EXECUTIVE SUMMARY For 70 years, the current Gardens has served countless numbers of families by providing accessible, affordable housing as state-funded public housing. Speaking with several long-time residents, we have seen how the site carries a rich history and vital legacy of serving and raising some of the neediest families in Brighton. This legacy and mission are absolutely central to our re-imagining of the Gardens, as we address the pressing concern of reinvigorating an aging site that has successfully served its mission for seven decades. Neighboring rapid developments in Alliston and connected to downtown Boston, the Gardens as a site now faces a dual challenge and opportunity brought by economic progress: Can the Gardens expand upon its mission to provide diverse families access to housing that our most vulnerable Brighton community members are included, rather than excluded, from the growing wealth of opportunities in their neighborhood? The sense of crisis is urgent: Rents have increased by over 200% for family housing units, while one in four households in Brighton remain under the poverty line. While the Gardens’ neighborhood of Brighton has grown steadily more diverse over the decades, it still lags far behind the diversity of Boston at-large. As a current cornerstone of accessibility and diversity in its neighborhood, the re-imagined Gardens that we propose will directly face these urgent challenges.
OUR APPROACH TO THE CHALLENGES Our redevelopment of the Gardens seeks to modernize the aging site in order to better serve our currently residing low-income households, and ensure their continued access to the growing opportunities in the neighborhood. To achieve our goal of not only preservation but expansion of accessible housing, we have embraced a mixed-income housing approach to both serve workforce families and take advantage of market-rate unit demands in the area. By securing housing for our low-income and workforce residents, we envision the Gardens as a transportation hub connecting these households to opportunities in the Greater Boston area. The proposal’s larger vision of serving the needs of diverse families has also been informed by our outreach to the community, with plans for the development of community spaces for teen and children’s programming, a children’s play area, and green spaces. We hope to redevelop previous strong partnerships with organizations and institutions in the neighborhood to provide programming for families and children. With our reimagination of the Gardens, we hope our design supports broader efforts to address the housing crisis in Brighton and continues to carry forward our site’s original mission of inclusive, diverse family housing.
TOTAL UNITS: 351 Floors: 5 Buildings: 6 Studios: 82 1-Bedroom: 30 2-Bedroom: 203 3-Bedroom: 36 ELI and LI Units: 254 Workforce: 43 Market Rate: 54 DEVELOPMENT COST Total: $181,000,000 Per Building: $30,000,000 Per Unit: $493,000
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