Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito were among those on hand Wednesday afternoon to celebrate groundbreaking on the 76-unit project, which was financed in part with city and state affordable housing programs and federal tax credits.

Work started this month on Cote Village, a $37 million development of low- and moderate-income housing that supporters say is a sign that Boston’s long-running real estate boom is finally starting to reach Mattapan.

The site of a long-shuttered Ford dealership on Cummins Highway in Mattapan will soon be filled by apartments and townhomes.

It’s being built by the Archdiocese of Boston’s Planning Office for Urban Affairs and Caribbean Integration Community Development, a Mattapan-based housing nonprofit, with all of its units set at below-market rents targeting a range of incomes, including eight apartments for formerly homeless residents.


“This is a real win for Mattapan,” said Donald Alexis, President of Caribbean Integration Community Development. “Our goal was to create housing that reflects the needs of the working class residents in Mattapan and I believe we’ve accomplished that here.”

The project sits on land formerly owned by the city, a few blocks from the new Blue Hill Avenue stop on the Commuter Rail’s Fairmount Line. It’s one of several sites the Walsh administration has sold to developers in an effort to create housing along the rail line in recent years. The city is also partway through formulating a new community plan for Mattapan, a part of the city which is starting to attract more attention from real estate investors and developers. They’re bringing new projects to the neighborhood, but also sparking concern that working-class residents could be priced out of the area.

Cote Village is expected to open in 2021.

Tim Logan can be reached at timothy.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.