[CPEO-BIF] Failed housing plan, Worcester, Massachusetts

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Great idea — What went wrong?
City lot once envisioned as showcase of affordable housing
WATCHDOG REPORTING

By Shaun Sutner
WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (MA)
 March 6, 2011


WORCESTER -  Great things were expected for 48 Mason St.

The group of local businessmen and affordable housing developers who  
bought the property in the run-down Piedmont neighborhood for $67,000  
from the city six years ago envisioned cleaning up the contaminated  
lot and putting up 11 town homes, four of which would be sold to low- 
income buyers.

But while the environmental cleanup of the former linen manufacturing  
plant was completed - courtesy of a $400,000 federal brownfields  
grant secured by the Worcester Common Ground community development  
corporation - the housing plan fell apart.

The 1.1-acre lot became a repository for trash and illegal dumping, a  
neglected eyesore in a neighborhood that has begun to rebound  
recently from years of economic distress.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.telegram.com/article/20110306/NEWS/103060538/0/NEWS06

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

_______________________________________________
Brownfields mailing list
Brownfields@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/brownfields-cpeo.org