Across from the Boston Police headquarters on Tremont Street near Ruggles, the Whittier Street public housing development sits alone, surrounded by an expanse of vacant lots.
That could all change in the next two years.
City planners are working with two nonprofits on a $30 million HUD grant to raze and redevelop the Whittier Street housing development, a project they hope to leverage into more than $330 million in new housing and commercial buildings that could redraw a large swath of Lower Roxbury.
Along with proposed development of housing, commercial and office space on Parcel P3, directly across from the Boston Police Department headquarters, Lower Roxbury is poised to see its most radical transformation since the state cleared much of the land in the late 1960s.
The Boston Housing Authority, Madison Park Development Corporation and Preservation of Affordable Housing have teamed up to submit a proposal that would create 550 units of new housing, including replacements for the 200 currently occupied units in the Whittier Street development, market rate units and moderately affordable units.
The team is vying for a HUD Choice grant, a program designed to redevelop public housing developments along with the neighborhoods in which they are sited. The Choice grant program is the latest iteration of the HOPE VI grant program, which provided housing authorities with funds to redevelop public housing developments into mixed-use developments with market-rate and affordable units.
The area the BHA and its nonprofit partners are planning to redevelop includes the present footprint of the Whittier Street development and extends to the corner of Tremont Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard, follows Melnea Cass to Shawmut Avenue, and Shawmut Avenue to Ruggles Street.
According to the current iteration of the development team’s plans, new construction would include an 18-story tower of market-rate units along Tremont Street, a new community center on the so-called Crescent Parcel at the corner of Melnea Cass and Tremont, new affordable and mixed-income development along Melnea Cass and a new affordable housing building at Dewitt Drive with a community center and gymnasium.
The project would radically transform the vacant parcels of land in and around the nearby Madison Park housing development.
“We will have an enhanced community,” said Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee Chairman Darnell Williams. “What I’d like to see is a person making $1 million and a person on public assistance living in the same building. You should not be able to tell the difference between their units. Folks will know what it’s like to live in a quality neighborhood.”
The land along Tremont Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard was cleared in the late 1960s and early ’70s to make way for the planned extension of Interstate 95 and an Inner Belt Highway that would have run where Melnea Cass Boulevard now lies. Hundreds of housing units, storefronts and factories were razed, but after community opposition derailed the highway project, the land sat vacant.
In addition, in the Madison Park area, the Boston Redevelopment Authority demolished hundreds of housing units and erased streets and a park to clear the way for Madison Park High School. Activists formed the nonprofit Madison Park Development Corporation and were able to secure funds to develop the subsidized townhomes and high-rise buildings MPDC now manages.
In recent years, redevelopment has begun on parts of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Tremont Street. Madison Park is currently developing projects at the corner of Washington Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard, including the new Tropical Foods Supermarket now under construction. A mixed-use hotel, residential and commercial project is slated to begin construction across the street on Parcel 9 near Jim Rice Field.
Across from the police headquarters on Tremont Street, the development team P3 Partners LLC is planning 450,000 square feet of commercial space, 300 units of housing, a 175-room hotel and a 21,000-square foot cultural center.
If the P3 Partners project receives the green light from the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the BHA-led development team receives the HUD Choice Grant, the transformation along Tremont Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard will radically alter the landscape in Lower Roxbury.
“It’s huge,” said Madison Park Executive Director Jeanne Pinado of the development plans. “But it’s been a long time coming. We’ve had 40 years of vacant land. If we can’t do something now, shame on us.”
