Millrace Development Partners is seeking city approval for a second Foundry Row project even as it remains under a court order to fix an affordable-housing shortfall at its first, a timing that has some council members vowing to demand far stricter terms before signing off.
Millrace Development Partners has filed a preliminary application to redevelop a vacant 1.8-acre parcel two blocks from its Foundry District Lofts site, proposing a roughly 180-unit apartment building even as the company remains under a court order tied to an affordable-housing shortfall at its first Foundry Row project.
The timing has drawn immediate scrutiny from city council members who say they intend to demand far stricter, more enforceable affordable-housing terms before advancing any new agreement with the developer. “I don’t think anyone on this council is inclined to hand Millrace a second redevelopment agreement while the ink is still wet on a court order for the first one,” said Council Member Aisha Muhammad, who chairs the council’s housing committee.
A different approach to the numbers this time
Aaron Kessler, a spokesman for Millrace Development Partners, said the new project, tentatively named Foundry Row Commons, would include a 22 percent income-restricted-unit set-aside, higher than the 18 percent required at the Foundry District Lofts, and said the company is proposing that those units be delivered proportionally with each construction phase rather than at the project’s completion. “We’ve heard the criticism from the first project, and we designed this proposal to answer it directly,” Kessler said.
Muhammad said she welcomed the higher set-aside on paper but wants any agreement to include the kind of enforceable per-phase benchmarks that a judge found missing from the Foundry District Lofts contract when it granted tenants’ preliminary injunction against Millrace earlier this month. “A better percentage on a press release doesn’t mean anything until it’s written into the agreement the way the transit corridor rules were written, with real consequences if a phase falls short,” Muhammad said.
We are not interested in relitigating the last agreement’s mistakes on a new site with a new name. If Millrace wants this project approved, the compliance language has to be airtight before anyone votes.
Council Member Terrence Boudreaux
Council Member Terrence Boudreaux, who represents Lowertown and has pushed for a standing enforcement mechanism for affordable-housing agreements since the Foundry District Lofts lawsuit was filed, said he would oppose advancing Millrace’s application until the city attorney’s office reviews the proposed compliance language against the standard set by the recent court ruling.
Tenant alliance calls for a pause
Denise Okonkwo-Marsh, lead organizer of the Lowertown Tenant Alliance, which remains locked in litigation with Millrace over the first project, said her organization is asking the council to delay any vote on the new proposal until the compliance plan ordered by the court for the Foundry District Lofts has been submitted and reviewed. “We’d like to see them actually follow through once before we take their word for it on a second building,” Okonkwo-Marsh said.
Kessler pushed back on characterizations that the company’s record warrants delay, saying Millrace intends to submit its court-ordered compliance plan for the Foundry District Lofts on schedule and views the new project as a separate matter that should be evaluated on its own proposed terms. “We understand the skepticism, but this application stands on its own merits, and we think the numbers reflect that,” he said.
The parcel under consideration currently sits vacant, having been used for surface parking since a fastener warehouse on the site was demolished several years ago. City planning staff said the proposal will go through the standard rezoning and redevelopment-agreement review process, which typically takes four to six months before reaching the full council for a vote.
Muhammad said the housing committee will hold its first public hearing on the proposal next month, and that she expects public comment to be dominated by questions about the first project’s unresolved compliance issues regardless of the merits of the new one. “Millrace built its own headwind here,” Muhammad said. “That’s not the city being unfair to them. That’s just what happens when your last project is still working through the consequences of not following its own agreement.”
Boudreaux said he expects the review process to take longer than usual given the scrutiny, and predicted the council would not vote on any agreement with Millrace until the Foundry District Lofts compliance plan has been reviewed and approved by the court. “They can file whatever timeline they want,” Boudreaux said. “This council is going to move at the pace that makes sense for Lowertown, not the pace that makes sense for their next groundbreaking.”
Kessler said Millrace remains confident the new project will ultimately win approval given what he described as a substantially stronger affordable-housing proposal than the company’s first Foundry Row deal, and said the company does not plan to withdraw or delay its application while the council conducts its review. “We’d rather have this conversation up front than be accused later of trying to slip something past anyone,” he said.
Some Foundry Row business owners, including several tenants of the Forge Bellwater incubator, said they were watching the process mainly for what it might signal about the pace of new housing construction in the neighborhood, which has struggled to keep apartment supply in step with the area’s growing biotech workforce. “We need more units built here regardless of who’s building them,” said one incubator tenant who asked not to be named discussing a matter before the council. “I just hope this doesn’t turn into a two-year fight that leaves the lot sitting empty the whole time.”