Neighborhood Development Corp. Of Jamaica Plain
Richard W. Thal, Executive Director
31 Germania St.
Jamaica Plain, Mass. 02130
(617) 522-2424
(617) 524-3596 fax

Whenever you open a bottle of Boston's deservedly popular Samuel Adams beer, you might hoist a quiet toast to the Neighborhood Development Corp. of Jamaica Plain. It's fair to say that this creative community-development corporation had more than a little to do with the well-known Boston brewery's success.

How's that? The NDC's most visible success story, a red-brick jumble of 16 commercial factory buildings squeezed onto a tight five-acre site surrounded by houses and shops in Boston's yeasty Jamaica Plain, has a history and a future that could well be written in beer instead of ink. More than 120 years ago, the Haffenreffer Brewery was the largest of scores of local beer-makers that had sprung up to quench the thirst of the neighborhood's German immigrants. A booming business until Prohibition, it resumed production with Repeal and continued as a major local employer until the 1960, when -- as many other inner-city businesses -- it closed its doors and moved out of the city.

Urban Boston was changing rapidly then, not least because of a controversial plan to punch Interstate 95 through the heart of the city, a threat that united most of the neighborhoods in its path and prompted the development of many of the region's still-active community-development corporations. Although they won that battle -- I-95 now swings well west of the urban area, encircling the community through a growing ring of suburbs -- they all but lost the war. Urban renewal devastated many of the inner-city neighborhoods, disinvestment left homes and businesses vacant, and the Haffenreffer Brewery site stood vacant and deteriorating.

Looking for a positive goal after its birth in opposition to the Interstate, the NDC focused on bringing back the brewery site as a small-business center. It took more than five years to negotiate and finance a purchase, but the facility came under the organization's control in 1983, and Boston Brewing Co. moved in shortly thereafter. Although it actually brews only a small amount of beer in a test brewery on the premises (most Sam Adams beer is made under contract by breweries in Pittsburgh and elsewhere), its corporate offices are the centerpiece of the small-business center, and its rent, paid to an NDC-related non-profit called Brewery Development Corp., provides a significant piece of NDC's $750,000 annual operating budget. (The organization has a staff of 17.)

Just as important, The Brewery -- now fully renovated with completion of the final building last autumn -- houses some 30 businesses, many of them small, startup businesses owned by neighborhood residents, employing more than 150 people. Although it is not a full "small-business incubator," the facility is managed with an eye to supporting and nurturing community businesses; rents are kept low, and business owners are encouraged to collaborate and give each other good advice. In addition to Boston Brewing, businesses on the property include a thriving tortilla maker who started as a one-room operation; a tofu-maker, a pretzel-maker, a chocolate producer, a woodworking firm that makes stylish furniture, and a consortium of design firms owned by women. One of the latest entries -- itself a self-reliance initiative -- houses a cluster of small businesses being started by formerly battered women under the auspices of the Women's Business Opportunity Program (WBOP), a local non-profit organization.

The Brewery may be Jamaica Plain NDC's most visible effort, but it is far from its only model program.

One major initiative, scheduled for completion this autumn, will bring the first supermarket in 20 years back into Jamaica Plain when a major Stop & Shop store and a major health center, Boston Children's Hospital's Martha Eliot Health Center, open in brand-new facilities pulled together by NDC, the Bromley Heath public-housing complex (a tenant-managed complex) and a private developer. The $13 million development, creatively financed by a combination of federal and city money and private investment, became possible because federal planning money and city environmental-hazard abatement funds made possible a commercially attractive package that made financial sense to the grocery firm, Thal explained.

Near that site, a smaller commercial center put together by the same private developer brought the neighborhood its first full-service bank and first pharmacy for many years.

Meanwhile, NDC has also been involved with numerous housing initiatives. One key victory will be declared this summer when a cluster of decayed buildings that the group wrested from an absentee slumlord are renovated as the Nate Smith House, a 45-unit housing complex for frail older people. Other housing initiatives, often completed in partnership with neighboring CDCs and community organzations, have turned deteroriated houses into stylish, affordable cooperative housing complexes and low-cost homes, making home ownership feasible for working poor people.

As part of a strategic-planning effort involving hundreds of residents, NDC has identified job creation, access to employment and improving the local business district a priorities. If it goes after these with the spirit and intelligence that has informed its past activities, this neighborhood is on its way up.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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