BOSTON– MassHousing has provided a total of $8 million in affordable and workforce housing financing to TLee Development LLC, for the construction of 29 new apartments on a vacant parcel at 1463 Dorchester Ave. in Dorchester, MA.
The new housing community will feature 25 workforce housing units, four affordable units, and first-floor commercial space.
“Travis Lee has a proven record of constructing state of the art rental housing for the benefit of Dorchester families, and MassHousing is extremely pleased to be a partner in this latest development, which provide working households with quality affordable housing and economic opportunity,” said MassHousing Executive Director Chrystal Kornegay.
“Our team is very excited to partner again with MassHousing on this community-centric, mixed-used development. The Fields Corner neighborhood is a special place, and we are honored to play a small role in keeping it accessible to households with a wide range of incomes,” said TLee Development Principal Travis Lee.
1463 Dorchester Ave. will include 21 studio apartments and eight one-bedroom apartments. Three of the apartments will be handicap accessible and the building will also have community space, a secure bicycle storage area, an outdoor patio, and 1,325 square feet of commercial space. The new building will be built adjacent to Fields Corner MBTA subway station.
All 29 new apartments at 1463 Dorchester Ave. will be deed-restricted and affordable to moderate- and middle-income households. Twenty-three of the units will be affordable for households earning at or below 90 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) and two units will be restricted to households earning at or below 80 percent of AMI. Four units will be affordable to households earning at or below 70 percent of AMI. The AMI for Boston is $120,800 for a household of four.
MassHousing is providing TLee Development with a $5.5 million permanent loan and $2.5 million in financing from the Agency’s Workforce Housing Initiative. Other financing sources include $1.3 million from the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation’s (MHIC) Healthy Neighborhoods Equity Fund.
1463 Dorchester Ave. advances the Baker-Polito Administration’s goal of creating up to 1,000 new workforce housing units affordable to middle-income households through MassHousing’s Workforce Housing Initiative. Since the inception of the initiative in 2016, MassHousing has committed or closed workforce housing financing totaling $133 million, to 65 projects, located in 25 cities and towns, and advanced the development of 5,226 housing units across a range of incomes, including 1,443 middle-income workforce units.
The general contractor will be MCR Construction, Inc., the architect is J. Garland Enterprises, and the management agent will be Bridgestone Properties.
MassHousing has financed 30 rental housing communities in Dorchester involving 2,933 housing units and $427.4 million in total financing. The Agency has additionally provided $1.2 billion in financing to 8,682 Boston homebuyers or homeowners who have refinanced their homes.
