PROGNOSIS FOR SUCCESS
Last of Mattapan state hospital grounds to be redeveloped
The minority-owned Primary Corporation will work with Toll Brothers to develop the final 10 acres of the old Boston State Hospital site in a project designed to boost home ownership, affordable housing and economic opportunity in Mattapan.
Gov. Charlie Baker announced Primary Corporation’s selection Tuesday outside the Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center & Wildlife Sanctuary, another development on the former hospital property, praising the new project as an inclusive initiative that will bring more affordable and senior housing to the majority-minority community.
“The site will be a truly great place to live and raise a family, with easy access to the T and open space to support a healthy lifestyle and outdoor activities,” Baker said.
The developers plan to build 367 residential units, 82 of which are slated for home ownership, 121 of which will be affordable and 42 of which will be designated for seniors. The proposal also includes a daycare, food amenities, a farming initiative in collaboration with the Clark/Cooper Community Gardens and a shuttle bus that will run to the Forest Hills MBTA station. Construction is expected to begin in 2021 and wrap up in spring 2024.
The state received six proposals for the last 10-acre plot, with Primary Corporation and Toll Brothers — a Pennsylvania-based firm that develops luxury singlefamily homes — winning out after what state Rep. Russell Holmes, D-Mattapan, described as a communitydriven process intended to make sure the project benefited the neighborhood to the fullest extent.
“Sharpen your pencils and deliver what this community needs,” Holmes said potential developers were told. “It needs to be for us. We did not develop a neighborhood for someone else to move in here.”
Several projects on the former hospital property have already been completed or are currently underway, including the nature center and daycare, a MassBiologics manufacturing facility, a community center and recreation facility, and mixed-income rentals and market-rate housing. The hospital closed in 1979, and the Boston State Hospital Citizens Advisory Committee was formed soon after to support the property’s redevelopment. The committee unanimously selected Primary Corporation for the latest project, Baker’s office said.
“What we envision is about to happen is the glue that brings it all together and invites the community in,” Kirk Sykes, Primary’s president and co-managing partner of Accordia Partners, said of the project.
Sykes said the opportunity to create economic development in the neighborhood “comes with a responsibility … to be inclusive, to be local.” The project will include businesses such as Dorchester-based Ripple Cafe and Brazo Fuerte, a Black- and women-owned brewery.