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| Planning for Quincy's redevelopment | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | UPDATES | |
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Housing in Quincy
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| Speak out A second forum on redeveloping Quincy Center is planned for 7 p.m. Jan. 20 in the atrium of the Thomas Crane Public Library. The topic of the forum is “Can we make this happen?” |
And now, as city leaders focus on plans for redeveloping Quincy Center, some city leaders and residents wonder whether the slow move toward high-end housing will force working-class people to go elsewhere.
“I’m concerned we’re going to end up as a city of the haves and the have-nots,” Ward 3 Councilor Kevin Coughlin said. “There will be those who can afford to live in a single- or multifamily home, and those who are simply on the other end of the scale.”
Throughout the city, more than 2,000 luxury condominiums, townhouses and apartments are being built or have received regulatory approval. In some instances, developers are proposing to convert commercial property into housing.
Plans to redevelop downtown already include new housing.
Marion Fantucchio, chairwoman of the city’s board of assessors, said she hopes the boom in residential development will eventually spur commercial growth and bring new businesses to the city.
“The people who live downtown are going to want to do things locally,” she said. “They’re going to want to go shopping and go out to eat. They’re going to want various services, and hopefully that’s going to promote business.”
Interest in that approach was evident Thursday night at the first of two forums on the city’s efforts to redevelop Quincy Center. Close to 100 people turned out to discuss plans to enliven the area with a mix of new housing, offices and upscale specialty shops.
A second forum is planned for 7 tonight in the atrium of the Thomas Crane Public Library.
Already, the city center is the focus of several residential proposals, including the nearly finished Munroe Place, which will add 111 housing units as well as several retail shops in front of the Quincy Center MBTA station. Another developer is expecting to break ground soon on 200 apartment units next to President’s Place, and officials have long considered the city-owned Hancock parking lot a prime location for housing.
On a smaller scale, a developer plans to replace four automotive shops on Washington Street near McGrath Highway with a 15-unit luxury condominium complex.
Outside the center, there are plans for 280 high-end apartment units across from the Adams Inn in North Quincy, and the Highpoint project under construction on Quarry Street is expected to include more than 1,000 new apartments over the next several years.
“Today there is just a greater demand for residential uses than there is for commercial,” said Dean Rizzo, executive director of Quincy 2000, the public-private development corporation. “Fifty years ago, the commercial uses made sense, but things have changed.”
Residential property values in Quincy and nearly every community across the region have skyrocketed in recent years. Houses purchased for $45,000 in the early 1980s are now valued at more than $350,000.
That means many residents are facing property tax bills that are increasing at a rate faster than their incomes. For elderly residents living on Social Security, the higher bills can leave them with no choice but to move out of homes they have lived in for decades.
The average tax bill for a single-family home in Quincy jumped 18 percent this year.
City officials have tried to help residents by changing the tax rate to put more of the burden on businesses, but the meteoric rise in home values may prove difficult to counteract.
Fantucchio said promoting commercial growth in the city is critical to keeping it affordable for residents. Currently, 82 percent of the city’s total property value is in residential parcels, with about 18 percent in commercial land.
Real estate broker Dan Flynn sees the potential for rapid improvement in coming years. He says bringing people downtown through residential development will help attract popular stores, theaters and new restaurants.
“The bottom line is balance,” he said. “When you have a dense neighborhood, what eventually pops up is the convenience store, the dry cleaners, the florist and the video store. That’s all good balance for a local economy.”
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