Sumner Block

Completed

Project Details:

Location

Great Barrington, MA

Impact South County Role

Owner

Unit Profile

6 rental apartments — a mix of one- and two-bedroom units, classified as Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH); two ground-floor commercial storefronts are also part of the property

Development cost

Impact South County paid $1.6 million for the 8,160-square-foot property (down from an initial $1.8 million asking price); the building had previously sold for $450,000 in September 1998

Financing

Town of Great Barrington; Great Barrington Affordable Housing Trust; an anonymous donor; community fundraising/Impact South County donors

Collaborators

Impact South County, buyer/owner; Impact South County board members Richard Stanley (real estate investor) and Tom Doyle (Realtor), who played key roles in negotiating the purchase; Town of Great Barrington; Great Barrington Affordable Housing Trust

Status

Completed (acquired and preserved, June 2023)

Contact

To apply, contact Parke Place Properties, located in Monterey.

The Sumner Block is a historic four-story Second Empire-style mixed-use building at 306-310 Main Street in downtown Great Barrington, built around 1900 by attorney and Civil War veteran Lt. Col. Samuel Barstow Sumner. The building housed a Woolworth’s and a music hall for roughly 50 years and today contains two ground-floor commercial storefronts (occupied by William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty) above six rental apartments — a mix of one- and two-bedroom units classified as Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH), with tenants who work locally.

Rather than building new, Impact South County took a different approach with this project: acquiring an existing building to stabilize rents and protect tenants already living there. Impact South County purchased the Sumner Block on June 1, 2023, and committed to giving all current tenants the protection of an annual lease while completing renovation of one previously unoccupied unit. The purchase preserved “workforce housing” in the heart of downtown, where residents have walkable access to coffee shops, the Berkshire Co-op Market, and other downtown amenities.

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