Cambridge, MA Nauset Construction and affordable housing nonprofit developer Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) celebrated the official groundbreaking for The Rose on Sixth St. This project will convert the historic Sacred Heart church rectory and school at 49 Sixth St. into 46 affordable apartment units. The celebration also included appearances by secretary Ed Augustus of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC); state senator Sal DiDomenico; state representative Mike Connolly; executive director of Massachusetts Housing Partnership Clark Ziegler; and members of the Cambridge city council and housing department, including vice mayor Marc McGovern and city manager Yi-An Huang.

“POAH looks forward to transforming this historic property into well-designed, high-quality, energy-efficient, and attractive apartments that will offer critical housing opportunities to residents who would otherwise not be able to afford to live in the city of Cambridge,” said POAH president/CEO Aaron Gornstein. 

Designed by architectural firm DMS Design of Peabody, this adaptive reuse project addresses the critical need for housing in the region while preserving the architectural character of these historic structures by restoring their historical facades and interiors. The project’s scope of work includes the complete renovation and restoration of walls, ceilings, woodwork, mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems, elevators, and windows. Historic hardwood floors will also be repaired and preserved where possible or replaced with matching materials. 

When complete, Rose on Sixth St. will provide 46 affordable homes for the community, including 34 one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments and 12 units with three or more bedrooms. The property will serve a range of incomes below the 80% Area Median Income, with eight of the apartments targeted to extremely low-income households at risk of homelessness. 

The apartments will be developed under Cambridge’s Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) ordinance and will remain affordable in perpetuity. 

“By repurposing a historic school and parish rectory, we’re preserving the building’s rich architecture while providing much-needed affordable housing for the community,” said Augustus, whose agency is providing $2.4 million in a combination of grants and loans, as well as Low Income Housing Tax Credits. 

Nauset Construction has constructed over a dozen multifamily projects in the city in the last decade-plus. These include several conversions of historic church properties, including the transformation of St. James Episcopal Church in Porter Sq., into the mixed-use development St. James Place, consisting of 46 condominiums and 12,000 s/f of commercial/community space; and Dana Park Place, which transformed a 1925 school and an early 19^th-century church into 43 condominium units.

“The Rose on Sixth St. project taps into two of our strengths as a construction manager – experience with dense urban infill projects in Cambridge and our deep expertise in historic adaptive reuse projects,” said Anthony Papantonis, president of Nauset Construction.