In the early 2000s, a small campus of Catholic institutions, including the Holyoke Catholic High School, closed for good. The century-old buildings stood vacant and boarded up for nearly a decade before plans to rehabilitate them finally materialized with the ultimate conversion of the campus’s schools and convents into 54 units of housing. The $19 million project was funded in part by $1.6 million in direct state aid and almost $1 million in federal low-income housing tax credits. Permitting for the project was facilitated by Holyoke’s adoption of a Massachusetts law that allows relatively high-density development by-right for affordable and mixed-income projects.

• The Architectural Team, “Chestnut Park Apartments,” 
• MassLive, “Conversion of old Holyoke Catholic High School into 54 apartments underway; construction to last a year” (July 22, 2014)