Housing Headlines

MANSFIELD --- Easton developer Nick Mirrione of the New England Cottage Company wants to create small single-family homes young people can actually afford in upscale towns like Easton and Mansfield. The problem is not the concept, everyone agrees this type of housing is needed. The problem seems to be nobody really wants densely settled communities. Mirrione received the same reception Wednesday, Feb. 13 at selectmen that he has seen almost everywhere else he has gone fine, but not here.

BOURNE --- The appeals board has approved a 40B permit that will allow developer Len Cubellis to build 300 homes, including 75 affordable units, above the Bourne rotary.

BOSTON --- A local development company has teamed up with the Asian Community Development Corporation for a project that will create 325 apartments, townhouses, and condos on a site controlled by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. The effort will be located off Kneeland Street near the Rose Kennedy Greenway and will include 70 apartments and up to 99 condos that will be affordable.

LAWRENCE --- A Cleveland company is moving ahead with plans to transform a vacant, 350,000-square-foot mill on the Merrimack River into a 280-unit apartment complex. David Levey, executive vice president of Forest City Enterprises, said this week that his company is purchasing the seven-story building for an undisclosed sum from the Newark Paper Group, which has owned the property for about 20 years.

ASHLAND --- A developer has submitted a 40B proposal to build 32 single-family homes on a 13 acre tract off Fountain Street, to be called Overlook Commons. The project would include at least eight units affordable at 80 percent of the area median income.

BOSTON --- Mayor Thomas Menino has tapped Evelyn Friedman to revitalize Boston's neighborhoods as the city's next chief of housing and director of the Department of Neighborhood Development. Friedman served as the executive director of Nuestra Comunidad Development Corp. in Roxbury for the past 17 years. Friedman will work with John Palmieri, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, to redouble the city's efforts to improve Boston's neighborhoods.