St. Patrick’s School in Jaffrey, the site of a proposed future apartments and condominiums. (Photo by Ashley Saari, Monadnock Ledger-Transcript)
Construction work to turn the former St. Patrick School site on Main Street into 58 new housing units is on track to start next year.
The site will be cleared and equipped with utility service needed for the new units by the end of 2025, with construction scheduled to start in 2026, according to Jo Anne Carr, the town’s planning and economic development director.
MJ & MJ Realty Ventures LLC bought the property in April 2023 for $725,000, town property records state. The Jaffrey Planning Board approved in 2024 a plan to demolish the school building and redevelop the property with 28 market-rate townhouse duplex units and 30 units of workforce housing, Carr said.
Michael Shea of MJ & MJ Realty Ventures said the 14 duplexes to be built on a loop road around the property will be for sale, while the 30 units of workforce housing in an apartment building will be managed by Keene Housing. Shea is also the president of Jaffrey-based Belletetes Inc., which, along with large manufacturers like MilliporeSigma and Teleflex, is one of the top employers in the town, according to the Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau.
Workforce housing is defined as affordable for a four-person household earning a maximum of the area median income, or a three-person household with no more than 60 percent of the area median income.
Just northwest of downtown on Route 124, the location is a prime area for development because of its accessibility to municipal utilities, according to Carr.
Like the rest of the state, Jaffrey needs more housing, Carr said. Last year, it was one of 18 towns recognized as Housing Champions by the N.H. Department of Business and Economic Affairs for efforts to address the housing crisis.
Other new developments in the works include the Stony Brook development off Route 124, near the Shattuck Golf Course.
According to N.H. Housing, the rental vacancy rate in Cheshire County climbed in 2024 to 6.8 percent, up from 1.8 percent in 2023. The state as a whole hasn’t hit the healthy rate of 5 percent in about 15 years.
What is available is typically expensive. The median gross rent for all units in Cheshire County in 2024 was $1,374, according to N.H. Housing.
In Jaffrey, a town with several large manufacturers, lack of housing that workers can afford poses a problem for employers who need to maintain a workforce.
“Manufacturing facilities really demand housing,” Carr said.
Shea said the town needs more housing options to enable people to live and work in town. “We believe there is a true need,” he said.
A nationwide housing crisis has many municipalities looking for ways to increase housing stock or make the most of what housing they do have. In small towns in the Monadnock Region, that often means finding ways for municipalities to assist with the transformation of dormant structures like the St. Patrick School, which closed in 2015.
In partnership with the town of Jaffrey, the developer applied for and won a grant from InvestNH, which gave the project $414,000 to help pay for the demolition, N.H. Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs records state. The demolition started recently and is scheduled to be completed in the coming weeks.
That demolition grant program has helped to pay for work on several Monadnock Region housing projects, including the housing project at the former Roosevelt School in Keene and Mountain View Mill at Troy on the site of the old Troy Mills.
Construction started at the old Roosevelt School on Washington Street in September 2024, with plans to add 30 rent-subsidized units to Keene’s stock.
Progress at Troy Mills is stalled as the developer and the town’s water and sewer commission lock horns over utility hookups.
MJ & MJ Realty Ventures LLC is owned by Shea, John Belletete, Matthew Peard and John Peard Jr., according to secretary of state records.
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