Housing Headlines

CONCORD --- The Concord Housing Development Corporation recently announced preliminary plans to buy 10 acres from the Department of Correction on which to build 20 affordable condominiums. The project is still in the early stages but developers hope to involve neighbors in the process and get their feedback from the start.

DANVERS --- A complex at the former Rio Grande site on Route 114 will soon be awarded a comprehensive permit from the town's ZBA. First proposed in 2004, the development will consist of 71 condominiums, with 17 designated as affordable.

TEWKSBURY --- Construction recently resumed on the Village Green 40B affordable housing project, after the site's developer managed to secure financing from the state. The complex will feature 56 rental units, 12 of which will be designated as affordable. The revised timeline calls for the project is to be completed around July 2009.

EDGARTOWN --- The Morgan Woods development, the largest affordable rental housing development on Martha's Vineyard, was designed as a mixed-income development to help working families find year-round housing in local communities. Now, the Martha's Vineyard Times reports, families have been forced to move out of the complex and several units sit empty on the site, because the locked-in unit prices allow no flexibility to entice tenants into renting.

GROVELAND --- In response to community feedback, Coming Home Inc. has decided not to demolish two buildings and will instead rehabilitate the former St. Patrick's Church and the adjacent Richdale store property into 13 rental units affordable to families between 30 and 80 percent of the area median income. For a family of four, incomes would range from around $24,200 for 30 percent AMI to $61,500 for 80 percent AMI.

LENOX --- Robert Akroyd of Greylock Design Associates recently announced that he and his team are proposing to construct a mixed-use development on the site of Brushwood Farms. The existing buildings on the site will be razed and a hotel, office space, retail space and 134 housing units will be built with a portion of those units designated as affordable. Akroyd expects to present a packet of information to the town and begin the permitting process in April.