Obituary: Joseph Corcoran, housing developer, Boston

Over the past few years, at the end of each year, I try to run a piece featuring obituaries of people who in my opinion are notable to urbanism. I can't claim it's a definitive article. It's just obituaries I've come across in my reading, on listservs, etc. And a good number of the people I wasn't aware of.

Some people deserve to be noted away, and I think that Boston real estate developer Joseph Corcoran is one such person. Even though most of his projects were typical market rate projects, he was committed to providing high quality housing for everyone, and has pushed various initiatives in Massachusetts.

His first major project was pathbreaking, the rebuild of the then unsuccessful Columbia Point public housing development in Boston.

Community pool open to all residents regardless of income, overlooking Boston Harbor.  Photo: Brad Vest.

Now called Harbor Point, it may be the first example of adaptively rebuilding a public housing project to incorporate market rate housing as a way to change the social and economic trajectory of the community.

It was helped by a great location on Boston Harbor--now also home to the JFK Presidential Library.  Goody Clancy, an architecture and planning firm that always impresses me, were the designers of the rebuild.

This is what I wrote for the general obituary entry:

Boston Globe photo.

Joseph Corcoran, Boston real estate developer ("Columbia Point gives way to upscale Harbor Point," Boston Globe, 2015). According to the website of the Boston College Center for Real Estate and Urban Action, which he founded, he:

earned a national reputation by transforming a Boston neighborhood now known as Harbor Point from a crime-ridden housing project into a safe, vibrant mixed-income community that the residents are proud to call home. Joe blazed the trail for mixed-income developments by helping to enact state legislation, chairing the real estate registration board, and founding a nonprofit to revitalize distressed urban neighborhoods. "People don't grow up in poverty," he says, "they grow up in neighborhoods."

This was probably the first example of the rebuild of a "squalid public housing project"--this one was originally called Columbia Point, into a mixed use development that included market rate housing ("Joseph Corcoran Rescued a Squalid Boston Housing Project," Wall Street Journal): "Looking Back at the Success of Harbor Point ," Architect Magazine.

And it was Corcoran who approached HUD about taking on the rebuild, not the other way around.  According to the WSJ:

Completed in 1990 at a cost of more than $250 million, Harbor Point created a neighborhood where lawyers and graduate students lived alongside people qualifying for subsidized rent. They shared swimming pools, a gym and views of Boston’s harbor and skyline.

-- Video interview, Boston Foundation
-- Privately-Funded Public Housing Redevelopment: A Study of the Transformation of Columbia Point (Boston, MA), Institute for International Urban Development

Although some argue that the redevelopment of the site came at a great cost in terms of reduced numbers of housing units available to low income tenants.  The split was about 1/3 low income; 2/3 market rate ("REVITALIZATION OR REPLACEMENT? TWO CASES OF REDEVELOPMENT IN BOSTON: COLUMBIA POINT AND COMMONWEALTH," Joint Center for Housing Studies).

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This is the criticism I make generally of the HOPE VI public housing redevelopment initiative launched by the Clinton Administration. Communities were "improved" but a significant amount of low income housing was lost.

And the negative impacts of displacement of the formerly housed residents could be far reaching, such as for Prince George's County, which became the destination for many of DC's families displaced by public housing redevelopment ("Shouldering the Burden," Gazette, 2003).

Recently, I came across an(other) exemplary urban planning initiative by the City of Toronto, Growing Up: Planning for Children in New Vertical Communities. One of the sections of the webpages for the planning documents include case studies.

One is of the St. Lawrence neighborhood. Which is a medium-rise community, built new in the 1970s and reflecting the architecture of the time. It's considered very successful.

One of the things they got right that was totally bobbled by HUD in the US, was the the development of complete communities, with schools, social and community facilities, and retail as part of each building. The ground floors were devoted to non-housing functions -- mixed use -- with housing above.

How cool would it be to have your elementary school on the ground floor of your apartment building?

Schematic/program for the Crombie Park Apartments in St. Lawrence.

For the most part, HUD rules require that public housing be homogeneous developments without retail or other service functions.

They built housing, but not neighborhoods-communities.  Likely this contributed to the "failure" of many public housing projects.