An effort to transform vacant workplace area into almost 200 new items of housing in downtown Boston has obtained a $7.4 million backing from the Healey administration.
Gov. Maura Healey is awarding the state funding to a pair of initiatives in Boston’s office-to-residential conversion program that Mayor Michelle Wu says she hopes will result in “greater downtown vibrancy and support for our local small businesses.”
The Boston Planning Division has already accepted the 2 initiatives: one awarded $4 million to create 110 rental items at 31 Milk St., and the opposite awarded $3.4 million to supply 80 rental items at 15 Courtroom Sq..
All collectively, the conversion pilot program obtained 15 purposes to transform 606,000 sq. toes of previous workplace area to create 762 housing items, 139 of which can be deemed reasonably priced, a Planning Division spokesperson instructed the Herald on Wednesday.
The BPDA board has accepted 9 initiatives, with this system’s first applicant, 281 Franklin St., slated to have tenants starting to maneuver in on the finish of the summer time, the spokesperson added.
“We need to build more housing across the state to lower costs for everyone,” Healey stated in a press release on Wednesday. “That’s why I directed my administration to identify every resource already available to us that could be turned into housing.”
The 31 Milk St. undertaking, accepted final month, will renovate what’s at the moment an 11-story workplace constructing into 110 residential items, together with 22 “income-restricted,” whereas sustaining a ground-floor put up workplace.
The 15 Courtroom Sq. undertaking, accepted in March, can even renovate an 11-story mixed-use workplace constructing into 80 new houses, 16 of them “income-restricted.” The residences will embrace a mixture of studios and one- and two-bedroom items, whereas the constructing maintains its present ground-floor retail area.
“These office-to-housing conversions at 31 Milk Street and 15 Court Square are exactly the kind of bold, creative solutions we need to address our housing crisis while breathing new life into underutilized spaces,” state Sen. Lydia Edwards stated in a press release.
The conversion program obtained a $15-million state enhance final summer time, with the Healey administration funding as much as $215,000 per reasonably priced unit, with a cap of $4 million per undertaking.
Wu stated on the time that the cash would enable for a year-and-a-half extension of this system.
In her State of the Metropolis tackle this previous March, the mayor introduced this system would broaden to universities and employers trying to reactivate workplace buildings as dorms or workforce housing.
The Wu administration in the summertime of 2023 introduced that the initiative would supply a 75%, 29-year tax abatement to constructing house owners who jumped on the likelihood to transform. The low cost was supposed to offset the excessive value related to changing workplace area, designed and engineered otherwise, to residential makes use of.
The tax break “could provide a strong incentive to encourage conversion,” officers stated.
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