Terrace 592 Brings Affordable Housing to Former Blight
PITTSFIELD, Mass.— After being charred by more than one fire, the White Terrace apartments are seeing new light as affordable housing.
Regan Development Corp. has transformed the buildings into 41 units: 25 one-bedrooms, 16 two-bedrooms, and three fully accessible units. Between 400 and 700 applications have already been received.
The complex is now named Terrace 592.
"We have eight units that have Massachusetts rental voucher program funding, which allows for housing for people who are considered to be homeless, special needs populations who also have developmental disabilities," development coordinator Jeremy Regan told the Affordable Housing Trust last week.
"So we will be including units in this development for both individuals experiencing homelessness and individuals with disabilities."
While vacant in 2021, the building endured major fire, heat, and smoke damage during a late-night blaze. Not long after, a Pittsfield man was charged with arson after firefighters responded to a second blaze at the site.
Regan said it was a "no-brainer" to revitalize the property and provide much-needed housing.
"Many of us know who have lived here for a long time, there was a fire, there were other issues," Director of Community Development Justine Dodds said about the property.
"But then when the Regans came to Pittsfield, they were able to, just with the sure goodwill and force of their energy, make something happen."
Pittsfield supported the effort with $750,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds and some Community Development Block Grant funds. Hearthway, formerly Berkshire Housing Development Corp., is managing the apartments and currently accepting applications.
President Larry Regan explained that the company is based in New York but reaches communities in Western Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
"But we're a family business, and these are our family assets and we treat affordable housing, each one like it's a child in our family," he said.
"And we partner with communities such as yourselves. We like to come into communities such as Pittsfield that are looking to sort of revitalize themselves and have areas that need assistance and we consider ourselves a niche affordable housing development firm that pretty much likes to serve as tools for community development. We are the tools that you as a municipality and a community use to achieve the goals and yes, we are for-profit but we always partner with not-for-profits in our buildings."
Regan noted, "As you all know as members of the community, the building was in really hard condition."
The property is three separate, historic, brick buildings that total 34,000 square feet. An elevator was added between the second and third buildings. The corporation had been in contract before the fires and had to rework its plans with the existing owners, who were "very cooperative," Larry Regan said.
"The difficulty was certainly not with the rebuilding effort. The difficulty was getting the funding sources all to fit together," he said.
"It's like a typical, difficult affordable housing process project when you're charging rents that are way below the market and you're trying to raise the funding to allow the sources to meet the uses with the mortgage, which you can't really raise that high. You really rely on a lot of gap money from other sources."
The developers reported expected struggles with cost inflation and equipment availability, explaining that a lot has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. Because they were working on a historic building, they salvaged as many original materials as they could, such as flooring.
"In the units, we went with pre-finished hardwood flooring that matched the original flooring in color and texture and we were able to save enough of the salvaged flooring to use in the halls," Regan said, noting the existing flooring is not in great condition but those are common struggles with historic adaptive reuse.
Dodds finds it exciting that the "beautiful" buildings are coming back into use. She was glad to hear that Hearthway will be providing case management services on-site case management services.
"It's really important to kind of partner with agencies to do that work and just help people with some extra supports," she said.
"It’s not enough just to put people in an apartment. Sometimes it's really important to make sure that they can maintain that housing with a trusted relationship with somebody who's checking on them and making sure they have what they need."
Trustee Michael McCarthy found the Regans’ pitch inspirational.
"You have to have the passion to do what you're doing to the benefit of our city and our people, and I'll speak just for myself, I really appreciate that," he said.
Fellow Trustee Carrie Wright said, "The sun is shining and we have housing. I’m very excited."
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