BEVERLY — Officials marked on Tuesday the grand opening of Beverly Village for Living & the Arts low-income housing that’s at the former home of the Briscoe School.
The $55 million project was first announced in 2021 when the city agreed to sell the Briscoe building to Harborlight Homes, a Beverly-based affordable housing agency, and Beacon Communities, a Boston real estate firm. The two would later decide to transform into affordable housing.
The project first broke ground two years ago, precisely 100 years after Briscoe opened as Beverly’s high school in 1923.
The building also previously served as a junior high-middle school until its closed in 2018, after the city opened a new middle school on Cabot Street.
“Over the course of about a year, we put together a committee of residents and knocked around a lot of the ideas for this building,” Mayor Mike Cahill said. “The values the community expressed during that process were to protect this building and don’t let it be torn down. It has too much value, historically and emotionally, in our community.”
While receiving bids for the project, the city connected with Harborlight Homes, which partnered with Beacon Communities for the construction and design of the building.
“This was a deal from the get-go that we knew that we wanted to do,” Beacon Communities CEO Dara Kovel said. “And there is no place that we would rather be than in a community like Beverly.”
The project is being funded through a wide variety of funding sources both from public-private partnerships, as well as through state funding such as the Affordable Homes Act, American Rescue Plan (ARPA) dollars, as well as federal and state Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC).
“Right now, we have a major housing challenge in Massachusetts,” Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said. “And it’s really critical, because many of the people who we rely on everyday, people who might be helping care for an older adult, the people checking us out in the grocery store, those heroes during COVID, those folks cannot afford to live in just about any of our communities, and yet we’re relying on them every single day.”
Vance Garry, a current resident of Beverly Village for Living & the Arts and a former Briscoe High School student, spoke about the pride and hope that such large-scale developments made him feel.
“The herculean efforts of countless people have revitalized the potential standout of a more than 100 year old edifice,” he said. “They have transformed this building into one in which we can be extremely proud.
“Good government and good business is an unbeatable combination.”