The Needham Housing Authority expects to begin work late this summer on a $20.8 million renovation project intended to preserve its Seabeds Way property that is home to seniors and people with disabilities.
The property has 46 one-bedroom units located in four two-story wood-framed buildings at 22-46 Seabeds Way. The NHA earlier this month voted to award a $12.3 million contract to Colantonio, Inc. to execute the planned upgrades, the first comprehensive project at the property since it was built in 1982.
The project will require Seabeds tenants to be temporarily relocated. The timing of the project and its alignment with the termination of the leases at the Stephen Palmer senior apartments has raised the suggestion that Stephen Palmer could provide that temporary housing.
The Seabeds work will be done in four phases with an expected completion date of March 2028. It will be done one building at a time and require tenants to be temporarily relocated for an estimated four months while the work is being done. That need prompted the idea of using the Stephen Palmer apartments for that purpose, with 10-12 tenants cycling in and out in four-month intervals.
Reg Foster, chair of the NHA Board of Commissioners, said “the accident of timing” of the start of the NHA project occurring nearly simultaneously with the vacating of the Stephen Palmer building raises the possibility of that option, which the NHA has considered but not formally proposed.
“There’s been conversations for several years, but I never thought the timing would coincide as uniquely correctly as it does because it had always been about things happening years in the future,” he said.
“That’s why the accident of timing around the Stephen Palmer situation looks so tempting,” he added.
The leases for all 28 units at Stephen Palmer are set to expire Oct. 31, six months ahead of the May 2027 expiration of the town’s 50-year lease with the property management company that converted the former school for apartment use back in 1977.
Town Meeting in the fall of 2025 approved the Select Board’s request to accelerate the removal date, which the Select Board said was needed to ensure a clean process and prevent the possibility of the town needing to take over as landlord.
The Stephen Palmer tenants, some Town Meeting members and others viewed the move as hard-hearted and unnecessary, given that the town had not even begun to discuss plans for a new use for the 1.5-acre property at the corner of May and Pickering streets.
Seabeds schedule
The NHA expects to close on its financing agreements for the Seabeds project in late July/early August. That will be followed by a mobilization period that Foster expects will take about four months to complete. The first tenants will be required to move out of the initial building to be renovated around the start of the new year.
“We obtained permission (from state and federal housing agencies) to hold units vacant for a while and that’s what we’ve been doing,” Foster said of what the NHA has done in anticipation of needing to relocate tenants.
“But every time we do that, that’s one less person that can be housed who’s living in a tent or in their car, or somebody’s closet.”
Foster also said the NHA has checked with its federal (Housing and Urban Development) and state (Housing and Livable Communities) regulators and been told Stephen Palmer would be an acceptable temporary relocation site.
Stephen Palmer planning stalled
Meanwhile, progress on developing a new use for Stephen Palmer has stalled. The redevelopment committee held its first meeting shortly after last October’s Town Meeting and held a community meeting at Town Hall in January.
It was working on developing a short list of potential use options to be discussed at a second community meeting in the spring, but it has not met since February and has no meetings currently scheduled.
Then there is the fact Stephen Palmer is under the jurisdiction of the school department and not the Select Board, a condition that has impacted the work of the redevelopment committee established by the Select Board.
The School Committee is still in the process of considering how it intends to assert that jurisdiction, although it has stated the site is not suitable to return to its original use as an elementary school.
“They don’t seem to know what they want to do, and they don’t want to be rushed into it,” Foster said of the School Committee’s plans.
“So that’s where things are sort of stuck right now.”
Foster notes a consultant’s report showed the building to be structurally sound and well-maintained.
“That has to be checked out — double checked out,” he said. “That’s the biggest ‘if’ because we don’t have the money and the town does not have the money to make any kind of major alterations.”
Foster would not comment on whether he’s discussed this with school officials, saying only “everybody knows about this. They know that there’s this accident of timing, that tenant relocation is one of our thorniest issues because there isn’t any housing available within 25 miles.”
“Having 27 units that could be used as swing space would take an enormous amount of pressure off things and be a godsend to our residents.”
Save as PDF