At Monday night’s Gove Street Citizens Association (GSCA) meeting the development team trying to construct over 400 units of housing on a series of parking lots owned by the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center (EBNHC) held its first meeting since announcing a new partnership with the East Boston Community Development Corporation (CDC).
The Davis Company and EBNHC entered into partnership to redevelop four parcels along Breman and Orleans Streets used for Health Center employee parking into a mixed-use development. The four parcels of land are located at 75-115 Bremen Street, 135B Bremen Street, 147-163 Orleans Street, and 164 Orleans Street, respectively.
At Monday night’s meeting the team said they have reduced the overall number of market rate units to 356 market rate units and the CDC will now develop 70 ‘deeply’ affordable units at the 164 Orleans St. parcel.
According to EBNHC’s General Counsel Ernani DeAruajo, under the agreement with the Davis Company the Health Center will make around $80,000 per unit off the sale of the market rate units. These proceeds will be used to expand and enhance EBNHC programs throughout Eastie and the other communities the Health Center serves.
DeAraujo said in return the Health Center will commit $2.4 million in proceeds back to helping the CDC create the 70 affordable units on Orleans Street.
While upping the affordable component of the overall project was met with open arms at the meeting the parcels’ close proximity to the Mary Ellen Welch Greenway has had community activists worried that the proposed height of the buildings would cast a portion of the bright and sunny greenway into darkness.
At Monday night’s meeting the development team said they were committed to working with the Friends of the Mary Ellen Greenway and other stakeholders on how to best address those concerns.
“A big part of our focus is on what we call the Green Heart of the project which is the Mary Ellen Welch Greenway,” said Pat Noone. “The Greenway is sort of the essential heart of the development and we want to be good neighbors and treat it with respect. I also want to just point out that we’re still early in the process and we welcome feedback and look forward to our continuing discussions with the Friends of the Greenway as well as our upcoming discussions that we’ll have with the Parks Department.”
At the meeting longtime activist and member of the Friends of the Mary Ellen Greenway Karen Maddelena said one of the main concerns for Greenway members is potential shading from the larger building being proposed that is five to six stories.
The development team pledged to look at how shading from the building would impact the Greenway and work with the community on addressing where, along the park, shading would be appropriate and less impactful.