The transformation of a 27 acre former hospital campus along the Dorchester-Mattapan border is complete. And, last Saturday, the key players in the decade-long project took a few hours to step back and marvel and what they have accomplished. The consensus – and it is spot-on – is that the Mattapan Heights effort has been a resounding success.
It was not always clear that this story would have such a rosy finish. The old Boston Specialty and Rehabilitation Hospital – once home to a busy facility that treated patients with polio and tuberculosis – had become a largely dormant and foreboding place by the early 1990s. In 1996, the campus and its crumbling buildings became the responsibility of the city of Boston’s Public Health Commission. Wisely, the Menino administration quickly resolved to convene a community advisory board to devise a re-development plan for the space. The Community Advisory Board mandated that the campus should include a mix of health-related uses and new housing opportunities, while at the same time not overbuilding on the campus, which had then – and maintains – much needed green space cherished by the surrounding neighborhood.
Trinity Financial, the Dorchester-based development team that submitted the winning proposal to redevelop the campus in 1999, shared that vision. In 2001, Trinity began to restore the property’s signature building – the Foley – into rental units – most with an assisted living component –now called the Foley Senior Residences. By 2005, the team rolled out an additional 83 units of affordable housing as part of Mattapan Heights II. Last February, the third phase of the campus build-out brought online another 73 units of rental housing at the rear of the property, re-using the hospital’s former children’s ward for 12 of them. In all, 96 percent of the housing created on the campus since 1999 is deemed affordable to “households at or below 60 percent of Area Median Income.” In total, the project’s pricetag has exceeded $80 million. The city of Boston contributed more than $7.5 million in loans and other financing to Trinity’s efforts.
Remarkably, with all of its new and refurbished units already fully occupied, the Mattapan Heights campus has managed to retain its bucolic feel. The apartment buildings are surrounded by green space and large, leafy trees retained from its early 20th century landscape design.
On Saturday, Trinity managers highlighted those qualities with a community celebration held on the spacious lawn that fronts River Street. Scores of seniors from the Foley enjoyed a sunny summer afternoon alongside children from the surrounding neighborhood, who flocked to the field day for a free cookout, songs and carnival-like amusements. It was an appropriately neat ribbon atop a well-done project that has been marked by solid community involvement and a keen eye towards preserving the best of the neighborhoods’ past.
