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Boston Globe

In Charlestown, smaller ambitions for big housing development

Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'We don't have a lot of five-acre sites in the city,' Dillon said. 'This is the kind of project that we need.' Advertisement There's a lot to like about the site — its proximity to the T, the historic Charlestown neighborhood, and downtown, said Abby Goldenfarb, Trinity's senior vice president. And with five acres comes a chance for some creative landscaping and other community-focused features, such as a public plaza and lawn, athletic fields, and space for arts and early childhood education. But despite the site's size, it comes with a host of restrictions, Goldenfarb said. Trinity spent nearly a year pushing to shift a state service road that runs immediately behind the site to a spot closer to the nearby Route 1 on-ramp. But after many months of conversations with state transportation officials and Boston Sand & Gravel, which also uses the access road, that idea fell through. Advertisement Affordable housing developer Trinity Financial has proposed an 85-foot, 125-unit affordable apartment complex with an urban plaza and lawn for the project's first phase. ICON Architecture Trinity's Cutting the total number of units allows Trinity to pursue wood-frame construction over a podium — a more affordable option than building taller — and also still allowed opportunity for financial support from the city and state. 'We wish we were able to start construction a few years ago,' Goldenfarb said. 'Construction costs have gone up, so we're trying to build the most economically feasible project we can in the first phase, just to start the momentum.' Related : City officials asked Trinity to explore whether they could build affordable condos in the first phase, but the project needed more governmental subsidy than was available, Goldenfarb said. MassHousing's CommonwealthBuilder program, for example, has per-unit funding caps of between $150,000 and $250,000 for units set aside for households making between 70 percent to 120 percent of the area median income. Advertisement 'The cost differential between what it costs to build a unit and how much subsidy you're able to get for it was just too large to finance,' Goldenfarb said. 'We also didn't want to be in a position where we ... had to sell very, very expensive market-rate units in order to make the affordable units work.' So Trinity started exploring affordable rental apartments — a property type it has long built — and cut down the total number of units in the first phase. Trinity Financial executives Kenan Bigby and Abby Goldenfarb at the Austin Street site in 2023. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Likely investors for the first phase include low-income housing tax credit investors, who consider Boston an 'extremely attractive' market, Goldenfarb said. She's expecting strong interest, but is aware that Trinity is also competing against property owners selling their buildings at rock-bottom prices. 'A lot of owners are selling buildings at a discount, so we're going to have to work really hard to make a building that investors want to take lease-up risk on and construction risk on,' she said. Dillon, Boston's housing chief, said the city recognizes the difficult building environment and is working project-by-project to help developers problem solve — whether that's 'value engineering' or allowing them to safely store materials they've stockpiled. 'It is not an easy time for Boston, or most major cities right now, to to continue to advance an affordable housing and income-restricted housing agenda, but we're not going to stop,' Dillon said. 'Boston is committed to increasing our housing stock and ensuring that a very high amount of the housing that we're creating is income-restricted and affordable to our residents.' Advertisement Catherine Carlock can be reached at