Walnut Park Place: Affordable Ownership Opportunities for the Egleston Square Community
Aaron Smithson (MArch/MUP ’25), Cat Chen (MArch ’25), and Maggie Weese (MUP/MPH ’24)
Walnut Park Place is a 29-unit affordable homeownership development in the Egleston Square area of Roxbury. Designed with sensitivity to both its physical context and the stated needs and desires of local residents, the project leverages both public sources and residential cross subsidy to provide middle-income Roxbury families with an increasingly rare opportunity to establish enduring roots in a fast-changing community. Walnut Park Place utilizes a family-centered design approach, incorporating a ground-floor daycare, a protected play space, larger units, and open-unit floor plans to better serve the needs of residents. The site’s “disguised density” approach strategically distributes the project’s massing to increase affordable ownership opportunities in Roxbury while ensuring the project remains contextual.