The dilapidated 3-story buildings at the Boston Housing Authority’s Washington Beech complex in Roslindale will be replaced with a mixed-income community.
Sarah Barnat was stunned when Boston received a $20 million federal grant to redevelop one of the city’s decaying housing projects.
“Given the diminishing housing resources under this Republican administration, it seemed like a long shot,” she said.
Barnat, a project manager at Trinity Financial, will be part of the team to replace dilapidated 3-story buildings at the Boston Housing Authority’s (BHA) Washington Beech public housing complex in Roslindale with a mixed-income community. Thanks to a $20 million HOPE VI Revitalization Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the project will feature 336 townhouses, garden-style apartments, and a midrise building surrounded by parks.
But this is not the first time the Boston developer has been asked to transform a crime-ridden, barrack-style housing project. In 2003, Trinity leveled the notorious Orchard Park project in Roxbury. The 60-year-old development had become a haven for violent criminals and drug dealers. That all changed with the creation of Orchard Gardens, 115 units of mixed-income housing along Dudley Street. With help from a $30 million HOPE VI grant, more than 100 abandoned lots and derelict buildings were replaced with wood-framed, pastel-colored homes.
Last year, Trinity completed Maverick Landing, the $121 million HOPE VI development that replaced the former Maverick Gardens housing development in East Boston ahead of schedule. The new waterfront community contains 396 units of mixed-income waterfront town homes.
The BHA issued its Request for Proposals for Washington Beech last fall. Trinity was selected over The Community Builders of Boston and Braintree-based E.A. Fish Assoc.
“We chose Trinity because they had more experience with housing authorities on complicated and mixed financial transactions,” explained Deborah Morse, the BHA’s real estate development director. “That was important. And Trinity spoke most passionately to residents about their commitment to doing the job with the least disruption to tenants. They have demonstrated they could do it and we were impressed.”
Willie Jones, senior vice president of The Community Builders, and Edward Fish of E.A. Fish did not return calls seeking comment.
Boston was selected from 29 applications HUD received for HOPE VI funding from public housing authorities nationwide. Other grantees to receive grants in this year’s round of funding include Washington, D.C.; Fayetteville, N.C.; New Orleans; and Phoenix. Boston has now been awarded four HOPE VI awards.
‘Risky Business’
Trinity has a reputation for taking on risky projects. While it does stylish downtown work such as the $135 million Avenir in Boston’s historic Bulfinch Triangle, which will offer 241 condominiums near North Station, the company is drawn to challenging work. It has used HOPE VI money to transform four housing projects in three states. Last summer, it was chosen to complete the $500 Hamilton Canal project in Lowell, where the city wants Trinity to turn abandoned buildings and vacant lots into a 24/7 mixed-use neighborhood.
Barnat said Trinity’s experience was the biggest reason it won the Roslindale project.
“The BHA and HUD recognized that we could get this done in a variety of climates,” she said. “Having two Boston HOPE VI projects under our belt and a pair in Newport [Rhode Island] and Connecticut helped.”
HUD’s HOPE VI program was created in 1992 following a report by the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing. The study concluded that 86,000 of the 1.3 million public housing units in the United States needed revitalization. Since it began, the program has awarded 242 grants to more than 100 cities that total nearly $6 billion.
In HOPE VI projects, every government dollar leverages at least two private-sector dollars. Still, the program has faced dramatic funding cuts under the Bush administration. When it was launched in the 1990s, the budget was $600 million. Today, the resources are less than $100 million. Brian Sullivan, a HUD spokesman, said HOPE VI was considered a pilot project 16 years ago and it’s appropriate that funding has diminished.
Critics argue that HOPE VI razes more housing than it produces. They say the program reduces the number of public housing units at a time when about 1 million families are on housing authority waiting lists nationwide; 14,000 of them are in Boston.
But Lawrence Vale, the author of “Reclaiming Public Housing,” has said that the BHA has done an excellent job of maintaining affordability, while other cities have used the HOPE VI award to reduce their number of public housing units.
