Black real estate professionals join forces to restore neighborhood’s housing stock

Anthony Richardson, Darryl Settles and Kobie Evans teamed up to redevelop this long-vacant single family home on Gaston Street in Roxbury. The newly-renovated home has 2,500 square feet of living space and 2 and a half bathrooms and an expansive rear deck. (Banner photo) (Photo: Banner photo)

For more than 10 years, the faded green Victorian at 36 Gaston Street sat vacant while the out-of-state owner who inherited the house was unwilling to sell or rent.

Now, after an extensive renovation, the 2,500-square-foot single family is for sale. At an open house last week, prospective buyers and curious neighbors gawked at the open floor plan kitchen with sliding glass door leading to an expansive rear deck, the newly built 2½ bathrooms, with slate walls and flooring and the freshly refinished hardwood floors.

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about the house wasn’t what was inside, but who. Standing around the over-sized marble-topped kitchen island were general contractor Tony Richardson, investor Darryl Settles and broker Kobe Evans. An all-black real estate development team in Boston is not unheard of, but in a city where much of the real estate development is dominated by whites, it’s not common either.

“We’re like a co-op,” Richardson explained. “Darryl and I teamed up to buy the house. I fixed it up. Kobe was the broker. Now he’s selling it.”

The three were among a smattering of black real estate developers and investors Settles convened last year for a gathering at his South End restaurant, Darryl’s Corner Bar.

“A year ago we didn’t know each other,” Settles said.

“When we all came together, we just clicked,” Richardson added.

“Once I got to know them and saw how much they were doing, it was incredible,” Settles continued. “They’re very successful.”

Settles and his associates are part of a growing cadre of younger black and Latino real estate investors who are quietly making headway in the local real estate market. Their focus on renovating and selling individual properties is somewhat of a departure from the older generation of black real estate professionals.

With historically low real estate values in Boston’s black community in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, development efforts in past years have revolved around the production of subsidized and mixed-income developments built on public land. Black real estate development firms, like Long Bay Management and Cruz Construction focused on large commercial and residential development projects, creating opportunities for black, Latino and Asian subcontractors to share in the wealth of construction work in Roxbury during the 1980s and ’90s.

Black for-profit developers have left their mark on Boston’s real estate landscape, with large renovations like the Rubina Guscott Building in Grove Hall, the expansive Harvard Commons development in Mattapan and the Crosstown development at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

In 2003, Columbia Plaza Associates, a black, Latino and Asian development team completed One Lincoln Street, a million-square foot, 36-story office tower in Downtown Boston — a high water mark for minority developers in the city’s history. But during that same era, many of the for-profit housing units being developed in Roxbury were developed by white builders.

Now, as real estate values in Roxbury are rapidly rising, the newer cadre of black developers is focused on one- to three-family homes that can be acquired for as low as $300,000 and, after renovation, can be sold for considerably more. Several single family homes in Roxbury have sold this year for more than $500,000 and two-family homes have sold for more than $700,000.

Listed at $499,999, 36 Gaston Street is the first home Settles and his associates have worked on together from start to finish. Richardson, who employs a team of six local carpenters, says all of the subcontractors on the project — roofers, electricians, plumbers, HVAC specialists — were also people of color.

“They’re all young and they’re all professional,” Richardson commented. “They get in and they get out quickly.”

“The money stays in the community,” Evans adds. “It improves the neighborhood.”

Richardson, who grew up in Fields Corner, started in the business buying and fixing up old buildings. He has rehabilitated more than 30 buildings since he went into business six years ago.

With home values rising, Settles said he and Evans will provide Richardson with a needed boost in acquiring new homes to rehabilitate, and getting top dollar for them.

“Tony’s a new breed of contractor-developer,” Settles commented. “We don’t have many like him in our community. We’re looking to change that.”