WORCESTER—After sitting empty for 17 years, the building in Lincoln Square that formerly housed the Worcester Boys Club is getting a second chance at life.
On Thursday, Winn Development held a ground breaking at the location to announce the construction of affordable housing for seniors in the space.
The project was the first to receive funding from the city’s Affordably Housing Trust Fund, which it launched in 2021 using American Rescue Plan Act funds.
The project involves redeveloping the original building at 16 Salisbury St.—which was constructed over a four-year period starting in 1928, after George Fuller purchased the land that was the home of the Salisbury Mansion—and constructing an additional five-story building on the site.
The $52 million project will fund the conversion of the existing, historic building and the construction of the new building, according to Drew Colbert, the vice president of Winn Development. The buildings will be connected by a walkway.
Colbert said about 60 percent of the funding will be applied to the new construction and the remainder will pay for the restoration and redevelopment of the former Worcester Boys Club building.
All units in both buildings, which will be a mix of studios, one and two-bedroom apartments, will be reserved for heads of households who are 55 and older and earn 60 percent of the area median income (AMI). Thirteen of the units will be income-restricted even further, saved for renters who earn less than 30 percent AMI, according to Colbert.
The project is expected to take about two years to complete, Colbert said, and the city next year will launch a lottery process to select residents.
As long as the head of the household is 55 years old, children will be welcome to live in the apartment, according to Colbert, who pointed to an example of a potential tenant as a grandparent raising their grandchildren.
The Worcester Boys Club building will have a community room with a full kitchen, a fitness area, and reading nooks throughout the building, according to Colbert. He remarked that planners want to create plenty of areas for tenants to interact in order to give it a community feel.
The community room will hold events and activities hosted by local nonprofits, according to Colbert.
City Manager Eric Batista called the project a win for the city and a response to a critical need.
“It’s an unfortunate fact that as our population grows and ages, our adults are in increasing risk of being home insecure,” Batista said.
Sen. Robyn Kennedy said it is our responsibility to ensure that aging residents are able to age in place and have access to affordable, safe, accessible housing, like this project will create.
The building will include double the amount of handicapped accessible units that it is required, too, Colbert said.
“We’re making sure that that those seniors have the opportunity to continue to live in dignity in the community they’ve called home for so long,” he said.
The project will also preserve a building that is nearly a hundred years old.
Deb Packard, the executive director of Preservation Worcester, said her organization isn’t trying to save all the old buildings in Worcester. Just the best ones.
“Also, we want to see buildings reused and repurposed, we’re not interested in saving buildings as relics,” Packard said. “This project does both we flying colors. It saves one of the best buildings in the city.”
The building was created to help “provide young and vulnerable boys who wandered the city’s streets without supervision, a place where they could develop into productive citizens,” according to Packard.
Its redevelopment marks the second historic building on Lincoln Square that was turned into apartments. The former Worcester Courthouse building is now the Courthouse Lofts.
A third historic building on the square, the Worcester Memorial Auditorium, also needs to be redeveloped. Ideas for its redevelopment have included turning it into a convention center.
“This next chapter for the Boys Club is another milestone in completing the revitalization of Lincoln Square,” Batista said.
In addition to the funds from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the project is going to be financed through the HOME Investment Partnerships program, federal and state historic housing credits, and the MassDevelopment Underutilized Properties Program, among other sources, according to Colbert.
In a press release Thursday, District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj relayed her call to pass a new Responsible Development ordinance “to hold big developers that receive million-dollar subsidies from taxpayers accountable to those of us picking up the bill.”
Haxhiaj cited the $1.75 million Winn Development received from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and said they are not being monitored for worker safety, workforce diversity or tax fraud.
In the press release, Haxhiaj also questioned why the city is “quick to give tax subsidies to large developers but not to the small local business owners.”
Peter Dunn, the city’s chief development officer, told the Worcester Guardian Thursday that the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is not a tax credit or break like the Tax Increment Financing agreements the city offers some developers and therefore does not have the hiring and oversight requirements TIF agreements do.
The trust fund purposefully doesn’t have those requirements for funding from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, according to Dunn, because the city wanted it to be open to anyone.
Smaller businesses and nonprofits may not have the administrative operating capacity to live up to those requirements, Dunn said, and if those requirements were in place, the trust fund may only be accessible to big developers like Winn.
In addition to Winn, the trust fund has allotted funds to smaller organizations and nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, according to Dunn, which is using the funds to create two units of affordable housing.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
