By
Robert O’Malley
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| Orchard Gardens in Roxbury. |
Since its founding some 40 years ago, Madison Park Development
Corporation has been undertaking housing and economic development
projects in lower Roxbury.
One of the organization’s first developments was construction of the multibuilding
Madison Park Village, which was built in phases in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the late 1990s, Madison Park partnered with for-profit developer Trinity Financial,
Inc.
to redevelop the old Orchard Parks housing project in Dudley Square. The result
is Orchard Gardens, a Hope VI-funded development that was a major step forward
in redeveloping Dudley Square.
“We partnered with a for-profit developer — unique among CDCs [community
development corporations] — but it has become a model
that we regularly employ,” says Jeanne Pinado, Madison Park’s executive
director.
“I think the Orchard Gardens development did a lot for that area,” she
adds. “We took the city’s worse public housing development, demolished
a lot of old brick buildings, did rehab and new construction, and completely
changed the dynamic there.
“It’s not perfect,” she continues. “There are still plenty
of problems we continue to work on, but it had a big impact visually and public-safety-wise
on the area.”
After completing Orchard Gardens, Madison Park turned its attention to Dudley
Square, the commercial district between Madison Park Village and Orchard Gardens.
While some 3,000 residents lived in Madison Park’s two major developments,
the Dudley Square commercial district — at one time the second largest
in the city — was in serious decline.
The organization acquired and renovated two dilapidated commercial buildings
in the square — 2201 Washington Street and Hibernian Hall. “We wanted
to fix this commercial district, which really seemed to be key to the revival
of the whole area,” she says.
In addition to renovating the buildings, Madison Park began working with the
Dudley Square Main Street program to market the district, coordinate activities,
and work with the police on serious public-safety issues in the square.
The results have been positive. “People are beginning to take pride in
the area,” she says. “There is definitely a feeling of hope and change.
People are engaged in the community in a whole different way. We’re seeing
different kinds of merchants and different types of storefronts. Larger retailers
such as Walgreens and Ashley Stewart have opened in the square.
“Our retail market study indicates
that we’re not capturing anything close to the local buying power,” she
adds. “We’re encouraging the local retailers to carry the kind of
products and services that the area’s changing customer
base expects.”
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| A new Wallgreens
and the soon to-be-redeveloped Ferdinand Building in Roxbury's
Dudley Square. |
In recent years, Madison Park has been leaning toward a mixed-income
model in developing new housing. “It’s extremely difficult to reach a low-income
population with new homeownership housing,” she says. “The subsidies
just aren’t there to target below 60 per-cent of area median
income. You can barely
do it at 60 to 120 percent.”
As the organization moves into the
next phase of the Roxbury revival, Madison Park is seeking new
ways to tap the resources of
for-profit developers and major city institutions. “Madison Park has always
been pushing the envelope with these kinds of partnerships,” she says,
adding that the organization’s community base, expertise,
and track record can be used to leverage the financial capabilities
and expertise of large organizations.
“I think the institutions — the hospitals in
the Longwood medical area and Northeastern University — are important partners
to engage in a way that promotes the economic development of the area,” she
says. “They are all located along the edges of Roxbury.”
As an example of such collaborations, she points to the development of Davenport
Commons in lower Roxbury, which grew out of
a task force established by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and whose members included
Michael A. Jessee, president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston
(the Bank).
In 1999, the Bank awarded Madison Park a $250,000 Affordable Housing
Program grant through member Citizens Bank of Massachusetts to
help fund the Davenport Commons initiative, a collaboration among
Madison Park, the City of Boston, and Northeastern University to
build 125 student apartments for Northeastern and 60 ownership
units — 37
targeted for households earning 80 percent or less of the area
median income. As part of the initiative, Madison Park also built
Shawmut Estates, a 15-unit ownership development near Dudley Square.
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