A construction crew broke ground on a new wing of the Foundry District Lofts this week, and across the street, a group of the project's own tenants and plaintiffs watched, saying the timing of the ceremony amounted to an insult while their lawsuit over the first phase remains unresolved.
Millrace Development Partners broke ground this week on the second phase of the Foundry District Lofts, adding 74 apartments to the Mill Street development even as the company remains locked in litigation with Lowertown tenants over its handling of affordable units in the project’s first phase.
Company spokesman Aaron Kessler said phase two will include the full complement of income-restricted units the company has said all along it intended to deliver across the complete build-out, framing the groundbreaking as evidence Millrace is following through on its commitments rather than abandoning them. “Phase one was never supposed to carry the whole affordable-housing obligation on its own,” Kessler said. “Phase two is where the math finishes catching up.”
Plaintiffs call the timing tone-deaf
Denise Okonkwo-Marsh, lead organizer of the Lowertown Tenant Alliance and a named plaintiff in the suit against Millrace, said breaking ground on a second phase while the first phase’s compliance remains disputed in court sends exactly the wrong message. “You don’t get to keep building while you’re being sued for not building what you already promised,” Okonkwo-Marsh said. “This isn’t confidence. This is betting that the lawsuit won’t slow them down, and so far, they’ve bet right.”
The tenant alliance had sought a preliminary injunction earlier this year that would have barred Millrace from leasing additional market-rate units, and separately from breaking ground on new phases, until the company produced a revised compliance plan for phase one. That request remains pending before a Wentworth County Superior Court judge, and Kessler said the company’s legal position is that groundbreaking on a separate construction phase is not covered by the injunction request as filed.
Reyna Ostrowski, another named plaintiff who says she was told the phase-one affordable-unit program had been “restructured” when she tried to apply, said she watched the groundbreaking ceremony from across the street. “They had a tent and a little stage and executives in hard hats holding shovels for the cameras,” Ostrowski said. “Meanwhile I still don’t have an apartment in the building they already built.”
They had a tent and a little stage and executives in hard hats holding shovels for the cameras. Meanwhile I still don’t have an apartment in the building they already built.
Reyna Ostrowski, plaintiff in the Foundry District Lofts lawsuit
City officials watching closely, but not intervening
City Council Member Terrence Boudreaux, who represents Lowertown, said he had urged Millrace informally to delay the groundbreaking until the litigation resolved, but acknowledged the city has no legal mechanism to force that delay on its own. “I asked them to wait,” Boudreaux said. “They didn’t have to listen to me, and they didn’t.”
Council Member Aisha Muhammad, who chairs the housing committee, said her office is separately reviewing whether phase two’s building permits should be conditioned on updated compliance reporting, an idea she said grew directly out of the enforcement gaps exposed by the phase-one dispute. “We can’t undo the groundbreaking that already happened,” Muhammad said. “But we can make sure every permit that comes after this one has better teeth attached to it.”
- Phase two: 74 additional apartments, bringing the completed project to 214 total units
- Phase-one preliminary injunction request remains pending before a Wentworth County Superior Court judge
- Millrace says phase two will include the remaining income-restricted units promised across the full build-out
Kessler said Millrace remains willing to negotiate a settlement with the tenant alliance but declined to say whether the company would agree to third-party monitoring of phase two’s affordable-unit delivery, an accommodation the alliance has requested as part of settlement talks. “We’re in active discussions,” Kessler said. “I’m not going to negotiate the details of those discussions in the newspaper.”
Okonkwo-Marsh confirmed settlement talks are ongoing but said the alliance would not agree to any resolution that does not include binding, third-party-verified reporting on unit delivery, given what she described as the company’s track record on phase one. “We’ve heard ‘trust us’ from this company before,” she said. “We’re not interested in hearing it again without something we can actually check.”
Construction on phase two is expected to take roughly 20 months, with the additional units projected to open around the same time the pending litigation over phase one is likely to reach a resolution, according to court scheduling estimates. Boudreaux said he plans to keep raising the case at council meetings regardless of the timeline. “This is going to be a story we’re covering in some form for years,” he said. “I’d like it to end with a building that actually does what it said it would do.”