By
Robert O’Malley
 |
View of Central Boston Elder
Services’ new headquarters
in Dudley Square. |
Long before she joined Boston Private Bank & Trust Company
in 1995, Esther Schlorholtz was active in the revitalization of
Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.
A planner in the city’s neighborhood development department under Mayors
Kevin White and Raymond Flynn, Ms. Schlorholtz saw Roxbury rise from the ashes
of a 1980s arson wave to the massive reconstruction efforts of the 1990s.
“When I started in the city, there were vast acres of burned-out land,” says
Ms. Schlorholtz, senior vice president and CRA officer at Boston Private Bank & Trust
Company. “Much of the soil was contaminated. It was very challenging because
you couldn’t even find the owners of the parcels.”
Ms. Schlorholtz says the transformation of Roxbury has been nothing less than
remarkable, and she attributes much of the success there to partnerships developed
among community residents, nonprofit organizations, the city, state, and federal
government,
and private funders.
Critical to the community’s revival was the work of local community development
corporations and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI). “A small
group of people just got fed up with what was going on and decided to take back
their community,” she says. “The situation was so intolerable and
so unfair that they were compelled to take action. They demanded that the political
establishment listen to them and begin directing resources to the neighborhood
instead of disinvesting.”
Other key developments included a large Ford Foundation
grant to the community to purchase vacant land, and the Boston Redevelopment
Authority’s decision to give DSNI the right to take land by eminent domain
for the development of housing.
But while residents and community organizations served as the catalyst for the
revival, the rebirth of Roxbury couldn’t have taken place “without
bringing together public and private resources and the political will to make
it happen,” she says.
“It is about multiple entities coming together to invest,” says Ms.
Schlorholtz. “City and state investments in community development initiatives
were the initial catalysts, but a lot of private-sector actors were involved
as well. The city and the state could not have done it without private-sector
involvement because such vast sums were needed.
“We have put millions of dollars in that area and many of the other banks
have done the same,” she says. “It’s an incredible story, and
it goes back to the issue of everybody pulling together and partnering.”
Of the 30 acres of vacant land-trust parcels in the Dudley Triangle that were
available for development by Dudley Neighbors Inc. (the land trust arm of DSNI),
20 acres have been redeveloped over the last decade with financing provided by
Boston Private Bank & Trust. In investing in the community, Boston Private
Bank has made ample use of Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston (the Bank) funding
programs, including the Affordable Housing Program (AHP), the Equity Builder
Program (EBP), and the Community Development advance.
Since 1992, Boston Private Bank & Trust has won 27 AHP awards — many
to fund initiatives in Roxbury and Dorchester — and has invested millions
of dollars of Community Development advances in Roxbury initiatives.
In addition to investing in the block-by-block rebuilding of the neighborhood
through financing the construction of new ownership and rental housing, Boston
Private Bank has also invested in the redevelopment of the Dudley Square commercial
district. Boston Private Bank is also the sponsor for the Dudley Square Main
Street Program, which promotes economic development in the area.
Over the last decade, Boston Private Bank’s numerous neighborhood projects
include financing construction of Central Boston Elder Services’ new headquarters
in Dudley Square with help from the Bank’s Community Development advance,
as well as investments in the Dartmouth Hotel and Hibernian Hall renovations
through the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation.
Boston Private Bank also financed Madison Park Development Corporation’s
Shawmut Estates initiative to build 15 affordable homes just outside the square. “We
financed five of the first-time home buyers’ mortgages out of the AHP grant
to support the
Soft Second mortgage program,” says Ms. Schlorholtz.
Other Roxbury initiatives funded by Boston Private Bank with Bank funding include
the renovation of a dilapidated building at 504 Dudley Street that houses the
offices of Youth Build Boston and DSNI, and the nearby Brook Avenue Cooperative,
which includes 30 units of cooperative housing for very low-income families.
Boston Private Bank used a Community Development advance to fund the 504 Dudley
Street initiative and received a $180,000 AHP grant to help fund the Brook Avenue
Cooperative.
“Boston Private has really embraced its community reinvestment responsibilities,” she
says. “We have considered it good business, and it’s really good
for the community. Board members, senior managers, bank staff, everybody really
pulls together to try to do more of it. We’re very engaged in it.
“In 2006 Boston Private’s community investment program totaled $86
million, and that includes home mortgage financing for low- and moderate-income
buyers,” she says. “We assisted a lot with money from the Bank’s
EBP, which we love. Many of the home buyers in the neighborhood received some
of that EBP money.
“There’s an enormous amount more to do,” adds Ms.
Schlorholtz. “I would say we have gotten a quarter of the way
there, but
that quarter of the way is the biggest step. Before that there was very little
to build on. Now there’s a lot to build on, and we have momentum.”T |
