The first of the 124 single-family homes, duplexes, and multifamily apartments planned for the Emerson Green development on Grant Road in Devens are nearly complete.
From left: Marty Jones, Christopher Jurak, Thatcher Kezer, and Mark Melnik stand in front of the home to be featured in This Old House magazine. (Courtesy photo)
According to Dan Gainsboro of Emerson Green’s co-developer, Now Communities LLC of Concord, the 18 units of Phase 1 will be completed this fall. In a recent email, Gainsboro said 15 of the homes are “complete and watertight,” while one duplex building should be watertight by the end of November. All but two of the units have been sold, he said, including one moderate-income subsidized unit.
Phase 1 comprises 10 single-family homes, priced at $495,000 each, and four duplexes. Seven units in the duplexes are market priced at $375,000 apiece. The remaining unit is the moderate-income subsidized unit, for which a lottery will soon be held.
Phase 2 of the project is scheduled to get underway this fall, said Gainsboro. According to MassDevelopment land entitlement director Ed Starzec, Phase 2 will comprise two 20-unit multifamily rental buildings, 12 townhouse units, eight duplexes, and 10 single-family homes. Ten of the planned apartment units will be low-income subsidized units, for which the developer was compensated by a grant from the Harvard Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. Under state law, that arrangement will add a total of 40 low-income units to Harvard’s stock of affordable housing, raising the percentage of such units from 5.5 percent to more than 7 percent and bringing the town closer to the state’s recommended 10 percent goal.
The remaining units of the project will be completed in three or four additional phases.
One of the recently built single-family homes at Emerson Green, located at 28 Chance Street, will be featured in the Jan. 12, 2017, episode of “This Old House” on PBS, Gainsboro said. The model home is currently featured in the October 2016 issue of This Old House magazine, where it appears as that publication’s 2016 “Idea House.”
