Developer Uses Boston Tour to Show Vision for Devens Housing
January 8, 2012: The Lowell Sun, by Hiroko Sato
BOSTON – Jennifer Pizarro looks over the rows of pastel yellow-and-green houses snuggling along the streets in East Boston and cannot believe it’s where she grew up.
Instead of the decorative fences that surround the backyard lawns, she used to see chain links rising tall against brick public-housing buildings. The roads that now divide the complex into neighborhood blocks were just dead-end driveways. Inside the “project,” the residents felt cut off from the outside world, Pizarro said.
“It was dark,” she said.
Now called Maverick Landing, the sleek, 396-unit apartment complex sprawls in front of Carlton Wharf, which overlooks Boston’s financial district across the bay. The development, for which Pizarro works as property manager, includes both public housing and market-rate rental units. Public-housing residents put out their own trash bins on the street and check mailboxes on their doors just like any homeowners would.
There are also strict rules for them to follow to keep the development pleasant and clean, said Jim Keefe, president of Trinity Financial, which developed Maverick Landing. And market-rate renters are willing to pay $1,400 for a one-bedroom unit to $2,600 for a four-bedroom unit to live there.
With the right designs and management, one can successfully mix market-rate with affordable apartment units, Keefe said. He wants to prove it at Vicksburg Square in Devens by converting the empty Army barracks into a 246-unit, affordable apartment complex. After visiting Maverick Landing and two other Trinity developments during a company tour Thursday, Ayer Selectmen Chairman Jim Fay now believes Keefe’s winning formula will work for Vicksburg Square, too.
“I’m convinced that it will be a good thing because of the work and caring that goes into it,” Fay said.
“I wish hundreds of people were here,” said Phillip Crosby, a retired high-school teacher from Devens, during the tour, agreeing with Fay that the Vicksburg Square proposal will work.
But Ellen Neelands, an educational consultant from Ayer, isn’t so sure the project is right for the region.
“I don’t have enough information to really know. But this is helpful,” Neelands said of the tour.
Trinity Financial held the public tour of its three past developments in Boston to help Nashoba Valley residents gain insight into what the company plans to do in Devens. The project would rehabilitate four main buildings at Vicksburg Square into 78 senior housing units and 168 other units, with a preference for veterans, active military personnel and their families. Eighty percent of the units would be designated as affordable.
Some residents have expressed concerns over the density and municipal services, including fire and police, that the affordable housing might require. A Harvard task force that studied the project’s economic impact also warned that it might become a cost burden for the local school system, which is contracted with Devens to accept its students.
In preparation for an anticipated Super Town Meeting, where the three towns with jurisdiction over Devens will vote on the proposal, Trinity is stepping up its publicity campaign, opening an office at 14 Main St. in Ayer and launching a Web site, vicksburgsquare.com. Trinity staff has even made rounds at local holiday parties to gain votes.
Thursday’s tour showcased Maverick Landing in East Boston, the Mattapan Campus, a 52-acre historic property in Mattapan that includes an assisted-living facility and affordable housing, and the Carruth building in Dorchester, which includes market-rate condos and affordable rental units.
Among the three, Vicksburg would look most similar to the Mattapan Campus, which Trinity began in 2005 by converting a circa-1908 multistory rehabilitation hospital, for the size of the buildings, according to Trinity Project Manager Abby Goldenfarb. Property managers there run every potential tenant for the 75 affordable units through the national sex-offenders database and credit checks.
About half of the residents work at Boston hospitals as medical technicians or in other support positions, said property manager Michael Baldwin. The tenant-selection process would be the same for Vicksburg Square except for the military preference, Goldenfarb said. In the case of Devens, “affordable” means a single tenant would be earning roughly $30,000 to $40,000 a year, she said.
Fay said providing the public an accurate definition of affordable housing will be the key to securing approval for the project.
“Affordable is not detrimental to the community,” Fay said.
During the tour, Fay and Crosby pointed out the close proximity of all three Trinity projects to train stations and bus stops, and questioned how Vicksburg Square would work without the same kind of access to public transportation. Keefe noted he is willing to pay a share for a communitywide shuttle service if area businesses are interested in creating it. He said the large number of units he is proposing to create would help fund such service.
“This is again where scale comes into play,” Keefe said.
Crosby said the initiative should come from the residents first.
“It needs to be organic,” Crosby said.
Fay believes those who qualify for affordable units would have their own cars anyway and that the project would energize small businesses in Ayer.
Security cameras dot the Mattapan Campus, and the residents who take pride in living there police themselves, Baldwin said. The complex currently has an 18-month waiting list for the family units.
Maintaining the integrity of a property and keeping tight security costs money, Keefe said. But he said by including a large percentage of affordable housing in his projects, he is able to sell the tax credits for these units to financial institutions for cash, allowing his company to substantially limit the amount of the debt to free up money for maintenance.
Neelands said there seem to be plenty of affordable rental units in Ayer that remain empty.
“I’m trying to understand how this is going to affect the development in the area,” Neelands said of the Vicksburg Square project.
But Crosby said he is only concerned that the proposal will be “defeated by voters who are ignorant of issues.” Devens must become a whole community with thriving residential components that area residents envisioned before the fort’s closure, he said.
“That, to me, is so critical,” he said, adding that the project would create needed housing for military personnel.
The deteriorated barracks are “sitting and crying for this development,” Crosby said.
Keefe said Trinity has spent too much time responding to the “grim and unfair assessment” on the project by the Harvard task force.
“We are now better poised to talk about the positives here,” Keefe said.
© Copyright 2012 The Lowell Sun.
