Governor Deval Patrick toured Jackson Square last week to tout $250 million in public and private investment in the area where two community development corporations are building more than 200 new units of housing and commercial space on six acres of vacant land.
“Thanks to our growth strategy in investing in education, innovation and infrastructure we have been able to help revitalize the Jackson Square neighborhood,” Patrick said. “Through these types of collaboration efforts, we are making our communities great places to live, work and play.”
Accompanied by state and local officials, Patrick began his tour at the Urban Edge Development project, Jackson Commons, a $1.6 million project established with a partnership with MassWorks Infrastructure Programs. The four-story building will include 37 housing units and commercial space. This project also includes roadway and parking improvements along Centre Street and Columbus Avenue.
Next, the group stopped at 225 Centre Street, where 103 housing units were developed with federal and state low-income housing funds. The MBTA has a $3.1 million plan to reconfigure the bus way and sidewalks to create a bus stop at the entrance to the building. MassWorks was awarded a $2.3 million grant in 2010 to create more public parking spaces on Centre Street and help the streetscape.
The group stopped at 270 Centre Street where 37 affordable housing units were built with support from DHCD and 75 Amory Street where the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation plans to build 40 affordable housing units.
The new development underway in Jackson Square came after years of community process, noted Chrystal Kornegay, president and CEO of Urban Edge.
“We had a whole plan put together and then the crash happened in 2008 and we got some infrastructure dollars and a lot of help from the state, we got this thing jumpstarted. We have had a ground breaking and a ribbon cutting every year for the past three or four years.”
Much of the land in Jackson Square was taken by eminent domain when the state planned to extend interstate I-95 along the Southwest Corridor rail line through Hyde Park, Roslindale, Jamaica Plain and Roxbury in the 1960s. While widespread community protest ultimately stopped the highway construction project, the land in Jackson Square has remained vacant for most of the last five decades.
The development projects in Jackson Square benefitted from the governor’s goal of creating 10,000 units of housing a year. The projects have received $7 million in MassWorks Infrastructure Programs resources and $30 million in tax credit equity, through state and federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits and state bond funds.
“We’ve been involved for 20 years with this development of this area and have seen it go through many phases of this lengthy project,” Kornegay said. “There is a lot of the vacant land from the 1960s when they bulldozed all of the houses and businesses as part of an expansion of I-95. We stopped what would destroy the neighborhood.”
Sally Swenson, fundraising and communications director at JPNDC, said the group is looking to start construction next year on their first project at 75 Amory Street.
