Redevelopment of South Holyoke housing project set to break ground

Feb. 15, 2021 | Danielle Eaton
deaton@thereminder.com

HOLYOKE – The affordable housing and the redevelopment of South Holyoke has been underway for several years now.

Former Director of Planning and Economic Development for the City of Holyoke, Marcos Marrero, said the housing project around Carlos Vega Park has been in the works for several years now. The goal of the project, he explained, was to “create social capital” and home “ownership opportunities” as the “neighborhood is over 90 percentile rental.”

Marrero said so far they have “secured a good amount of site control,” and had begun conversations with landowners in the area for the planned project which is in the area of Hamilton Street, South Bridge Street and Sergeant Streets, with the first phase of the project being built on the corner of South Bridge Street and Hamilton Street. He said their intentions for the project are “well known, [and] well publicized.”

A significant part of the project, he said, isn’t just the construction, but also “the process of understanding what the vision is for the community.” This is what has been limited the most by the ongoing pandemic. He said, “The thing that is most limited is the pubic engagement side, you can build a building without public engagement, but that’s not the way we want to do it.”

He said while they were able to “do the bulk of that before the pandemic,” they wanted to ensure the community had a voice in the project’s vision as well. “Dealing with an underserved community, we want to have them at the table. Folks don’t always have the same language around the development, you can’t approach them with the same language,” he said. The project will have two phases, Marrero said. The first phase is “12 units of affordable housing” which would be rental opportunities. The second phase would be “homeownership units.” He said as long as everything goes well, the first phase of the project would hopefully begin in spring of 2021.

“If everything goes well with the subsidy applications that we’ve submitted through the housing authority, we could be breaking ground as early as this spring for this portion of the project,” he said. They would then move on to the permitting phase, which would also take place in 2021, for the second portion of the project.

If all goes well, Marrero said they were hoping to break ground for the homebuilding phase in 2022. He explained that there were “three entities” that the city has “had site control of.” He said this was “mostly due to foreclosure, [or] nonpayment of taxes over many many years.” While the city currently has possession of the properties, he said this would not be the case when it came to selling the homes. He explained that the Holyoke Housing Authority “would own them,” as they were “able to more easily do real estate transactions” as a “separate corporate entity.”

While the public engagement side of the project was difficult throughout the pandemic, he said the design work and layering of finances had continued on. Marrero compared it to a cake and said it was a process of “laying it one on top of another.”

“That work has continued throughout 2020. The procurement and contracting work in the streets has continued, part of that is going to happen regardless. The city has undergone an extensive stormwater process as part of the agreement with the EPA,” he explained. A significant part of that, he said, was a historic MassWorks Grant awarded to the city by Gov. Charlie Baker. The city, he said, was given “just over $6.5 million to do the streets, sidewalks [and] subservience around Carlos Vega Park.”

This, he explained, was incredibly helpful as “the  infrastructure is so old, 100-years-old or older.”

Overall, Marrero said “people are really excited and happy they’ve been a part of the process.” He said it was typical for there to be pushback surrounding the initial announcement of the project and during the first public meeting. However, he said since then”the community has been able to participate in several ways.”

Marrero said the next step was simply awaiting an announcement regarding a “funding stream for those 12 units.” While he couldn’t speak on the details, he said the funding stream would “allow us to break ground later in the spring,” as they had “already been permitted.” Once ground was broken for the project, he said it would likely take a year to complete.

Overall, he said this project has demonstrated much more to the community and the city. “We started demonstrating beyond the public realm how the neighborhood is transforming. We’re headed in a really good direction, doing some stuff that folks said that is impossible and really hard,” he said. “We could have good momentum for homebuilding in 2022.”

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