ONE DEVELOPER IS PRESERVING OLD BUILDINGS BY CREATING NEW HOUSING
By Liam Gorman
If you’ve taken a spin through Housatonic lately, you might have noticed some construction happening at the old schoolhouse in the heart of the quiet village.
Built in 1907, the structure that sits adjacent to the iconic water tower just across the train tracks has been vacant since 2003, when Berkshire Hills Regional School District consolidated schools. Over the years, the building has fallen into disrepair. Broken and boarded windows and even graffiti made the structure a bit of an eyesore.
Since it became vacant, several real estate developers have flirted with the notion of utilizing the school or portions of the more than 21,000-square-foot space for a variety of purposes, including apartments or condos, a gym, a museum, a health center, a business incubator, and even a laundromat. Unfortunately, none of those grand plans came to fruition, and the building edged closer and closer to demolition.
“It was just deteriorating and becoming a blight in Housatonic,” says Leigh Davis, newly elected state representative for southern Berkshire County. She was vice chair of the Great Barrington selectboard when the city put out its third request for bids from developers. That was in late 2022, and among the four proposals that came across the desks of town officials was one from a local developer with a track record for turning historic buildings into new homes.
It was from Dave Carver.
“I was thrilled,” says Davis. “He's known for attention to detail and for his love for preservation, which is something that I particularly love.”
You might not be familiar with Carver’s name, but you’ve probably seen his work. Up and down Berkshire County, he has played an important part in building all types of properties—from commercial and retail to market rate and affordable housing. With his partner Peter Ticconi at CT Management or various partnerships, he and his team—including Senior Property Manager Carol Bentz—are responsible for owning or managing over 1,200 housing units throughout the county.
For most of the last 25 years, though, Carver has focused primarily on what developers call “adaptive reuse,” repurposing existing structures for new uses. Some of his more high-profile projects have been converting old Plunkett Hospital in Adams into condos in 2005; creating condos in Pittsfield’s Clock Tower Building in 2008; turning St. Raphael’s Church in Williamstown into the Church Corner Apartments in 2011; and, more recently on Tyler Street in Pittsfield, he’s turned St. Mary’s Church and The Morningside Firehouse into even more housing for the community.
“We don't design like that anymore, and I just think it's important to save the architecture,” says Carver, speaking about the old buildings he’s turned into modern homes. “You can't reproduce it. There's just something organic about their design. They’re just beautiful—whether it's a firehouse or a powerhouse or a church, they were all substantially built at a time when the economy was pretty strong here, and there was a big interest in building buildings as a form of public art.”
Carver’s unique ability to make housing units from structures that others might see as tear-downs couldn’t come at a better time for the Berkshires. Even if you’re a passive ingester of news, chances are you’ve heard about America’s housing crisis. Simply put, it means there aren’t enough homes to house everyone adequately.
The Berkshires isn’t immune to these issues. Pittsfield, the county’s largest municipality, needs 2,035 units to reach the goal of full housing, or an additional 204 housing units each year for the next 10 years, according to a recent report by the MassINC Policy Center. That need for housing is pervasive throughout the county.
“Even before the pandemic, there was a little bit of a squeeze, and housing was something that we had identified economically as it was going to become a real pressure point for us in the next couple years,” says Jonathan Butler, president and CEO of 1Berkshire, the county’s regional economic development organization and regional tourism council.
During the pandemic, a migration to the Berkshires has upended the housing market. Real estate prices have skyrocketed, making market rate and affordable housing more expensive.
“What ends up happening is all that pressure pushes downward, right? So it pushes what should be market-rate buyers into more of the upper tiers of affordable housing,” explains Butler. “This whole thing creates downward pressure, which is regressive in that the lower part of the socioeconomic ladder people are on, the more difficult it is to find suitable housing in the region.”
Solving the problem is as complicated as defining the various types of housing options that generally enter the conversation: single family homes, multi-family homes, condominiums, townhouses, accessory dwelling units, boarding houses, and even second homes are all brought up when discussing the causes and solutions to housing problems. Whatever you want to call them, more roofs are needed over people’s heads.
“It's like saying that we have a problem with our grocery stores,” says Carver. “It’s 50,000 feet of space. Okay, where's the problem? Is it the vegetable department, meat department, where is the problem? Housing is very complicated and spread out. So, when everybody talks about housing, you have to be very specific about what category of housing it is, because they're totally different animals.”
If anyone knows the nature of this beast, it’s Carver, who has been developing properties in the Berkshires since the early 1980s. Carver, now 70, started out in the Naval Civil Engineer Corps. Four years in, he joined his father-in-law, who wanted to develop real estate he owned in North Adams.
“There were a couple buildings on Main Street that were empty offices upstairs, and we kind of slowly, quietly converted all those to market rate housing,” recalls Carver. “There wasn’t a lot of fanfare.”
Of course, why would there be any fanfare? In the early 1980s, large employers like Sprague Electric and General Electric were humming along. Since their departure (Sprague Electric in 1985 and GE in the early 1990s), much of the housing stock built during the boom years wasn’t in demand. Large swaths of housing weren’t maintained and became outdated.
“Pittsfield’s infrastructure is incredibly dated—70 percent-plus of the homes were built before 1970,” says Tim Burke, CEO and managing director of Mill Town Capital, a Pittsfield-based impact investing firm that has bought and redeveloped area real estate. “You're dealing with infrastructure that's incredibly old, that needs a lot of upgrades and constant repairs in our environment, and you're in a market where what people are looking for is typically more modern.”
Alongside Mill Town founder Dave Mixer, Burke and his team have tried to ease the housing crunch by buying up properties largely in Pittsfield, updating them, and keeping them affordable.
“Our portfolio is a mix of single family, multi-family, and mixed use property. Our goal is to maintain the properties in a quality way, while not increasing rents outside of the market rate,” says Burke. “We're trying to maintain a standard where we can sleep at night and our tenants can sleep at night knowing it's in a safe, clean, well-maintained property.”
In 2018, Mill Town partnered with Carver to bring 29 more units online in the Tyler Street neighborhood of Pittsfield when they converted the old
St. Mary of the Morning Star Church complex into housing.
“I partnered with Mill Town as a financial investor, and I put together a building plan and design development,” explains Carver. “That’s what I do; I like to carve out the floor plans and put a deal together.”
The property consisted of four buildings, the church, the rectory, the convent and the school.
“The school was a tear-down,” says Carver. “It had been empty for 35 to 40 years, and the roof was gone—there was daylight inside. But to tear it down and build a new building, it would have been about the same price. For the same money, I want to look at an old building. I wanted to save the architecture.”
So that is what they did. The four buildings still stand on Tyler Street. From the outside, it still looks like a church with its surrounding buildings. But on the inside, it’s been reborn as multiple one- to three-bedroom apartments. The unique architecture only found in churches can still be seen: arched windows, stained glass, and original beams. Even the church’s front doors remain intact, although they’re not usable because of fire codes.
“I've got a lot of respect for Dave Carver and what he does, He’s a unique thinker,” says Burke. “There are very few people in the region, if not the world, who could have done what he did with St. Mary's. That level of creative thinking and willingness to take risk and tolerate nominal returns for the outcome that he gets is really impressive.”
It will take years to make up the Berkshire’s shortage in housing, but local nonprofits and developers are working hard to make more units available. Also making an impact are organizations like Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire, which has helped bring over 60 units to the market in the last year.
Hearthway, Inc., formerly known as Berkshire Housing Development Corp., has announced three projects that will bring 27 new units to the market in Pittsfield. They’re also involved in the Eagle Mill Project now under construction in Lee, where 56 units will be included in this mixed-use development taking shape where Route 20 crosses the Housatonic River.
“That's a multi-faceted project. It's the kind of economic development we like to see,” says Butler with 1Berkshire. “When you're mixing market rate with some affordable units mixed in, and you're putting populations together, that's smart economic development, generally speaking.”
Building housing in downtowns has the added benefit of boosting local economies.
“If you want to see storefronts with businesses, the more housing you're able to put into the downtown, the better,” Butler adds. “It's foot traffic, it’s activity. When people live above a building, they're more apt to be buying sandwiches or getting their cup of coffee. The restaurants and those businesses become more viable in a downtown.”
Carver concurs. New construction outside of downtowns just creates sprawl and potentially harms one of the county’s biggest draws, the outdoors.
“Leave the countryside alone,” he says. “If you build 5,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet on the outside of town, whether it's office, retail, housing or whatever it is, something will stay empty downtown. People love cool downtowns that are fixed up with the old architecture instead of an empty downtown. We need to keep the downtown strong and and don't let sprawl occur. Outside recreation, tourism, all that stuff, that’s our growth.”
Rebecca Brien, managing director of Downtown Pittsfield, Inc., couldn’t agree more. “We need people shopping. We need people to really embrace city life,” says Brien, who has worked with Carver for years to help build up the downtown’s economic base.
“Dave Carver is one of the largest supporters of our initiative, whether it is looking to find first floor business opportunities for entrepreneurs or being very creative in housing on the upper levels of these buildings,” she says. “It really sets him apart from a lot of our other property owners.”
A project Brien is excited about for downtown Pittsfield is the Wright Building at 225 North Street, former home of a candlepin bowling alley. The property is being developed by Allegrone Cos., who were also responsible for restoring the Onota and Howard buildings in the city's downtown. They hope to have it completed by late summer. Taking advantage of the state’s Housing Development Incentive Program—a tax credit and exemption program built to stimulate market rate housing projects in select cities—the building will contain 35 units of both market rate and affordable housing, as well as up to six storefronts when completed. In addition to the storefronts and housing, greenspace has been approved in the back of the building for potential outdoor dining.
While one of Carver’s latest downtown Pittsfield projects isn’t housing, he’s proud to talk about the excitement generated by adding new life to an old space in The Clocktower Complex. In addition to the condos at The Clocktower, Carver has repurposed space for businesses in the complex. During its brief stint in the Berkshires, Wayfair occupied 35,000 square feet of space. When the company closed its call center in 2023, Carver had to come up with a creative way to fill the space. He was able to land a financial services company, Elder Services of Berkshire County and MassHire, but then artists started poking around. He saw an opening to fill even more space for something creative.
“We got interest from an artist, and then another artist, and another artist,” says Carver. “So, we took a step back and then redesigned the whole area as an art center. It's wild. It kind of grew up by itself.”
Now there are about 30 artists who have formed their own association called The Clock Tower Artists.
Even with three kids and nine grandkids in his portfolio, Carver doesn’t see himself slowing down, despite his wife’s wishes. “My wife tells me I'm all done. So I have to tell her every morning, ‘Honey, yeah, okay, I'm retired. I'm retired. I'm just going out to do some errands. I'll be back around 5,’” laughs Carver. “There's still a few things I'd like to do.”
That includes the schoolhouse in Houstonic, which will be ready for tenants in the fall—something Representative Leigh Davis is excited about. “It's going to be nice to have families there and just some energy. These will be people that are contributing to the community. These are going to be kids that are going to our local schools. So I think it's a win-win for everyone.”
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