The Brookley Flats, a new multifamily residential development in Jamaica Plain, Mass. PHOTO: JGE ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN
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A local minority-owned architecture and design firm has recently completed one of the largest affordable homeownership developments in the city.
In partnership with the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation and Causeway Development, JGE Architecture + Design firm developed 45 new affordable apartments, called Brookley Flats, as a multifamily residential development that includes dedicated spaces for artists to both reside and use as their studios, in what are known as live/work units.
Jonathan Garland, president and founder of JGE Architecture + Design president, said he considers this to be a landmark project for the firm and the city “in terms of all things housing policy.”
According to the real estate marketplace company Zillow, a one-bedroom, one-bathroom, 680-square-foot unit in the new development at 10 Stonley Road in Jamaica Plain sold earlier this year for $287,400. A comparable unit elsewhere in the neighborhood sold in April for nearly twice that, $479,000.
Eligibility for one of the affordable units comes with income restrictions, as previously listed in the Banner. The maximum household income allowed is a little $190,000, and that’s for a family of six (according to the Income by Zipcode website, which pulls its data from U.S. Census Data, the median household income for Jamaica Plain is $131,551).
“It stands as the largest affordable homeownership project in the city of Boston,” Garland said. He explained that the development takes advantage of city and state subsidy programs that allow for residents who have lived in the neighborhood for some time and want to upgrade without being priced out of the city. “This provides good quality housing at affordable prices,” Garland said.
The new apartments are located on a former industrial site and the new residential building “prioritizes connectivity, creativity, and long-term environmental performance,” according to JGE’s press release.
The Brookley Flats, a new multifamily residential development in Jamaica Plain, Mass. PHOTO: JGE ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN
Highlights include community-oriented amenities such as “a shared roof deck, gallery space, bicycle storage, and a 19-space stacker garage, all designed to support both individual living and collective engagement,” according to JGE’s press release.
Along with the gallery, there is an exhibition space on the ground floor exclusively for local artists to support professionals in creative careers as they continue to master their craft and live in the same community.
“[For] artists [who] have struggled notoriously to make a living and have stable housing, this provides them an opportunity to do work right there in their studio [in] great natural daylight and quality housing.
Another feature of the project is its energy conservation goals. Sustainability is a mandate from the city when developing affordable housing and using city and state resources. That includes meeting high energy standards and making sure that the building is passive house certified.
“What [passive house certified] means to the layperson is that you really try to insulate the building well, so that when you have high heat demand or cooler temperatures, you’re actually asking your HVAC systems to run and operate at lower rates, because you have done a good job at insulating the envelope [of the building]: whether that’s the roof, the walls, [and] the foundation,” he said.
The building also responds to Mayor Michelle Wu’s arts and culture goals, as it also has an artist mural on the side of the building.
That dedication to art was made clear through community conversations the firm had during the development phase.
“One of the things that was very loud and clear from [this] neighborhood [is that] this happens to be an arts-focused neighborhood,” Garland said. “They came and said, ‘We do not want another gray building in the city of Boston. We want some color and some vibrancy,” he said.
Garland said that he and his team took this community feedback and made sure that the building has bright, bold reds, taupes and purples.
“That was a direct response to voices from the neighborhood,” he said. And by incorporating community feedback, it “also becomes a model in the neighborhood for other new construction coming online.”
Now that the project is completed in the community, Garland said that it is rewarding for him to see and hear the stories of first-time homebuyers. To be able to purchase one of the units, prospective homeowners must be prequalified, obtain mortgages, apply to the housing lottery, and then be chosen to live in these new apartments.
“Not everybody understands” the lengthy process involved, Garland said. “They just see from a distance [that] construction [is] happening. But there is a lot that happens behind the scenes — everything from the developer to the brokers, to the residents themselves,” he said.
At the end of the day, affordable home ownership options in the city, especially in communities of color, is a matter of giving back to the Black and brown communities that have built the country from the ground up, Garland said
“The least we can do is find ways of honoring those traditions and all that hard work,” Garland said. “I’m talking about hard work that often went years and generations without any compensation. I think the least we can do is find ways of honoring that and doing our part as an entire housing and development community to break down barriers that make construction pricing too high.”
