Housing Headlines

TRURO --- Selectmen are moving forward with efforts to lift the town's ban on year-round condominium use, even as some town officials are saying the measure wouldn't produce many new year-round housing units, given the expense of updating seasonal cottages' interior and septic capacity for year-round use.

WORCESTER --- Botany Bay Construction - a local company with experience building, managing and owning apartment buildings - has been designated as the preferred developer for a former paper factory on Clover St. that was seized by the city for back taxes. Located in the southwest corner of the city, Botany is proposing to knock down the building and redevelop the five-acre site into seven buildings with 90 apartments. Botany operates two well-known apartment complexes in the city - Botany Bay off June St. and Center Hill off Mill Street.

WEYMOUTH --- The need to pump in water from Route 18 to fight a four-alarm fire at Union Point earlier this month has city officials discussing ways of increasing water pressure and other safety measures to ensure fire safety not only at the new development on the former air base and all over the city.

ALLSTON --- As part of a three-phase $85 million mixed-use development, developer Harold Brown's Hamilton Company recently celebrated the start of construction of 40 workforce housing units on Gardner Street in the Packard's Corner area of Allston. The development involves the integration of one of the last remaining historic "Mahogany Row" Victorian houses with a new four-story residential building.

WEST TISBURY --- Developer William Cumming has indicated he would like to rezone a 27-acre farm as a cluster development with mixed-income homes for year-round workers, a plan some residents say is a reversal from what was indicated when the property was first purchased.

AMHERST --- Despite an order from the town to make six affordable apartments available by mid-October, the owner of Presidential Apartments says he won't be able to comply until next year. The six affordable apartments were created as a requirement of a 2013 special permit allowing Presidential Apartments to add 54 apartments to its existing 85-unit complex. The Amherst Housing Authority held a lottery for the units this summer, picked the winners, but then learned the apartments would not be available on Sept. 1. The owner, Allen Cohn, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette he did not anticipate that the lottery would be held during the summer and had received permission from town officials to go ahead and rent the units. He also said he set aside six affordable units and four handicapped accessible units for the housing authority in 2015-2016 but those units were not filled. The town has issued Cohn a notice of violation of the special permit, which includes a $100 per day fine beginning Oct. 18.