Affordable condos in downtown Worcester??? YES!!! Great progress by NEI General Contracting on our adaptive-reuse project to create 22 affordable homeownership units. The existing building had the potential for a huge upside that came with a tremendous challenge. We had: -an original brick masonry building that was constructed in 1877 -a large brick masonry addition was constructed in the early 1900's that engulfed most of the original building -the building was used as a retail banking location for most of its life -converted to office space in the 1980's The Good: -walkable to downtown -high floor to floor heights -large windows in locations that worked moderately well for residential units -square footprint, which is typically not what we want for efficient layout of multifamily units, but with the overall dimensions for this building (relatively small), this was not an issue. The Challenge: -this "four" story building actually had at least nine different floor heights! -the existing building had many internal stairs, ramps, and three elevators to make the office layouts work, but these vertical transportation elements took up too much floor space and creating an inefficiency that was holding back the unit yield -we had to change the main entry for the building to a different facade, and to a different floor The Solution: -working closely with Synergy, and later in the design process with Planning Office for Urban Affairs (POUA), we created many different design layouts to produce the floors plans that are under construction today. -we will have a new centrally located elevator with doors on opposite ends of the elevator cab. -two new egress stairs will be built The Result: -twenty-two residential units in a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom units -affordable -homeownership -walkable to downtown #housingforall BLW Engineers H+O Structural Engineering Intertek Building & Construction (acoustical engineering) Melanie Conant MDLA | Landscape Architects Mark Kalin Code Red Consultants VHB
We were grateful to lead Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities and MassHousing through our construction site at 22 Elm Street in Worcester yesterday! Renovations are underway to convert the building into 22 affordable condominium units, in partnership with Synergy. As the first conversion of an office property to affordable homeownership housing in the State, we are thankful for our financing partners - MassHousing, The Life Initiative, the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation and the Worcester Affordable Housing Trust Fund – to help make this development a reality. Thank you to MassHousing for organizing yesterday's site walkthrough!