REGIONAL – The cost and availability of housing on the North Shore is a frequent topic of conversation as prices have skyrocketed and builders are having trouble keeping up with demand for those who want to live here.
In Newburyport, where housing prices are higher than anyone can remember, Mayor Sean Reardon is holding a public forum at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 11 in the senior and community center to discuss efforts to create more housing options and preview the city’s new Housing Production Plan.
Reardon and the city council are also grappling with how best to convert the vacant Brown School into affordable units.
Across the Merrimack River, the city of Amesbury is bringing in Strong Towns, an organization that promises to help city officials and residents “understand the root causes of America’s interrelated housing crisis and the intentional responses your city can make to address it.”
The event, scheduled for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at Amesbury High School, 5 Highland St., will present a summary of local housing and economic trends.
“Housing is an investment. Investment prices must go up. Housing is shelter. When the price of shelter goes up, people experience distress,” Strong Towns stated . “This is the housing trap. It’s time to escape.
“This presentation introduces a first-of-its-kind discussion of the tension between housing as a financial product and housing as shelter. These insights will help local communities fight back against the current affordability housing crisis and opt out of the boom and bust cycles that have typified housing in postwar America.”
Answering an invitation by the city of Newburyport for the Brown School, three companies offered to turn the former elementary school in the south end into new housing. Previously it has served as the city’s youth services facility until a deteriorating heating system made it too expensive to operate.
Three plans, none of which wowed the mayor, came from Zeta Insite in Boston, CSI Support and Development of Warren, MI, and the YWCA of Greater Newburyport
CSI has proposed building 56 affordable studio and one-bedroom units (55 units if the school gymnasium is kept) for low and moderate-income seniors 62 years old and older who earn between 30 percent and 80 percent of the area’s median income of $127,306.
Monthly rents would run between $700 to $2,000 for residents earning $30,000 to $90,000 a year.
CSI proposed two site plan alternatives. One would keep the gym for community use. But to keep the gym would require an underground parking garage
The other site plan, which CSI prefers, would demolish the gym to make way for access off Lime Street plus some outdoor parking.
Zeta Insite would keep the gym and build 29 units –two studios, nine two-bedrooms and 18 one-bedrooms Eight of these units would be considered affordable for households at 80 percent of the area median income.
The YWCA is offering to build 43 affordable units. Its proposal provides for replacing the gym with a new addition that includes a large function room for community use.
CSI proposes to buy the building for $7 million. The YWCA offered to buy it for $650,000. Zeta offered nothing upfront, but would spend $100,000 toward rehabbing the gym in tandem with the school revamp.
To vet the proposals for the council, Reardon appointed a 10-member Brown School Advisory Group that includes himself, Planning Director Andy Port, Special Project Manager Kim Turner, the mayor’s Chief of Staff Andrew Levine, Ward 1 City Councilor Sharif Zeid, Ward 2 Councilor Jennie Donahue, at-large Councilor Heather Shand, Affordable Housing Trust members Madeline Nash and Andrew Shapiro, and former Ward 2 Councilor Jared Eigerman.
The Brown School applicants are being asked to come for an interview on either Aug. 26 or Sept. 5.
To view the proposals, visit www.cityofnewburyport.com/planning-development/brown-school-adaptive-reuse/pages/brown-school-2024-rfp.
