2024 saw a housing development boom in Fall River. Will it continue in 2025?

FALL RIVER — As the housing crisis worsened in 2024, Fall River staggered under persistent demands to locate available and affordable homes, with economic conditions making it harder for citizens to afford rent. Still, Fall River has been deemed by many as “naturally affordable.”

This past year saw expeditious growth when it came to urban planning and zoning redistribution, with numerous schools, churches and blighted mills queued up for rehabilitation and redevelopment. Smaller businesses gave in to the creep of buyouts and traded in their storefront space to be reallocated into housing units.

Fueling the crisis locally is Fall River’s drastically low 1.2% vacancy rate, with more supply needed to keep up with demand. According to Ken Fiola, executive vice president of Bristol County Economic Development Consultants, developers — especially those rehabbing blighted mill properties — acted aggressively to add between 600 and 700 market-rate rental units, in the hopes of answering that demand for about 5,000 units to be added over the next four to five years.

Mike Dion, executive director of Fall River’s Community Development Agency, said the city has added 44 affordable housing units over the past three years, and is poised to bump that number up to 113.

Here’s a look at what’s happened in the housing market in 2024 and what Fall River can expect in 2025:

From mills to apartments: Fall River expanding housing development opportunities to South End mills. Here’s the plan.

Route 79 project could transform Fall River’s skyline

Planning has begun for the acreage along the Taunton River that will open when the Route 79 redesign is complete.

The $135 million project, headed by engineering and consulting firm Stantec, is well underway in the Davol Street Corridor, and will open almost 19 acres of developable land for mixed commercial and residential use. Fiola said he thinks it will house an additional 1,480 units when complete.

“This offers an incredible economic development opportunity for the city, and for a new waterfront neighborhood,” Sarah Page, executive director of Fall River’s Redevelopment Authority, said in a September interview, at the same time renditions of the development were publicly revealed. “We will continue to be the mouthpiece for this project.”

The RDA will partner with Fall River and Massachusetts governments to determine next steps for what Karen Martin, project manager for the RDA, calls a “blank canvas,” ready for developers to pick the blueprints up and transform the space into “a vibrant, walkable, mixed-use neighborhood.”

The city’s waterfront makeover won’t be finished until 2026. South Coast Rail, a new major transportation development, is on track to be completed in May 2025, provided it passes safety testing. Fall River’s MBTA commuter rail station has been completed since December 2022.

More housing in South End mills west of Cook Pond

In September, the City Council added waterfront properties along the west shore of Cook Pond to an expanded housing district in the city’s South End.

Much of this territory includes blighted mills, like Shove Mills and Charlton Mill, in need of rehabilitation. Many are slated for the construction of 40 new market-rate units, geared toward young professionals, empty-nesters seeking to downsize, or current city renters keen for an upgrade.

Fiola said there are few mills remaining that are eligible for rehabilitation, but select candidate properties are expected to yield close to 450 new units.

Developers of Pleasant St. properties get closer to CPA funding

Before the Community Preservation Committee in September, Armando Pereira of Comprehensive Design/Build Services in New Bedford called the prospect of redevelopment a “revitalization” of the historic Greany Building, and made clear the desire to “put it to a use that we need, which is housing,” though he didn’t identify an expected number of units.

There are six existing units in the neighboring 1616 Pleasant St. building. The objective for that building is to “double them and make 12,” Pereira said. “We’re looking to help out with the housing stock as best as possible and restore these buildings back to where they need to be.”

Fall River retakes two old schools

In January, Fall River regained ownership of the former Frank M. Silvia Elementary School at 138 Hartwell St. The city, under advice of the Preservation Society of Fall River, exercised a reverter clause to reclaim the property when developer David Herbert’s plans to build a boutique hotel and restaurant never materialized and he was unable to sell the property.

The contaminated property sold for $5,000 in 2017. The city put it up for sale in 2024, with former mayor William Flanagan vying for the property, until a flaw in the bidding process prevented any movement.

Mayor Paul Coogan said in a January interview that he’d like to refit the languishing building with a more aesthetic appearance, and a purpose; more recently, Coogan said that the property “is almost ready to go again,” in a new bidding process.

The city’s commitment to offering affordable housing was tested in a grueling back-and-forth that ended with the city once again relying on a reverter clause to sweep the former Davol Street school at 112 Pleasant St. back under its jurisdiction, taking it back from Carlos Cesar and the Flint Neighborhood Association after a decade of inactivity. The city can now include affordable housing criteria into a sale agreement.

Watuppa Heights tabled in a legal bungle with no end in sight

The Fall River Housing Authority, current owners of the barren 10-acre field at the corner of Rodman and Warren streets, say there’s not much to report about the once-developed site in Fall River’s Niagara neighborhood, once a public housing project demolished in 2013.

The latest case is an amalgamation of inherited legal issues related to the undeveloped land and is aimed at the Fall River Housing Authority and the city for failure to make good on an agreement to build at least 80 units for low-income families, veterans, and the elderly.

“There’s a law on the books that says it needs to be 26 single-family homes, and that the developer needs to be a nonprofit,” said Dion during a City Council meeting on Nov. 19. He mentioned in a later interview that, at one point, there was the potential for 300 replicable units.

Former Dominican Academy is OK’d for 68 new units

The Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously at a Dec. 19 meeting to approve the conversion of the historic structure on 37 Park St. — once the former home of Atlantis Charter School and the Dominican Academy — into 68 new market-rate apartments.

The $17 million rehabilitation will makeover the 19th century building, originally used as a convent, into 25 studio apartments, 25 one-bedroom apartments, and 18 two-bedroom units with 75 spaces of off-street parking next door to Saint Anne’s Shrine.

Cordeiro Properties plants its flag at 60 Hartwell St.

Developer Tony Cordeiro has needed to pivot in his plans to build two towering, six-story buildings for a total of 102 market-rate apartments where the former Thomas Alva Edison Building once stood, near the Interstate 195 exit leading to downtown Fall River.

The Lofts at Hartwell Street were to be built in two phases, Cordeiro had said in a May interview, citing the drastic 40% uptick in development costs over the last three years may now cause him to recalibrate plans.

Cordeiro planned for the buildings to have a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units with 5,000 square feet of commercial space.

Construction has not yet begun, either, Fiola said, on purchased land at the corner of Davol and Turner streets, though, once finalized, the deal will add just under 150 units to the city’s rental market.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Fall River MA affordable housing report 2024; forecast for 2025

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