18 Apts. OK’d For Ex-School & Convent

An affiliate of the local megalandlord Mandy Management won unanimous approval to convert a former Fair Haven Catholic school and nearby ex-convent into 18 new market-rate apartments.

Local land-use commissioners signed off on that church-to-apartments plan Wednesday night during the latest regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

The commissioners voted unanimously in support of a site plan application submitted by Mandy’s Fair Haven Heights Properties LLC to convert the existing vacant buildings at 22 Richard St. and 81 Saltonstall Ave. into 18 new apartments.

Those two now-vacant buildings were once home to the St. Rose Church’s parochial school and convent, respectively. 

Last November, the Mandy Management affiliate company purchased both properties for a combined sum of $450,000 from Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish Corporation after winning two packages of zoning relief from the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) earlier in the year.

On Wednesday night, local attorney Ben Trachten appeared at the commission’s virtual meeting alongside architect David Stein, engineer Keith Buda, and Netz Capital Management Principal Frank Micali to make the case for the church-to-apartments project.

“It’s a great adaptive reuse of blighted buildings,” Trachten said. ​“This has been in the works for almost two years, at this point.”

Buda said that the former convent building on Saltonstall Avenue will be converted into eight apartments, while the former school building on Richard Street will contain 10 new apartments. The finished development will also include 18 on-site parking spaces, outdoor bicycle storage, and an outdoor greenspace.

Does the developer plan on making any major changes to the exteriors of the buildings themselves? City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe asked.

“Our main improvements architecturally are mainly just providing access and accessibility for the project” through the addition of ramps for the entrances, Stein said. Beyond that, ​“there’s no physical additions to the buildings.”

“Our intent is to keep with the character of the existing architecture,” he said.

Will the rents for these new apartments be market rate or affordable? Radcliffe asked.

“This is a market-rate development,” Trachten said. ​“This started approximately two years ago, before the introduction of the inclusionary zoning ordinance.” 

He added that the 18 apartments will be ​“predominantly” one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, with one three-bedroom unit on the top floor of the Richard Street building.

Stein said that the sizes of these apartments will range from around 655 square feet for the one-bedrooms to 990 square feet for the three-bedroom.

On ​“adaptive reuse projects” like this, Trachten said, the developer ​“loses a lot of square footage to stairs and hallways,” thus the relatively small square footage of the apartments. ​“They’re perfectly within the requirements of the housing code, building code, and all other applicable codes that govern these types of inquiries,” he added.

Radcliffe and Commission Vice-Chair Ed Mattison encouraged the developer to take down the existing chainlink fence that surrounds the Richard Street property before finishing the apartment conversion. Micali said he’d take their aesthetic recommendations into consideration.

“Otherwise, I think it’s a great thing,” Mattison said about the project. ​“I’ve passed that building many times, and I was afraid that it would just sort of sit there and rot. So I’m very pleased that you’re taking it on.”

According to the Mandy affiliate’s site plan application, the developer plans to begin construction this spring, and plans to complete the conversion work by the end of this winter.