It's in Mattapan

SINCE THE early 1980s, everyone from outright hustlers to church groups with the purest of intentions has sought to develop portions of the former Boston State Hospital property in Mattapan. They all had one thing in common -- too little capital. That problem ended in 2004 when the state designated Lena New Boston to build Olmsted Green, a mixed - income community on 42 acres of what was until recently Boston's largest undeveloped site. With today's groundbreaking, a quarter of a century of false starts and frustration should be coming to an end.

Olmsted Green is buttressed by New Boston Fund, a $1.4 billion real estate development, investment , and management firm led by Jerome Rappaport Jr. The community partner is Lena Park Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit housing and human services organization with deep roots in Mattapan. The partnership is being supervised by Kirk Sykes, a local developer with a record of generating successful economic development projects in poor neighborhoods. In short, there is every reason to believe that this team can create an attractive and affordable residential community that gives middle - class families an opportunity to remain in the city and build equity.

``We're not playing in a little stream now," says Lorraine Baugh, president of the Lena Park CDC, which is slated for a major expansion as part of the overall development.

The centerpiece of the project will be 287 market - rate townhouses and condominiums priced in the $220,000 to $450,000 range. Olmsted Green will also include 153 affordable rentals and 83 units of senior housing. Some of the city's finer recreational assets, including Franklin Park, are close at hand. Ideally, Lena New Boston might have created even greater housing density in response to the area's housing crisis. But many urban residents share the same unfortunate aversion to density commonly seen in the suburbs. Still, there may be an opportunity for Lena New Boston or another developer to build additional units on a 19-acre parcel that the state Division of Capital Asset Management has put out to bid. There is also strong community interest in building a school, most likely a charter school, on part of the site.

Schemers and dreamers have proposed everything from a domed stadium to a driving range on the abandoned hospital grounds. The site had become a symbol of half-baked ideas. That's no longer the case. The view of Mattapan changes dramatically when seen from a position of capital strength.