By Adam Swift
Last month, the Chelsea Housing Authority Board of Commissioners voted to designate the Joseph J. Corcoran and the John M. Corcoran companies as the redevelopment partners with the CHA for the 13 acres of its Fitzpatrick and Prattville site.
The Corcoran companies are the CHA partners for the ongoing Innes/Central Avenue redevelopment.
CHA Executive Director Paul Nowicki said the Fitzpatrick and Prattville project will likewise be a transformational project not just for the CHA, but the entire city.
The project is still in the earliest stages, but Nowicki, Corcoran partners, and City Manager Fidel Maltez said the project will include brand new housing units for all 198 families currently housed on the two sites, as well as a mix of affordable- and market-rate residential units on the parcel.
All the occupants of the current units will be offered temporary housing while the work is ongoing, and will be able to return to the new units once they are completed.
While the timelines and exact shape of the project are still in the very early stages, Nowicki and Jennifer Corcoran of the Joseph J. Corcoran Company said there has already been outreach to residents of the CHA developments, and that outreach will continue through the next several months as the plans for building solidify.
Corcoran said there will be a minimum of the 198 units for the CHA property that currently exists built as part of the project, as well as a number of market-rate and affordable units to be determined as the process moves along.
In addition to the residential development itself, Nowicki said there will be major infrastructure improvements to the site and the surrounding area, from new water pipes to improved roads and traffic configurations. He noted that the pipes currently running under the parcel are more than a century old.
The CHA units will be identical to any of the market-rate residential units, a process that was also taken at the Innes Development.
Nowicki noted that without having a private development partner onboard for the project, it would be impossible to fund the redevelopment for the CHA residents.
While the CHA goes above and beyond to care for the units and make repairs as needed, Nowicki said the CHA and the city would not be able to fund the kind of new units the residents will be getting on their own.
Corcoran, Mary Davis, and Sean McReynolds of the John M. Corcoran Company all noted that while the Innes Development project has been a success, they have committed their companies to beginning the outreach process sooner for the Fitzpatrick and Prattville project in order to address any concerns from the residents and the community.
“This is an incredible opportunity because we don’t have many locations like this in Chelsea where a big area has the ability to absorb more density, and we are able to kind of shape what a neighborhood looks like,” said Maltez. “We are also really excited about the potential of this project bringing in a lot of infrastructure money.”
During his time as the public works commissioner, Maltez said the department responded to a lot of water main breaks in the area, and he added that the sidewalks and other infrastructure in the area are not in the best shape.
“Without any development there, we would have to fund it ourselves,” said Maltez. “By leveraging this development, we are going to tap into state programs, into state grants like MassWorks and HousingWorks in order to leverage this development to improve the infrastructure of the overall neighborhood. We all win by doing that.”
Like the development and CHA partners, Maltez said public outreach is going to play a big part in making the project a success.
“We learned a lot with the project on Central Avenue; we know that it is very important to meet with the residents to ensure that their voices are centered in the development, to reassure them,” said Maltez. “In the early stages of Central Ave., a lot of residents had this mistrust about whether the project was going to happen, whether the project was going to result in better homes. Now, they are back in the property, they see how beautiful the project is; so we know we have to do a lot of trust building with the residents.”