FILE PHOTO
Rep. Brendan Crighton
BY BRIDGET TURCOTTE
LYNN — Officials hope to use the city’s strengths to encourage economic development.
The House passed legislation last week that included language from a bill filed by Rep. Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn) that would expand eligibility criteria for the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP).
The program aims to increase residential growth, expand diversity of housing supply, support economic development and promote neighborhood stabilization. It provides tax incentives to developers who are willing to take on substantial rehabilitation projects in gateway cities. At least 80 percent of the resulting housing units are required to be market rate.
“Lynn, at its height, was a manufacturing city with a lot of jobs,” said Benjamin Forman, research director of Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC), a public policy think tank. “It was also a place with a destination. People wanted to come downtown to do their shopping. We desperately need that, and the commonwealth as a whole needs more places for people to live.”
Giving economic development professionals more flexibility to complete the first development project is what leads to a second and third project, Forman said.
The incentives include a local option property tax exemption that is negotiated between the developer and the city, and a state investment tax credit.
A gateway city is a municipality with a population between 35,000 and 250,000, a median housing income below the state average and an education rate below state average. There are 26 Massachusetts communities that fall into this category, including Lynn.
HDIP is administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development. Today, only properties with existing structures are eligible for the program.
Crighton’s bill expands the eligibility criteria to include new construction on vacant parcels, such as those on the waterfront and former General Electric Co. site along the commuter rail. He said it could include hundreds of acres in the downtown and on the waterfront.
“We have some good stock downtown near the transit that would be very marketable to a lot of folks that are being priced out of the Greater Boston area,” Crighton said. “Right now these vacant or underutilized properties aren’t contributing to taxes to the fullest potential. Those taxes translate to the city’s services that everybody cares about like the schools, police, fire, keeping the streets clean.”
Providing more market rate housing will bring in more residents, who will take advantage of the city’s restaurants and businesses and add to downtown foot traffic, Crighton said.
Forman said the first piece of legislation that included the HDIP program passed in 2009, but included regulations that made it a difficult tool to use.
Crighton said potential developers have shown an interest in the past year, but haven’t chosen to use the program in Lynn.
“Downton Lynn has great urban culture,” Forman said. “There are some buildings that need to be revitalized or reused, but also it has vacant properties that are in the middle of it all.”
The real issue is that the city has a “long pattern of disinvestment” and it’s difficult to get the investors back, he added.
“Affordable housing is good in its own right,” Forman said. “We need affordable housing for people whose incomes are low. But we need to have development that’s going to bring in tax revenues, with businesses on the ground floors. This is a really good step in the right direction.”
The bill must first be approved by the Senate and signed by Gov. Charlie Baker before it goes into effect.
Bridget Turcotte can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @BridgetTurcotte.