By
Robert O’Malley
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| The AHP-funded Sargent-Prince building in Roxbury’s
Dudley Square.
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In the 1980s, an arson epidemic swept through the Roxbury neighborhood
of Boston. Property owners began to torch their buildings to earn
insurance payments. Vacant lots and burned-out buildings scarred
the Dudley corridor. The neighborhood, as one visitor put it, began
to look like war-torn Beirut.
For years the neighborhood had been drifting into decline. In the years following
the Second World War, waves of white residents migrated to the suburbs, leaving
behind a largely low-income minority and immigrant population burdened by discrimination
and with little access to credit. In the 1960s, great swaths of lower Roxbury
were bulldozed as part of an urban renewal effort and a plan to build the Southwest
Corridor, a highway linking the expressway with Route 95.
At the nadir of the neighborhood’s decline in the late 1980s, concerned
nonprofit organizations such as the Boston Foundation and the Riley Foundation
collaborated with Roxbury residents to create the Dudley Street Neighborhood
Initiative (DSNI), an organization to coordinate neighborhood redevelopment by
linking vacant land with community development corporations (CDCs) eager to build
housing on it.
Over the last 15 years DSNI and local CDCs have been building new commercial
space and rental and ownership housing on vacant land left behind by the arson
wave of the 1980s. Today, the streets of the Dudley Triangle (an area bordered
by Dudley Street, Howard Avenue, Brookford Street, and Blue Hill Avenue) show
a stunning array of new affordable housing wedged between the neighborhood’s
older housing.
Jason Webb, director of operations at DSNI and director of Dudley Neighbors Inc.,
the land-trust arm of the organization, says a key factor in Roxbury’s
rebirth has been the participation of residents in the redevelopment process.
Shortly after its founding, DSNI and neighborhood residents developed a comprehensive
community plan outlining the kind of housing, commercial development, and green
space residents wanted to see developed in the community. In the 1990s, DSNI
and local CDCs began to implement the plan.
“The key is to have the residents leading the way,” says Mr. Webb,
who grew up in the neighborhood and has been working at DSNI for almost 20 years. “You
have to allow the community and the residents to speak on their own behalf, to
come together to work on their legacy.”
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| View of Central Boston Elder Services’ new headquarters
in Dudley Square.
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Critical to the revival has been the work of Nuestra Comunidad
Development Corporation, Madison Park Development Corporation,
and Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation. Rooted in
the community, these organizations have developed new housing and
commercial space throughout the neighborhood. “I think
that the role of the nonprofit is to tread where no one else will go,” says
Evelyn Friedman, Nuestra Comunidad’s executive director. “We
took the risk and acquired and developed strategically located
buildings and land as a way to encourage development elsewhere.
I think it has worked.”
Also critical to the revival have been collaborations among community
organizations, the City of Boston, and local financial institutions. “The CDCs had to
build confidence with the lenders and funders that we could do these projects,” says
Ms. Friedman. “Ten years ago, I’m not sure we could
have convinced the banks that we could do the Dartmouth Hotel project.
We have done bigger and bigger projects successfully, so slowly
their confidence in us has been growing.”
Over the years the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston’s (the Bank) Affordable
Housing Program (AHP) and Community Development advance have helped fund numerous
neighborhood initiatives. In 1997, the Bank awarded a $180,000 grant through
member Boston Private Bank & Trust Company to the Brook Avenue Cooperative,
which was part of the original comprehensive community plan. The Brook Avenue
initiative involved construction of new two- and three-family rental buildings,
30 of which are affordable to very low-income residents. The recipient of numerous
AHP awards for Roxbury initiatives, Boston Private Bank & Trust Company has
been a major financer of the Dudley neighborhood’s revival
(see related article).
Dudley Square
In addition to widespread construction of new single- and multifamily
housing on vacant lots throughout the Dudley neighborhood, the
Dudley revival includes major renovations to Dudley Square — at
one time the city’s second largest commercial district.
Over the last decade, Nuestra Comunidad and Madison Park have
ac- quired and renovated dilapidated commercial buildings to
create new housing and commercial space in the square.
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| View
of the AHP-funded Dartmouth Hotel in Dudley Square. |
Recent initiatives include Madison Park’s renovation of
Hibernian Hall and Nuestra Comunidad’s renovation of the
historic Dartmouth Hotel building. Awarded
a $313,000 AHP grant through member Bank of America Rhode
Island, N.A., the Dartmouth Hotel created 65 units of rental housing
(45 for very low- and low-income families) and ground-floor commercial
space.
In addition to those initiatives, other developments in the square
include a new headquarters for Central Boston Elder Services and
a new commercial building developed by a local church group. In
recent years, Walgreens and national clothing retailer Ashley Stewart
have also opened stores in the square. In the spring, the city
will begin renovating the landmark Ferdinand Building — one
of the most visible but dilapidated buildings in the square — to
serve as offices for several city departments.
Ms. Friedman says Nuestra Comunidad and Madison Park’s development
efforts have given the city new confidence in
investing there. “Somebody has to stick his neck out and
take the risk,” she says.
“I think that when someone does this, even in a small way, government
feels more comfortable stepping in.”
More than a decade after the formulation of a comprehensive plan,
the Dudley neighborhood is showing clear signs of revival. New
housing and retail space have been built in the square, new businesses
are opening, and property values are rising. “When I first
came here, we had gang warfare on Dudley Street,” says Ms.
Friedman. “Every day someone was being shot or stabbed. The
kids were just warring with each other. We still have a ways to
go, but we are light years away from where we were.”
Gentrification
But as real estate values in Roxbury rise and the new Kroc community
center (see story on page 7) begins construction, some in the
community are increasingly concerned about gentrification. “The
next 10 years is definitely going to be challenging,” says
Mr. Webb. “We know we are going to have to fight gentrification.
When you bring in this type of community center, you’re
going to have people wanting to live close to it.”
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| New housing on Dudley Street in Roxbury.
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Community activists, however, feel confident that Roxbury, despite
its proximity to the center of the city, will continue to be affordable
to low-income residents, largely because much of the housing developed
over the last decade — including ownership housing — was
built with land donated by Dudley Neighbors Inc.
“People who purchase from our land trust get very little equity,” says
Mr. Webb. “We say that to folks up front. ‘If you are in the market
to make money on your house, then this is not the program for you; but if you
want to live in a quality home and have a sense of community and not pay high
property taxes, then this is the house you will want.’” T |
