WinnDevelopment to move forward with $52M Boys Club affordable housing redevelopment

Rendering| Cutler Design courtesy of WinnDevelopment WinnDevelopment will redevelop the former Boys Club property in Worcester's Lincoln Square.

Photo | Courtesy of WinnDevelopment The former Boys Club property in its present condition.

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By Timothy Doyle

Boston real estate firm WinnDevelopment announced on Thursday that it would proceed with the redevelopment of a 93-year-old former Boys Club property in Worcester into 80 units of affordable housing for residents 55 and older.

The project will include the restoration of the existing Boys Club building on Lincoln Square and the construction of a new building on the property. Of the 80 units, 68 will be reserved for households earning up to 60% area median income and 12 will be for residents earning up to 30% AMI. Eleven units will be accessible to residents with disabilities, according to a Thursday press release from WinnDevelopment.

The project was approved by the city in 2021. Financing for the $52 million project is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024. More details about the project will be available after that time.

The Massachusetts Executive Office for Housing and Livable Communities has authorized the bulk of the funding through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. Funding also included federal and state historic tax credits from the U.S. National Park Service and Massachusetts Historic Commission, according to the press release. The project was awarded $900,000 from MassDevelopment’s Underutilized Property Program in fiscal year 2023. The project received $1.75 million in Affordable Housing Trust funds from the City of Worcester, according to a press release from City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, who is calling for the City of Worcester to monitor the project for worker safety, local hiring, workforce diversity, and tax fraud as it would for a project receiving a tax increment exception deal.

The Boys Club project is not Winn’s only downtown development.

Winn announced in June that nearby the Boys Club project, the company intends to purchase and redevelop the Slater Building, an office building on Main Street in Worcester into a mixed-use, mixed-income development. Michael O’Brien, executive vice president of WinnCompanies, WinnDevelopment’s parent company, told WBJ that he hopes that the project will be permitted by fall of 2024.

In 2014, Winn completed the redevelopment of the former Worcester Vocational Technical School just to the north of the Boys Club into the Voke Lofts, an 84-unit mixed-income apartment building.