Multifamily development in Roxbury worked with diverse set of contractors

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Located on Alpine Street and Regent Street separately, Tommy’s Rock Residences is a multifamily, town-home-style development in Roxbury.

The condos were built by two Black-owned firms and constructed using the services of minority-owned businesses, an anomaly in the construction industry but an important decision, said Darryl Settles, president of Catalyst Ventures Development, one of the co-developers of the condominiums.

Settles said he wanted to give Black people and people of color a chance to be a part of a construction project like Tommy’s Rock Residences, an undertaking he said was essential.

“People need to do work and do high-end work to have the experience and move on,” Settles said. “If we don’t give our own people opportunities to do that, we won’t grow.”

It “slapped me in the face” that larger firms don’t hire many minorities to complete their contracts, he added, recalling a time he drove by a construction zone in Boston and hadn’t seen workers who looked like him, though it was a predominantly Black neighborhood.

In 2023, 87.5% of people employed in the construction industry were white, compared to just 6.7% who were Black and 1.7% who were Asian, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

An interior view of one of the Tommy’s Rock condos. PHOTO: COURTESY CATALYST VENTURES DEVELOPMENT

Although Hispanic people made up 34% of those working in construction, they, along with Black and Asian people, were underrepresented in supervisory and management positions within the construction industry, comprising a total of 22.9% of construction managers.

Settles, whose firm is made up of just him and develops large, commercial real estate projects, said he made an intentional choice to work with people of color because of how atypical it is in the industry. While developers of affordable housing might contract diverse companies, that’s not the standard for market-rate developments in cities, he said.

His decision, he said, aligns with his work of “scaling and building minority-owned businesses” with the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, or BECMA, and the Builders of Color Coalition, both of which he co-founded.

Catalyst Ventures Development landed the development contract for Tommy’s Rock after Settles responded to a request for proposals back in 2014. The city was looking for someone to develop housing on the parcel of land in Roxbury and Settles owned the adjacent lot.

Settles co-developed Tommy’s Rock Residences with Greg Janey, CEO of Janey Construction. After what Settles described as a challenging process, the 14-unit, multi-family building, with a total development cost of about $8 million, according to Janey, went onto the market in July 2023.

“This is probably one of the nicer contemporary homes that you don’t normally find in Roxbury,” Settles said, adding that “if this project was in the South End, the pricing would be almost twice of what the pricing is in [Roxbury]. I think it’s a great value for anyone that’s looking to buy a nice condo.”

According to Zillow’s Home Value Index, calculated using estimates, the average value of housing in the South End is just over $1 million. In Roxbury, the value is about $611,000.

Eight of the 14 units in Tommy’s Rock Residences have been sold, including the two affordable units. Each has a different shape and features European-style windows and 360-degree views of the city, a unique offering for buildings in the neighborhood, said Kim Seawright, real estate broker and owner of Generations Realty Group, who was hired as the broker for the Tommy’s Rock Residences development.

Seawright said she valued working with a majority of people of color, which she previously hadn’t done.

“This was a great project … it’s nice to see the camaraderie,” she said.

For Janey, who was born and raised in Roxbury with six generations of his family having lived there, working on the development project hit home. Developing in his neighborhood, he said, is a priority for him.

Equally important, he said, was working with a diverse group of people on the project. He and Settles “felt empowered … to hire vendors that look like us” to stimulate the neighborhood’s economy.

“Vertical integration is important in development,” he said. “By that, I mean not having all Black or underrepresented vendors or workforce on the bottom half, but instead people all the way up the line,” in top management positions as well.

Tommy’s Rock Residences gets its name from the hill in the area, which was named after Tommy Hommagen, a formerly enslaved Black man who operated a stagecoach in the area in the early 1800s, which gave the development “purpose,” Janey said.

Beyond honoring Hommagen, he said Tommy’s Rock Residences could also serve as an example to community members of what is possible.

“Everybody in the neighborhood could visualize people that look like them building and developing in their own neighborhood,” he said, “and therefore empower people to do the same.”