MassDevelopment Brownfields Award Helps JPNDC Remediate, Advance Vacant Parcels for Affordable Housing

July 27, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:
Louisa Stone, MassDevelopment, 857-283-3340 (cell)
lstone@massdevelopment.com

Sally Swenson, JPNDC, 617-522-2424 ext. 242
sswenson@jpndc.org

MassDevelopment has provided a $120,000 award from the Brownfields Redevelopment Fund to Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC), which used funds to remediate soil on three formerly vacant parcels in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood that form the site of a new affordable housing development. Construction began last fall on the Call Carolina development, located at the intersection of Call Street and Carolina Avenue, which will include four rental units and four units available for purchase. McPhail Associates provided environmental engineering services for the remediation activity on the parcels, which were vacant for more than 50 years.

“We were pleased to help Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation unlock these long-vacant parcels for the development of affordable housing,” said MassDevelopment President and CEO Lauren Liss. “In Boston and across the state, the Brownfields Redevelopment Fund continues to be an important resource for revitalizing challenging sites toward productive use.”

MassDevelopment oversees the Brownfields Redevelopment Fund, which helps to transform vacant, abandoned, or underused industrial or commercial properties by financing the environmental assessment and remediation of brownfield sites in “Economically Distressed Areas” of the Commonwealth. Since the Fund’s inception in 1998, it has supported 747 projects for a total investment of more than $108 million.

Founded in 1977, JPNDC seeks to transform the lives and amplify the voices of people who have been excluded from prosperity by an inequitable economic system. The organization has transformed vacant lots and distressed buildings into 1,180 affordable homes for families and individuals, created 2,000 jobs, helped 200 businesses open or expand, and invested $530 million in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester.

“It’s tremendously gratifying to be creating affordable homeownership opportunities on a site where homes were bulldozed 50 years ago to make way for a highway, which the people of Boston fortunately defeated,” said JPNDC Executive Director Richard Thal. “We’re grateful to MassDevelopment for providing critical resources to make it possible.”

Call Carolina is one of several JPNDC projects MassDevelopment has financed. Most recently, in January 2020, MassDevelopment provided a $250,000 Brownfields Redevelopment Fund award to help JPNDC remediate theJackson Square Redevelopment Initiative Site III, which will host two housing developments creating 154 mixed-income housing units, 88 of which will be affordable. In 2018, MassDevelopment issued a $9.4 million tax-exempt bond to help JPNDC build Hattie Kelton Apartments, a 47-unit affordable multifamily rental housing facility that also benefited from a $36,000 Brownfields Redevelopment Fund award in 2015.

MassDevelopment, the state’s finance and development agency, works with businesses, nonprofits, banks, and communities to stimulate economic growth. During FY2019, MassDevelopment financed or managed 316 projects generating investment of more than $2 billion in the Massachusetts economy. These projects are estimated to create or support 9,743 jobs and build or preserve 1,992 housing units.