State Housing Secretary Tours Downtown Pittsfield Developments
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The state's new secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities on Monday saw how local developers are transforming historic buildings into downtown housing units.
Secretary Juana Matias, appointed to the role in February, toured the former St. Joseph's High School on Maplewood Avenue and the near-complete Wright Building Block on North Street.
Matias observed local leaders working collaboratively to dismantle bottlenecks in housing production, something she said the administration wants to see across all 351 municipalities.
"This is a perfect model of the partnerships we want to see, and we love coming to the ground and seeing how people are leveraging public taxpayer dollars to help address the issue of our time, which is housing production," she said after the tours.
Developer David Carver, of Scarafoni Associates & CT Management Group, is seeking support from the state Housing Development Incentive Program to transform St. Joe's into apartments, and Allegrone Companies has secured millions from the program towards the Wright Building renovation.
They first visited the shuttered school that functioned as a shelter during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, greeted by broken windows and leaving with Carver's vision.
The plan is to transform the school with good bones into 19 apartments, 20 percent designated affordable, and 30 percent of the building for commercial use. Units are expected to cost between $1,700 and $1,900 per month; 14 one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom units are planned.
The project team is in talks with the nearby Berkshire Family YMCA to expand their childcare activities to the building's lower level. Residents and the daycare would use different entrances.
Part of the rear will be taken down to make way for parking, and Carver envisions the auditorium in the middle of the building as an amenity for occupants to share.
"The idea is to keep all the common areas exactly the way they are," Carver said.
Aside from work done in the back of the building, he plans to keep the exterior the same but with new windows. With an estimated cost of about $8 million, it is planned to be all electric.
Earlier this month, the City Council approved a 10-year tax increment exemption agreement that freezes the current property value base, starting at 100 percent forgiveness in the first year, decreasing by 10 percent annually over the agreement's 10-year period.
The state requires a local incentive to be approved before developers submit an application to the EOHLC.
The group then walked a few blocks to the Wright Building, which has received more than $4 million from the HDIP and $1.37 million for streetscape infrastructure improvements and the conversion of the rear vehicular alleyway into a pedestrian way behind the building.
"They're making sure that if there is a resource at the state level, thanks to Representative Farley-Bouvier, that the city is leveraging it to make sure that they're meeting their housing needs," Matias said.
"And that's what we want to see."
In total, the $20 million project has added 35 units, 21 two-bedrooms and 14 one-bedrooms, with rents between $1,800 and $2,400. Seven of the apartments are designated affordable with rents between $1,400 and $1,600, and all but two affordable units are leased.
Anthony and Louis Allegrone walked them through a ground-floor unit with an enclosed patio area at the front door and an upper-level unit with views of Bousquet. The project also transformed the former Jim's House of Shoes building and has commercial space fronting on North Street.
When asked how the state can support rural communities in building and maintaining housing, Matias said it begins with being present, understanding community needs, and responding to them.
"We know that there's a lot of undeveloped land in Western Mass, and we want to work with partners on the ground and think about how we are taking this and repurposing it to places where people can live," she said.
The Healey-Driscoll Administration's "A Home for Everyone: A Comprehensive Housing Plan for Massachusetts" found that more than 220,000 homes must be built in the next decade to meet housing needs.
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