in downtown Haverhill itself. Building upon momentum generated by housing investments by Forest City at Hamel Mill Lofts and Peabody Properties at Hayes at Railroad Square, among others, Haverhill is focused on its largest downtown redevelopment phase to date – the $80 million Harbor Place project – which will deliver 80 units of housing and an 80,000-square-foot commercial office building set on Merrimack River in the center of downtown.
Massachusetts needs a lot of additional housing and state housing programs should particularly embrace these communities with investments. New housing development in the heart of our mid-sized cities, connected to transit infrastructure, can play a meaningful part in reducing the housing crisis and will have a profound effect on the restoration of these proud cities as true economic engines.
Peter Abair is director of economic development and global affairs for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
