PUTTING PASSIVE HOUSE IN THE LOOP

Passive House Accelerator 

Though Mattapan Station is located in one of the southernmost communities in Boston, it serves as the most vital transportation hub for Mattapan and several south Boston neighborhoods. It’s the terminus of the Mattapan-Ashmont trolley line, which is an extension of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority’s (MBTA’s) red line, and is a major node within the MBTA’s bus system. In addition to its transit connections, the hub services multiple transportation modes, allowing easy access to the Neponset Trail, a multiuse path that follows the Neponset River as it snakes through the city’s southernmost neighborhoods. The station is also a block away from Mattapan Square, a thriving commercial center that provides local services to the area’s growing immigrant communities from Africa and the West Indies, particularly Haiti.

While much of Mattapan is seeing a surge in new residents, the property directly across from the station has long been home to an underutilized, 2.57-acre parking lot primarily for MBTA workers. For years, only around 20% of the more than 240 spaces were occupied on a typical weekday, meaning that it housed less than 50 cars and more than a football field’s worth of chronically unperturbed pavement. Recognizing that the lot was oversized and that there was and will continue to be a need for transit-oriented affordable housing in Boston, the MBTA issued a request for proposals in 2015 for a developer to make better use of the site. The winning bidders, the Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) and the Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation, have since partnered with MassHousing and the City of Boston to create a mixed-use, mixed-income podium building known as The Loop at Mattapan Station (The Loop). 

Continued here