Healey offers help to turn offices into housing
$1 million program would hire architects to study buildings for potential reuse
With a Boston program to convert underused office buildings into housing now up and running, the Healey administration wants to jump-start similar efforts elsewhere across the state by offering state funds to help municipal officials figure out which buildings might work best for these often tricky and costly conversions.
On Friday, Governor Maura Healey unveiled a $1 million program run by quasi-public agency MassHousing, which would hire architects to help study office buildings for reuse in as many as 50 municipalities. Healey made the announcement at Chestnut Place, the site of a conversion project in Worcester being planned by Boston-based developer Synergy Investments.
Synergy chief executive David Greaney said his firm bought the roughly 250,000-square-foot office complex last year with the intention of converting it into housing. It’s currently home to Fallon Health, which is moving around the end of the year. After Fallon leaves, Synergy will convert one of the two buildings into 198 market-rate apartments, while building 22 affordable condos next door. The floor plates are the right size and shape, he said, for conversion — not overly large or wide so floors can be divided into individual units with windows — and the property has some outdoor space as well.
Worcester’s city council just approved a long-term tax break for the $73 million project, Greaney said, and he hopes to get a state subsidy as well through a tax incentive program for housing construction in mid-sized cities. He said the new MassHousing initiative will make it easier for cities and towns to properly analyze downtown offices for conversion — as he did when he assessed Chestnut Place’s potential.
“I think it’s going to spur ... more office-to-residential conversions,” Greaney said. “It’s a good step in terms of being able to provide these towns with technical assistance [to figure out] if their buildings are good candidates. You need to do some upfront work to determine that.”
City and state officials are eager to see more conversions, to bring more life into downtown centers that continue to suffer the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Thursday, the Boston Planning & Development Agency approved the first project to tap new city tax breaks for residential conversions, one that involves renovating a sixstory office building on Franklin Street for 15 apartments. So far the BPDA has received tax-break applications for four conversion projects that together would create more than 150 housing units downtown.
State officials hope to help create similar programs in other communities, by providing the planning assistance. MassHousing communications director Paul McMorrow said the idea for the state program occurred to housing secretary Ed Augustus as he was touring downtown Fitchburg and was struck by the vacant and underused office buildings there. Augustus, McMorrow said, presided over a few such conversions in Worcester when he was its city manager.
Chrystal Kornegay, MassHousing’s chief executive officer, said officials had already been “test-driving” the initiative with some cities, including Fitchburg. MassHousing officials also had preliminary discussions with leaders in New Bedford and Holyoke.
“Most buildings that aren’t built for housing are difficult to convert,” Kornegay said. “Not every one of those work, so part of this initiative is to really narrow down ... what does work.”