Records Reveal Little About How Ex-Worcester Manager Was Picked As MA Housing Secretary

WORCESTER, MA — Before he was picked by Gov. Maura Healey in May to become the state's new housing secretary, former Worcester city manager Ed Augustus Jr. submitted a resume detailing 30 years of public and private jobs, ranging from chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern to his year as chancellor at Dean College.

The word “housing” is only mentioned in one place across the four-page resume in a section about a deal Augustus marshaled to lure the Red Sox AAA team to Worcester by building Polar Park, whose $160 million cost was financed by the city.

"Spearheaded $240 million landmark redevelopment of Worcester’s Canal District, including complex negotiation to relocate Boston Red Sox AAA-affiliate to city and construction of multi use ballpark, hotel, housing, Kelley Square intersection redesign, and more," a line in the resume reads under the section detailing Augustus' accomplishments as city manager.

Augustus' resume was the sole public record released by the Healey administration and the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) — the agency Augustus will lead, although it has been split in half and repositioned in Healey's cabinet as the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities — under a recent request by Worcester Patch.

The Healey administration has also declined to detail how the governor picked Augustus as the state's housing chief. As secretary, he will focus on increasing affordability as home and rent prices continue to rise in Massachusetts — a trend seen in Worcester during Augustus' time in office.

Asked specifically about the number of candidates, the hiring process, and whether Healey sought out Augustus or vice versa, the administration provided only a statement and declined to answer follow-up questions.

"Our administration conducted a thorough hiring process that included multiple interviews and resulted in several final candidates," Healey spokeswoman Karissa Hand said. "Ultimately, the governor and [Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll] determined that Ed Augustus was the best fit for the role because of his record of increasing housing production in Worcester, his collaborative approach to working with local officials, and his commitment to addressing the housing crisis."

Under the state's public records law, Worcester Patch asked both the Healey administration and DHCD to provide documents about the interview process, application materials submitted by Augustus other candidates and notes about the merits of each candidate. Augustus' resume was the only item handed over, with Healey’s office saying no other documents existed.

In a response to the public records request, Healey's office said the governor is typically exempt from the law. Healey in December said she would break tradition and respond to records requests, but later partially reversed that declaration, according to the Boston Globe.

"By law, records held by the office of the governor are not subject to the Massachusetts public records law," a response for records about Augustus' hiring said. "Gov. Healey intends to follow the public records law and provide more transparency to the governor's office than ever before."

Holy Cross to City Hall

Augustus became city manager in 2014 after several years as Holy Cross' director of government and community relations. Augustus was appointed to the job by the city council on a nine-month contract after which he would be "disqualified for consideration for reappointment following the term," according to the document. Worcester conducted a nationwide search that year for a new manager and found three possible candidates. But instead of picking from that group of three, the city council voted in 2014 to extend Augustus' contract, leading to his eight-year tenure as manager.

Before becoming manager, Augustus was a Worcester-area state senator between 2005 and 2009, McGovern's chief of staff between 1999 and 2005, and a U.S. Department of Education assistant secretary between 1993 and 1999. Augustus grew up in Worcester's Webster Square neighborhood.

Augustus took over at city hall in the midst of a key economic development project called City Square, which involved the demolition of a mall and the construction of a hotel, offices, and a 365-unit apartment building at 145 Front St. That building is a luxury apartment complex where two-bedroom units today fetch upward of $3,000 per month.

City Square and 145 Front were pieces of a constellation of projects that local boosters call the "Worcester Renaissance," which Augustus claims partial credit for.

"Helped fuel the 'Worcester Renaissance,' a phrase developed to describe one of the city’s strongest economic turnarounds in its history even through the pandemic," Augustus described in the resume he submitted to Healey.

Renaissance, affordability

Along with chatter about Worcester's renaissance, there’s been a countervailing backlash over a lack of affordable housing and rising homelessness.

Housing prices in Worcester have risen due to many factors, including a pandemic housing shortage, dropping affordability in the Boston area pushing renters west, and new local developments where renters pay a premium for amenities like built-in dog parks, stainless steel appliances and gaming rooms.

The median price of a single-family home in April in Worcester was $388,000, according to The Warren Group, a more than $100,000 increase since the same month in 2020. The average price of a one-bedroom apartment has risen about $450 since June 2021, according to the rental aggregation site Zumper.

According to recent research by the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI), developers in Worcester have received more than a quarter of all tax credits handed out under the state's Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP). But none of the 1,085 housing units created in Worcester with HDIP subsidies have been set aside as affordable. One development that got HDIP help, the Chatham Lofts, offers "high-end features" to renters who can afford it.

“The rents for these 24 luxury apartments are as high end as the building’s self-promotion — $3,000 for a luxury studio, as high as $2,450 for a one-bedroom unit and $3,600 for a two bedroom unit. These far exceed the Worcester city median rent for new leases — currently $1,237 for a one-bedroom and $1,658 for a two-bedroom,” the MLRI report said of Chatham Lofts.

Healey has proposed increasing the annual cap on HDIP credits from $10 million to $30 million, but the program would still only produce more pricey market-rate housing. The program is not intended to create affordable housing, but to increase housing supply in general, which economic developers say will lead to lower prices downstream.

Last spring, Augustus proposed Worcester's first-ever law to reign in prices on new units in the form of an inclusionary zoning (IZ) ordinance. The law requires developers to include a certain number of affordable units in any new development, but the proposal was less than what housing advocates wanted.

Augustus submitted the ordinance in the spring of 2022 before leaving to become chancellor at Dean College. The IZ process played out over nearly a year in city council hearings until a final vote in April, when councilors approved a more conservative version of the law against protests from affordable housing advocates.

Worcester also saw a raft of new projects submitted for approval before the inclusionary zoning ordinance became law. That means about 400 units across three residential buildings may escape the new affordability requirements.

As of early 2022, there were 19 projects with some 3,000 units either planned or under construction in the downtown Worcester and Canal District areas. But only 163 of those units will be set aside as affordable at some level. The remaining units will be "market rate," or priced according to what a developer thinks the market can bear.

Augustus also used a part of the city's $146 million pandemic stimulus award to seed a new Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The account helps developers build new affordable units, and one of the first projects to receive funds from it is a planned 80-unit development inside the former Worcester Boys Club building. Construction on the project, which will be age-restricted, has not started yet.

Polar Park paramount

The inaugural Worcester Red Sox game at Polar Park in April 2021 was a key moment for an economic revitalization project that may be more consequential than the Worcester Centrum (now DCU Center) of the 1980s and the Blackstone Canal of the 1820s. The pandemic delayed construction, but the ballpark opened on time.

Developments planned around the ballpark did not make it as neatly through the pandemic.

Worcester financed the construction of the $160 million ballpark under a plan spearheaded by Augustus that would mostly use future property tax revenues from nearby developments to make debt payments. Officials have long said the stadium would "pay for itself."

According to the Worcester Business Journal and a presentation by City Manager Eric Batista this week, the account the city is using to pay off the ballpark debt has been short over the past three fiscal years and will be again in the fiscal year 2024. To avoid dipping into the city budget, Worcester has used $3 million from the sale of a Green Street property to make recent debt payments.

Before the pandemic, Boston-based developer Madison Properties was planning to build two hotels, two offices and two residential buildings around the ballpark. One of the hotels has been canceled, and only the first residential building is under construction along Green Island Boulevard.

City officials say the ballpark area will generate enough revenue to pay off the park and are projecting an eventual $50 million surplus.

Just a few days before Augustus was revealed to be Healey's housing secretary pick, Holy Cross economics professor Robert Baumann co-authored a paper projecting Polar Park will cost Worcester up to $60 million over the next 30 years, partly due to the development-dependent financing arrangement. The paper also challenged conclusions made by Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist, who Worcester hired to make the case the Polar Park plan would work.

"We conclude that pro forma estimates do not provide credible forecasts of fiscal impacts, and ancillary developments do not improve the fiscal returns of stadium projects," the authors said.

'He left Worcester a stronger city'

In a May news release — which borrowed lines from Augustus' own resume — Healey touted Augustus' economic development work as the reason she chose him to lead her housing office. She also emphasized his knowledge of local government, which may come into play with some communities resisting the new MBTA communities zoning law.

"He left Worcester a stronger city than it was a decade ago, with booming economic development in the downtown and thousands of new housing units," she said. "Importantly, he is intimately familiar with local government and knows what it takes to collaborate with municipalities to move our state forward on our housing goals."

Augustus officially took over as the state's housing secretary on June 1. The Healey administration has set a goal of creating 200,000 new housing units to alleviate a statewide housing shortage.

One of his first acts was helping to award $246 million in state funds to 27 affordable and mixed-income projects across the state. Two of those are in Worcester: the Worcester Boys Cub 55+ development, and the redevelopment of the Curtis Apartments at Great Brook Valley.

"We need to address our housing crisis head on and move our state forward on our housing goals to increase production, lower costs and expand access to affordable units," Augustus said in a news release. "These [funding awards] are an important step to achieve these goals, and I look forward to expanding programs like this across the state as housing secretary."

You can read Augustus' resume here: