One of the largest public housing complexes in New England will get a complete overhaul over the next two decades in a redevelopment effort that kicked off Monday with a ceremonial groundbreaking.
All 1,016 affordable apartments in the Mary Ellen McCormack complex in South Boston will be replaced throughout the course of the project, which will also add more than 2,000 new market-rate and middle-income homes.
“We’re creating open space, retail, and a long-needed grocer,” WinnDevelopment’s Drew Colbert said at the event. “We’re finally connecting this site to the broader fabric of South Boston and Dorchester, and we’re committed to providing employment opportunities for Boston residents, people of color and women.”
The Mary Ellen McCormack was built during the Great Depression and opened in 1938. Mayor Michelle Wu said the federal government at that time “didn’t really understand or have an organized program for public housing.”
“This development led the way around the country,” Wu said. “It was one of the first places where a housing community had hot water, where they had laundry facilities on site. And in that way, we, from the very beginning, have been focused on how to make sure people can take care of their families and have basic dignity. Now, in Boston, we also know that being the first will soon mean that you’re the oldest if you don’t maintain things over time and renovate and redo them.”
Formerly known as the Old Harbor housing project, the complex spans 35 buildings across 30 acres and is home to around 1,800 residents.
The first new building, expected to be complete in the fall of 2026 at a cost of $62 million, will feature 94 affordable apartments for existing Mary Ellen McCormack households, along with a resident lounge, fitness room, playroom, mail area and private courtyard.
The building will be 100% electric powered, with a geothermal system for heating and cooling.
Carol Sullivan of the Mary Ellen McCormack tenant task force said the affordable apartments will have the same designs as the market-rate ones.
“And I bet the tenants of Mary Ellen McCormack are very happy,” she said. “I won’t be getting knocks on my door at 11:30 at night anymore going, ‘What’s going on?’”
The project has been under discussion for years. The developer, Winn, was tapped in 2017.
U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a South Boston Democrat first elected to Congress in 2001, said he remembers meetings on the topic back when he was a state senator.
“When I was in law school at Boston College Law School, I earned my stripes as a pro bono attorney down here representing families in the Mary Ellen McCormack housing development who had asbestos on their pipes, they had led paint on their windows,” Lynch said. “So this moment has a special level of satisfaction for me.”
Work on the next set of buildings is expected to start in early 2027.
