Nursing Home Conversion to Add 27 Apartments to Pond Street

Representatives for FX Messina and town officials are working out the kinks in a proposal to convert a decades-old nursing home on Pond Street into an apartment building aimed at business professionals.

The property at 20 Pond St. has been added to over the years and last served as a 128-bed nursing home. Renovations include reducing the building's footprint to add parking space, replacing much of the roof and completely overhauling the inside.

Among the aspects the developer is still finalizing are parking and cut-throughs, in discussion with abutter South Congregational Church, along with the design of the outside of the building. Representatives will meet again with the Planning Board in December.

"This building can be warmed up in some way shape or form," Rob St. John, Messina's planning director, told the board last week. "What you're looking at is a work-in-progress."

St. John said the goal is to have a 27-unit apartment building that draws in professionals who value housing near the T and South Braintree Square. It is being called the Franvale Apartments and St. John said that the development will be similar to what Messina did previously with its Hollingsworth property.

How the property looks, then, "is a major thing," board member Darryl Mikami said. "We're looking for something that [looks] good."

The three-story building will have nine units per floor – 20 two-bedroom apartments and seven single bedroom apartments, according to a plan submitted this month to the board. There will also be two parking spaces per unit, for a total of 54.

According to those numbers, the architect Habeeb & Associates puts the occupant maximum at 130 people. Three of the apartments will be affordable units, as required by law, St. John said.