Development Without Displacement: Preserving Worcester’s Green Island Neighborhood

As far as William Domber '27 was concerned, commercial development in Worcester’s Green Island neighborhood could only help the city. 

“From everything I was hearing, it was a good change, going to bring in new jobs, new infrastructure, and just make the city look nicer,” said Domber, an economics major who hopes to work in commercial development when he graduates. 

Revitalization, as the process is known by developers and municipal governments, can certainly deliver all these benefits. However, it can also have an outsized effect on specific communities, as longtime residents are priced out of their neighborhoods due to rising housing costs, warned Sarah Luria, professor and chair of the environmental studies department at Holy Cross. 

This is not to say that cities cannot grow or improve aesthetically, but Luria said urban development does not have to come at the expense of existing communities. “Development without displacement, I think there’s a way,” she said. 

“This is a national problem and Worcester is like the testing ground," she noted, citing the city’s Green Island neighborhood, historically home to a large immigrant population. The area is adjacent to the three-year-old minor league baseball stadium, Polar Park, as well as the popular Canal District, which occupies what was once the northern portion of Green Island. Lamartine Street acts as a boundary between new development and what remains of the original neighborhood.

For two years, Luria taught courses at Holy Cross on Green Island and the Lamartine Street boundary after researching the issue. “An edge is always a place of tension in city identity — representative of how Green Island has had to cede a lot of territory,” she said.

A city is its people

On the surface, building modern apartment complexes and businesses may go a long way toward making a city more appealing, but it comes with the cost of erasing what makes the neighborhood unique, Luria said.

“History is really valuable to a city,” she said, but added that history is more than preserving old buildings. She cited the Canal District, an area that dates back to the early 1800s, when it was an industrial waterway. In the early 2000s, it became the city’s primary entertainment district.

“Thank god they didn’t tear down the factories, but it doesn’t matter if the people are forced out,” Luria said. “We can’t just improve cities by renovating the buildings and moving in people who can pay higher rents and house prices. A city is also its people.” 

Luria said she understands that cities grow and evolve and that Green Island has always had a degree of turnover as residents move in and out. Neighborhoods like it serve an important role in cities, serving as a starting point for those new to the city, be they from out of town or overseas. 

“[Green Island is] the first stop for immigrants. You come because it’s affordable and move out when you can, but the preferred pattern is that you leave because you choose to,” she said, adding that many chose to stay; some homeowners have been in the neighborhood for up to four generations.

In her earlier courses, Green Island residents shared with students that they have seen the opposite due to new development in the area: homeowners unable to afford to fix up their homes sell to speculative developers who offer high prices, which are passed onto tenants in the form of increased rental costs that force out current residents. 

“It’s one thing if a neighborhood wants to leave,” she said, “and it’s another if the current immigrants tell my class that ‘We want to stay. We’re not happy about the rents going up. We came here because it was affordable.’” 

Among the students speaking with residents was Domber, who took Luria’s Nature of Worcester during the 2023-2024 academic year. While the first-semester course was more classroom-based, discussing the city’s history and contemporary issues, the second semester was a Community-Based Learning project that connected students with Green Island through service work. 

“It humanized the issues we’ve been hearing about even more,” Domber said, who worked at the Green Island Neighborhood Center, stocking food, helping residents file paperwork for social services and keeping the space clean. 

Speaking with community members, Domber said he gained a deeper appreciation for what the neighborhood meant to them, as a collective social history heard from those raised there and who, in turn, raised their own children there: “To really hear their stories and connect with them shifted my perspective.”

While Domber said he still believes development and revitalization can benefit a city and its people, his position is more nuanced.

“It really opened my eyes to the impact of urban development on people’s lives — plenty of positive, but a lot of people who aren’t seeing the benefits of that change,” he said. “It’s important to recognize that people can’t be sidelined and their voices should be heard.”

Chalkboard menus

Luria, who is in her 26th year as a member of the Holy Cross faculty, has been using her voice to help Green Island residents be heard, attending City Hall hearings as a researcher in partnership with the Green Island Residents Group to discuss projects with the Worcester  Zoning Board. 

At an October 2024 zoning board meeting, the issue on the agenda was the construction of two new apartment projects on the residential side of Lamartine Street. Luria used her research to support the residents group’s argument that these projects would create precedents for higher rents on that street, encouraging further development and leaving fewer affordable options in the Green Island real estate market.

“City data reports that in Green Island in 2022, well over half of its residents earned under $50,000 a year and 30% of Green Island residents live below the poverty line,” Luria said during the meeting. “It would seem a majority of Green Islanders will not be able to compete for these units. As a result, more Green Islanders of modest means will surely be displaced eventually from their neighborhood where they would like to stay.” 

In the end, the zoning board put a hold on one of the projects, stating the lot was too small for the size of the proposed building. Board members recommended the project design be revisited to reduce the impact on the neighborhood and abutting properties. A victory for now, but Luria knows that the argument has only been rescheduled, as the presence of Polar Park demands more projects. 

“They built this ballpark and are now close to $160 million in the hole, and this development is one way of paying for it,” she said. “They’re hoping that outside development will help them avoid placing the burden on taxpayers.”

In terms of neighborhood preservation, Luria said the best course of action is for residents to buy up properties as a nonprofit, but that is costly in terms of finance and human labor. So far, Green Island has been unable to muster these resources, she said.

An alternate approach would be to take steps to minimize displacement, but that requires working jointly with the city. Municipal government and residents are often at odds regarding revitalization efforts, but Luria believes they should unite to push back against developers.

“It’s clear that if you just let the market criteria drive things, you’re not going to get the best results,” she said. “Streets will just get more generic.”

Luria explained the process as a domino — or chalkboard menu — effect: “We know the pattern now. Hipsters come in with cool businesses, such as the cafe with a chalkboard menu. Once developers see the chalkboard menu, they want to buy the building.” 

The ultimate effect of Luria’s work may be the change in the perspective of students such as Domber, who will make up the next generation of developers and city administrators working with residents of neighborhoods like Green Island. Domber was adamant that his experience in Green Island would affect how he views and approaches issues of urban development. 

“It takes collaboration and commitment from both sides to come together,” he said. “Urban development is going to have a multitude of side effects, so you need to look past the revenue and infrastructure to, ‘How is it going to affect the residents, businesses, and local culture?’”