Growing up north of Boston, John Tocco drove through Everett countless times without giving much thought to its gritty industrial areas or the waterfront tucked amid factories and fuel depots.
That all changed in 2012 when Tocco took a community affairs job helping Wynn Resorts build a $2.5 billion casino on the Mystic River. He saw Everett’s potential firsthand, particularly given all its underused industrial land, and waited for developers to swoop in. Eventually, he became one of them.
“The area’s got to change,” Tocco recalls thinking. “It’s too close to Boston. You could get land at a reasonable price.”
That proved to be a safe bet.
From 2015 through 2021, per the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, no community in Greater Boston added more housing at a faster clip than Everett — 16 percent. Today, there are nearly 1,600 additional units under construction in large buildings, according to real estate firm JLL, the most, after Boston, of any city or town in the region.
The construction surge has naturally raised concerns about affordability, as this working-class city confronts an influx of luxury apartments that most of its residents can’t afford. Monthly rents at developer Greystar’s recently completed Mason complex, for example, range from $2,200 for a studio up to $4,100 for a two-bedroom.
As it is, only about 5 percent of Everett’s housing stock is set aside at income-restricted affordable rents. And in a city where the median household income of $78,000 is 10 percent below the region’s, even mandatory affordable units in new buildings are often not “Everett affordable” — as one city official put it. Addressing this issue will be a key part of a housing plan MAPC is developing for Mayor Carlo DeMaria’s administration.
But as state officials prod communities to craft new zoning that spurs more housing, many in the development industry say Everett has already hit on a formula that works.
“We have a housing shortage,” said Gary Kerr, a Boston-based executive for Greystar, one of the busiest builders in Everett. “This is one of the few cities proximate to Boston that’s incentivizing developers to come build.”
Everett’s location, just a few miles from downtown Boston, certainly helps. While there are no train stations within the city limits, a relatively new commuter rail and Silver Line station in Chelsea sits just a few blocks from Everett’s “Commercial Triangle,” a 100-plus acre industrial area south of Route 16 where many apartment buildings are sprouting.
Everett also has swaths of industrial land available — with owners looking to cash in on their scrap yards, auto body shops, and worn-out warehouses. These include the 40-plus acres — once part of the Mystic power plant — that the Kraft Group is eyeing for a soccer stadium, and a former 100-acre fuel storage facility that is now slated for a massive mixed-use development by The Davis Companies.
“The city is highly motivated to turn a leaf from its industrial history,” said Rafael Mares, executive director at housing nonprofit The Neighborhood Developers. “Housing production is one of the ways to move away from it.”
City officials have taken several steps to spur that transition. JLL managing director Andrew Gray said Everett has accommodative zoning that stands out among communities in Greater Boston. New zoning allows apartment buildings of six or seven stories in some places; nearly 4,000 units have been approved for the Commercial Triangle alone since its rezoning in 2018.
In other cities, developers can be deterred by rules requiring a percentage of housing construction to be set aside for affordable units. Everett typically requires 15 percent, but that rate was cut to 5 percent for projects built on contaminated industrial sites. More than 2,000 units were permitted under this provision, before city officials raised it to 10 percent.
Likewise, Everett has reduced minimum parking requirements at new buildings, in return for transit-friendly amenities such as free T passes or shuttles. That enables developers to devote more space for housing or shops. It can drive down the overall costs, Everett transportation planner Jay Monty said.
“When you build parking, you’re building it at the expense of something else,” Monty said.
Then there’s something harder to quantify: A “keep ‘em moving” approach at City Hall, to minimize clashes between residents and developers before formal plans even get filed.
“In Boston, it might take you two to three years to be told ‘no’ while in Everett it might take you two to three months to be told ‘yes,’” said Matt Lattanzi, Everett’s planning director.
That’s not just an empty boast. Tocco, for example, said the ease of permitting “made the world of difference” for his firm, V10 Development, which has received permits to build hundreds of apartments in the city.
“Everett has really cracked the nut on implementing best practices,” said April Anderson, an economic development consultant. “They’re implementing good public policy but they’re also very accommodating in the way they work with developers. ... It’s definitely a competitive advantage for them.”
Of course, it’s also much easier to propose big projects in industrial areas, with fewer residents next door to complain.
Then there’s the simple power of momentum. Everett’s development potential remained largely untapped until two crucial events. One, of course, was the casino opening. The other is more subtle: A developer from Connecticut stumbled across a former candy factory a half-mile up Broadway from the casino, and turned it into the Batch Yard — the first in Everett’s new wave of apartment buildings.
That was nearly 13 years ago, but Andy Montelli remembers it like it was yesterday. He found the proximity of the site to Boston and relatively inexpensive land appealing. The Batch Yard opened during a horrendous winter, in 2015, but units filled up quickly.
“I just couldn’t understand why this place wasn’t already on the map,” Montelli said. “Maybe it just took somebody from outside to look at it with fresh eyes. Lucky for me, no one else was looking.”
They are now. In 2019, executives at Greystar — a big, international developer — took an interest in Everett. Today, Greystar has several contiguous apartment buildings underway in the Commercial Triangle, nearly 2,000 units in all. The first opened last year, with rents starting on average at around $2,700 a month — inconceivable for Everett not that long ago.
But many current Everett residents are being priced out. This issue flared up in the most recent mayor’s race, in 2021, when DeMaria’s challengers, Gerly Adrien and Fred Capone, accused him of failing to focus on affordable housing.
“When you look at an apartment, they’re asking $3,000 for one bedroom,” said Guerline Alcy Jabouin, a newcomer on the City Council. “Everett is a blue-collar city. We need people who want to stay in the community they grew up in. [But] if you are not lucky enough to own a home, you have to go somewhere else because Everett is not affordable anymore.”
MAPC planner Alex Koppelman said the plan that his group is drafting on the city’s behalf will recommend ways Everett can boost affordable housing and reduce displacement — without driving developers away. Koppelman noted Everett’s increased work with nonprofit builders should help. (A project from the Neighborhood Developers with a city subsidy will bring 126 apartments — all affordable — to 25 Garvey St. in the Commercial Triangle.)
Meanwhile, the cheap land that attracted developers is starting to disappear. The recent purchase of the Exxon tank farm takes one of the last big parcels off the board.
Tocco said he also sees more pushback now, with some residents asking “Why does Everett have to fix the entire regional housing crisis?” He’s still waiting for infrastructure investments that could help the city accommodate the new housing: a commuter rail stop, a pedestrian bridge over the Mystic, an extension of the Silver Line. Everett’s enthusiasm for development, he said, is starting to wane.
“You wish the state would come in and be more of a leader, more supportive of Everett,” Tocco said. “They’ve been doing a ton. They’ve set the table to really deliver like no other community.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.