WORCESTER ― A retirement home organization is looking to raze its 12-building senior community center along Grove Street and replace it with 220 affordable senior housing units.
The community center spreads out across the street from Forest Grove Middle School at Chadwick and Grove streets.
Colony Retirement Homes’ existing buildings with 139 units date to the 1960s and 1970s, documents show.
“Due to its age and configuration, the 50+ year-old development has become outdated in several aspects,” Colony wrote in the plans. “The units are not up to current standards, with small rooms and kitchens and outdated apartment finishes and appliances.
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“Colony is proposing an overall development of the property that will bring the entire site into the 21st century.”
Colony Retirement Communities is a nonprofit organization that offers affordable units “ideal for older adults who wish to maintain their independence and free themselves from the responsibility of home maintenance, yardwork and snow removal.”
Its plans call for a four-phase redevelopment that will include four buildings containing 220 units that will on average be priced to be affordable to households making 60% of the area median income, plans show.
If plans are approved, the new buildings would range from four to five stories.
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The developer received approval from the Planning Board for the first phase of the project in May 2024, with blueprints calling for the demolition of three existing buildings and the construction of a four-story building with 45 one-bedroom units.
Colony will appear in front of the Planning Board on Oct. 1 for the second phase of the plans, which involve the demolition of three other buildings and the construction of a four-story building with 48 units.
The retirement community has another 100-unit location at 101 Chadwick St., just down the street from the property it wishes to redevelop; a third Worcester property with 70 units less than two miles away at 123 Holden St.; and a property in Holden with 80 apartments.
Attempts to reach the company were not immediately successful.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Retirement community in city to raze building, build 220 housing units