Wright Building Redevelopment Moves Forward through the State's HDIP
July 3, 2024
Mayor Peter Marchetti and Community Development Director Justine Dodds traveled to Lowell on Tuesday for the announcement of the $27 million HDIP package, which aims to create nearly 550 new units in 11 gateway cities across the state. Allegrone Co. is among the 13 housing projects, three of them in Western Massachusetts, to receive funding through the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP).
The Healey-Driscoll administration states that HDIP is a tool for the state's Gateway Cities to create more market-rate housing to support economic development, expand the diversity of housing stock, and create more vibrant neighborhoods. Allegrone Construction Co.'s redevelopment of the historic Wright Building and the Jim's House of Shoes property was awarded over $4 million through the HDIP.
Mayor Peter Marchetti, standing between Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, left, and Gov. Maura Healey attends the announcement of some $27 million in housing grants in Lowell. Also pictured are Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Edward Augustus, Pittsfield's Community Development Director Justine Dodds and Lou Allegrone, principal at Allegrone Companies.
Allegrone purchased the historic Wright Building in 2018, then the space next door — formerly home to Jim’s House of Shoes — three years later. The planned redevelopment will maintain the historic architecture of the former, while transforming both buildings into a total 35 housing units and six commercial storefronts.
Of those 35 units, 20 percent (four in the Wright Building and three in the addition) will be designated as “affordable housing,” available to those making up to 80 percent of the city’s area median income (AMI), in accordance with inclusionary zoning policy.
“That has always been a goal of the housing piece of the project; to be a mixed-income redevelopment, to create mixed-income units,” said Louis Allegrone, principal of Allegrone Co. “Housing is needed in the city of Pittsfield and the state of Massachusetts in general at all income levels so it will serve as a potential precedent for future redevelopment.”
With the HDIP award secured, as well as additional local funding from the city, the Wright Building project is now 100 percent funded and on track to begin reconstruction this fall.
