By Dan Murphy
Three Jamaica Plain projects have been recommended to receive grants totaling nearly $2 million from the fiscal ’20 Community Preservation Funds.
The city’s Community Preservation Committee (CPC) has earmarked a $1.5 million Affordable Housing grant to help Community Builders, Inc., a Boston nonprofit real estate developer, and the Pine Street Inn build 225 units of affordable housing at 3368 Washington St., with 150 units designated as housing for individuals assisted by the homeless shelter.
“Community Builders hopes to start this project this winter for occupancy by the winter of 2022,” Sheila Dillon, Chief of Housing and Director of Neighborhood Development, said Tuesday during a virtual meeting sponsored by the City Council Committee on Community Preservation Act.
The CPC has also recommended awarding a $200,000 Historic Preservation Grant to The Haffenreffer Brewery Complex “to restore the roof and windows for a ‘Prosperity Center’ providing small business services, job training, ESL classes, and other programs” as well as another grant, also for $200,000, “to the Footlight Club, the country’s oldest community theatre, remediate structural problems and stabilize Eliot Hall, a Greek Revival wood-frame structure built in 1831,” according to a press release from the city.
In all, the CPC’s recommended Community Preservation Funds for fiscal ’20 amount to $24,309,000 for 40 projects, including nine Affordable Housing applications totaling $15,750,000; 16 Historic Preservation applications totaling $3,440,000; and 15 Recreational Space and Open Space applications totaling $5,119,000.
Mayor Martin Walsh still must sign off on the recommended allocation of funding.
Boston voters approved the Community Preservation Act by voting “yes” on Ballot Question 5 in November of 2016, and the city subsequently created the Community Preservation Fund, which is funded in part by a 1-percent property tax-based surcharge on residential and business property tax bills and took effect in July of 2017.