The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 144

Sunday, December 21, 1975 (globe 0 SECTION Apartments ds.d? Automotive dhiodm Iim4itTiiLti(Dini pick mp; slack (constractiom rf if r' f1 Mr on a $52 million energy plant to service hospitals in the medical area as well as provide heat for the housing development. It seems as though the sudden burst of construction projects coming on stream at almost one time could be little embarrassing for the institutions. But, as anyone who has kept abreast of the history of the institutional growth and their conflicts with community groups in established neighborhoods, the accelerating activ dential facility for 200 student nurses for" New England Deaconess School of Nursing. 1 In addition to the energy plant, the Medical Area Services Corp. (MASCO, made up of members of the institutions to be serviced by the plant) also plans a MASCO; service center on the block bounded by Francis, Vining, Fenwood and Brookline avenues, but not until part of the Mission Park housing development is finished.

Boston i State College has been mulling over the idea of a 1000-car parking garage as well as other additions, although the state fiscal problems have probably forced these plans to be shelved. Til i i hi tii bh inn Iik i 1 Model of $40 million 775-unit housing development under con- designed by John Sharratt Associates Inc. and Glaserde-struction along Huntington avenue and St. Albans street, Castro Vitols Partnership associated architect. ity represents years of planning, re-planning, conferences and meetings with neighborhood groups and tenant advocacy groups in attempts to reach a consensus.

The potential of the institutional growth and its potential impact was reviewed in city planning department report of October, 1974, that narrated "An Interim Review of Current Development and Transportation Proposals," and suggested the need for comprehensive land planning, and community involvement. This process has been going on for several years but no one is naive enough to say that total community approval of the bevy of building plans has or will ever be reached, despite compromises reached. Even before the major construction starts took place, the institutional area has been the scene of a steady but scattered building growth running into millions of dollars. Long range plans of other institutions would run into millions more of inr vestments. Work has been under way and is scheduled to be completed soon on the Sidney Farber Cancer Center consisting of a 150-bed cancer research and treatment facility and a 200-car garage.

A four-story patient and research building, with commercial space along Brookline avenue, is scheduled for completion next year as the Howard F. Root Wing of the Joslin Clinic. And New England Deaconess Hospital is building a seven-story radiation facility (plus five stories under-gound) that is scheduled for completion soon. Beth Israel Hospital is also near-ing completion of a 176-bed addition. Boston State College's 12-story library addition is almost finished as is an eight-story educational and resi-.

7 1 'j. 1 Simmons College 'also has plans for an addition and New England. Deaconess has a 140-car garage extension. Long-range major development is under study by both the Children's Hospital and the New England Bap--tist Hospital which will be the beneficiaries of properties to be vacated by the Affiliated Hospital Center participants. New England Baptist on the top of Mission Hill has purchased the adja-.

cent Robert P. Brigham Hospital properties, one of the AHC participants. On May 1 last year, NEBH submitted a Certificate of Need Application to the Mass. Public Health Council requesting approval of a replacement hospital facility, doctor's office building and parking structure. Total cost was estimated at the time at $31 million, NEBH has some 23 acres of land, for a major redevelopment.

Its proposal for new buildings would cover about 12 acres. And when MASCO builds its new energy station, the existing facility adjacent to the Children's Hospital complex will be turned over to Children's. The property encompasses 1.4 acres and is bounded by Deaconess road, Binney street, Blackfan street and the rear property lines along Longwood avenue. While no specific plans have been announced, the hospital, one of the busiest in the country, will probably need expansion space in the near future. state housing finance agencies including Massachusetts HFA with Federal guarantees or "co-insurance" for billions of dollars worth of mortgages and bonds.

1 If Ford goes along with such a plan, his action would end one of the principal housing thrusts of the Nixon Administration from that of handing over progressively greater responsibility for housing to state and local governments, rather than concentrating authority in Washington. It would also raise new doubts about the ultimate future of the state role in the entire housing field. The agencies' fierce independence of Federal bureaucratic red tape has been a major factor in their ability to con By Anthony J. Yudis Globe Staff The major construction investment activity in Boston in the past decade has been in the downtown core area, by both housing and office developers, but a dramatic shift seems to be taking place. Emphasizing the shift to the Mission Hill-medical-educational area of Roxbury and from private enterprise to institutional investment is the groundbreaking activities that took place for the $129 million Affiliated Hospital Center along Binney and Francis streets.

A quick look at the activity under way, or nearly under way, forces the somewhat startling conclusion that the institutional life of the city seems to be ready to take up the construction slack of the private real estate market caused by the economic slump. With the Affiliated Hospital start, more than $200 million in construction work is under way or is to be under way in the next few months. The activity includes the 755-unit Mission Park apartment development and a 1274-car garage has begun on a 13-acre site along Huntington avenue and St. Albans street by Harvard University, a community group and others at a cost of $40 million. Expected in the next few months, barring legal holdups, is start of work DONALD C.

DOLBEN Realty Board elects Dolben Donald C. Dolben of Reading, a partner of William H. Dolben Sons, Boston, has been elected president of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board for 1976. Dolben succeeds David H. Bradley of L.

Davenport Boyd real estate firm and becomes the third member of the Dolben family to head the real estate" organization which draws its membership from Boston and 56 surrounding communities. Dolben's father, Alfred H. Dolben, served as president of the Mass. Assn. of Realtors in 1949.

In 1960, his uncle and partner, William H. Dolben Jr. Was president of the Greater Boston -Real Estate Board. Arthur J. Dolben, another uncle, served as head of the Boston board in 1954.

He is a member of the National Assn. of Realtors, is chairman of the board of trustees and treasurer of Fisher Junior College, and real estate consultant to the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Mass. He also is a Reading town meeting member and former finance committee member of the town, as well as chairman of Troop 705, Boy Scouts of America, in Reading. Elected to serve with him in various divisions of the real estate board were Wesley B. Swanson of Swanson Associates in Winchester, who will head the Brokers Institute; John H.

Rankin of J. H. Rankin, Sudbury, head of Multiple Listing Service; George E. Slye of Spaulding Slye head of Rental Housing Rfchard W. Spaulding, of Spaulding and Whclan head of Building Owners and Managers Assn.

1 a Model of $52 million energy plant to be State agencies trading independence for HUD funding Massachusetts administrations have acted to help their agencies roll over their bond anticipation notes, skittish investors have demanded higher and higher interest ratesj if they buy at all. Massachusetts' recent sale of $122 -million in short-term notes is a case in point. The HFA had to pay a whopping 8.5-8.6 percent. Money at those high rates is so costly that it renders apartment construction projects unfeasible for the agency. Other state agencies, such as Pennsylvania's have cancelled planned note sales because the rates they were of- fered were even worse, i By Kenneth R.

Harney WASHINGTON A series of un-publicized negotiations has gotten under way here that could produce one of the most dramatic reversals in US housing policy in the past eight years. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is seriously considering asking President Ford to provide the nation's 35 ailing Kenneth R. Harney is managing editor of the Housing and Development Reporter, published in Washington by the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. He is also a regular real estate columnist for the Washington Post. constructed by Medical Area Service Corp.

are going to be out of business" for the foreseeable future. White and other members of the Council of State Housing Agencies approached HUD quietly several weeks ago in search of financial aid. All the state agencies have had their backs to the wall ever since the March; 1975, default of New York's big Urban Development Corp. (UDC) and the subsequent New York City and state money crises. INvestors in the tax-exempt municipal bond market, the HFA's lifeline, have been unwilling to buy notes and bonds backed by nothing more than the "moral" obligation" of state legislatures.

Although both New York and and then make such money available to banks for mortgage loans. Thus far, without start-up funds, no agency has been able to be set up. Ash cited an urgent needs for funds to fix up state-aided public housing projects "and every day we do nothing, the projects get that much worse. The architectural firm of Childs Bertman Tseckares Associates, Inc. has placed first in the architectdeveloper competition sponsored by the Newton Redevelopment Authority for a project in the Washington street-Newton Lower Falls area.

The project comprises a 62-unit multi-family housing development by Hilon Development Co. of Chestnut Hill. The architectural process went through an evaluation with involvement of the Lower Falls Project Area Committee and other community Building permits in Bay State continue to decline struct more than $6 billion (202,000 units) worth of residential projects nationwide. 1 That independence almost certainly would be compromised if and when they accepted Uncle Sam's help. William J.

White, Massachusetts' HFA director and a key figure in the discusssions with HUD in Washington, sees danger ahead no matter what the agencies do. "If we get Federal co-insurance," he says, "we may never be able to sell bonds in the market again that don't carry federal backing. That could mean we'd be married to the Federal government for life. "On the other hand, if we get no help from Washington, many of us The latter agency was set up re cently to aid neighborhood home owners by providing rehabilitation loans. What the House leadership action means, says Ash, is "that we have no programs for dealing with the two most pressing housing problems facing the cities of the state, lack of mortgage funding for the neighborhoods and deteriorating public housing projects.

"A year after the Legislature created an agency like MHMFA to launch a statewide program to help homeowners in the neighborhoods, it should be able to provide some money for staff." MIlMFA's task was to float tax exempt notes and bonds similar to the Mass. Housing Finance Agency, LOTS AND BLOCKS ANTHONY J. YUDIS Continued on next page groups, as well as the New Redevelopment Authority. Drive-in theater buffs who decide to go to the Weymouth Twin Drive-In on Rte. 3A will beeeted with a marg-que previewing "Harbor Mall." The outdoorvie site has closed and report- edly a Grand Rapids, firm.

East Bay Development is planning a shopping center mall on the 30-acre tract. A discount department store, supermarket and about 40 smaller stores are planned. Officials of the new 500-room Hyatt Regency Cambridge Hotel now under construction along Memorial Drive report that sales of banquet and meeting facilities already exceeded the $1 million mark. The hotel's opening is scheduled for July 4 of next cvear. James P.

Evans. Hvatt Building permits for the first eight' months of this year for single-family residences in Massachusetts totalled 7500, a drop of 986 over the same period last year, according to a survey of the Builders Assn. of Greater Boston. (BAGB) In the BAGB's "Bay State Builder," the survey shows that building permits for 734 two-family units were issued, compared to 416 in the same period last year; permits ior 6225 units of multi-family units (apartments) were issued in the first' eight months, compared to 11,498 units in the same period last year. Building permits for all units in all categories, according to the BAGB survey, totalled 14,459.

In the same period last year the total was 20,400. In January, only 364 building permits were issued for single-family houses, 293 in February and 650 in March. April, May, June and July, the total showed increases every month each month more than 1000 units. Heported July's total was 1363, the highest for the eight-month period, but in August it dropped to 1200. Citizens Housing and Planning Assn.

of Metropolitan Boston, Inc. has taken the legislature to task for failing to provide minimal funding for two housing programs. CHPA says the House leadership was instrumental in killing a state housing policy for the older communities of Massachusetts. Ellis Ash, president of CHPA, said the legislative leadership failed to advance legislation to provide $5 million in a bond authorization for the modernization of state-aided public housing projects and to provide start-up money of $100,000 for the Mass. Home Mortgate Finance Agency.

sales director, says the sales are abou-' ten percent ahead of schedule. i i.