Councillors: Turn surplus city-owned property into affordable housing units

Proposal to convert former Malden Courthouse, Oak Grove Community Center to residential use amps up Council meeting

By Steve Freker

  MALDEN – The temperature rose considerably in the Herbert L. Jackson Council Chambers at Malden City Hall at the last City Council meeting, and it had nothing to do with the thermostat. When all the debate on what turned out to be a very thorny topic simmered down, several City Councillors agreed to disagree regarding the fate of a pair of iconic Malden edifices.

Also, every elected official in the room concurred on the one overlying dilemma: How does this city go about addressing what many believe is fast becoming the #1 issue in the city, lack of affordable housing.

“We’ve had two major changes shoved us at us on short notice in the past year and we had to change all our zoning laws due to mandates on ADUs [accessory dwelling units] and MBTA-related zoning,” said Malden Councillor-at-Large Craig Spadafora at the February 11 Council meeting.

“It is not equitable for a community like Malden to have to go through this when we are trying to address affordable housing,” Councillor Spadafora added. “Through all of this, I have heard the word ‘crisis’ 15 times.”

At that meeting, Spadafora and cosponsor Paul Condon (Ward 2) put forth a resolution calling for the City of Malden to start designating surplus property for conversion to affordable housing. Spadafora and Condon stated in the resolution that the city could start with the former Malden Courthouse building on Summer Street and the Oak Grove Community Center located at the corner of Winter and Washington Streets. Both buildings have been the center of hopeful renovation projects, with the former Malden District Court building for the past three years sitting vacant, while still being considered as the site of a future Arts and Culture center in the city. The Oak Grove Community Center, a much smaller structure, has also been at the center of renovation speculation.

The issue at this time, Councillor Spadafora said, is that the cost to renovate the Courthouse building is rapidly escalating.

“Both of these buildings have been vacant for years and both are near the MBTA,” Spadafora said. “We always talk about affordable housing, here’s a way we can do it.”

Councillor Condon agreed. “It’s simply a choice. We can have an arts center or affordable housing for 10-12 families. That’s an easy answer.”

“I have heard $12 million [to renovate] the Courthouse, just to make it safe and usable as an arts center. If there’s $12 million in our city for that? Show us!” Spadafora said.

“It’s not that I don’t like the arts, but I’m not laying off teachers. I’m not laying off firefighters. We aren’t talking about putting a Chevalier auditorium like Medford has in there,” the longtime Councillor added. “I’m not going to ask our residents to dig deeper for three years and then ask for luxuries [like an arts center].

“We talk about affordable housing out both sides of our mouths but it’s going to come down to money and our budget. I don’t know if it’s this year or next. But this is an option,” Spadafora said.

When Spadafora started to get pushback from other Councillors on his proposal, he said, “That’s fine. Let’s table this for five months and then see what happens.”

A motion to that effect failed by a 7-3 vote. What did eventually pass was a motion made by Ward 3 Councillor Amanda Linehan to strike out references to converting the Courthouse and Oak Grove Community Center to affordable housing and to have a detailed discussion by the Public Property Committee on converting surplus property to affordable housing use. Linehan’s motion passed by a 9-1 vote.

She has been a driving force and champion of the planning and feasibility research that led to the plan to convert the Courthouse to an arts center. She also pointed out that the cost to renovate the Courthouse was now estimated at between $17 million and $19 million, not $12 million.

“I believe in the arts center and I believe in the Oak Grove Community Center,” Councillor Linehan said. “I have also proposed that there can be both uses at the Courthouse: arts and affordable housing.”

“There is a very concrete, phased plan we can do. We have more working artists [in Malden] than in any other community in our region,” Linehan said. “The arts community has bounced back since the pandemic.”

“I have put five years of work into the Courthouse [arts center plan]. I feel really, really deeply about this project,” Linehan added. “At least we have to give it a shot. This resolve [to convert the buildings] came out of nowhere. I think it’s a false equivalent.”

Ward 7 Councillor Chris Simonelli actually stood up at his place on the dais instead of sitting and emphatically said, “My ward is the affordable housing capital [of Malden]. Since I’ve been in office, I have been asked to create affordable housing.”

“Show me where you made it,” he said to the other Councillors. “I already made it.”

“You might want to watch your mouth about creating affordable housing if you haven’t put any affordable housing there,” Simonelli added. “I’ll get into it with anyone on this floor on affordable housing.”

Ward 6 Councillor Stephen Winslow said he took exception to the resolution regarding specific buildings in specific wards without the Ward Councillors being included in the discussion, in this case, Linehan in Ward 3 (Courthouse) and City Council President Ryan O’Malley in Ward 4. “The city has a lot of properties. We should look at parking lots and all of our properties.”

For his part, Councillor-at-Large Carey McDonald, who has spent a great deal of time and effort on the Council’s Affordable Housing Trust, along with Councillors Winslow, Linehan and others, said he was pleased with the extensive discussion on the topic. “I’m just thrilled about all this discussion on affordable housing,” Councillor McDonald said, “Hot diggity dog!”

“But do we want to try and solve it, or just yell at each other?” McDonald asked. “I would love to support more discussion. Let’s talk about all of our properties. If we are serious about this, let’s talk about how to incentivize mixed use and just talk about how to increase affordable housing.”

Councillor-at-Large Karen Colón Hayes said it is important to involve Malden residents in this type of discussion. “We can’t just pop this out in the community without informing the community. Just targeting these two buildings is not fair. We have to have a big talk about all of this.”

The end result was that the resolution regarding surplus city-owned properties was referred to discussion at a future joint meeting of the Council’s Public Property and Community Engagement & Inclusion Committees.