One Downtown, Forty-Five Homes: Union Street Breaks Ground
45 homes and street-level retail in a building designed to belong to its historic block in New Bedford
As architect for this consequential project, Union Studio stood alongside our developer client One Circle Co. along with stakeholders MHIC, Conservation Law Foundation, MassDevelopment, Mayor Jon Mitchell and community leaders on May 6, 2026, for the Keystone Mixed-Use groundbreaking on Union Street in New Bedford. Twenty-two years after the historic Keystone Building collapsed, the site will be reborn. Forty-five apartments—studios, ones, and twos—will rise above 2,500 square feet of ground-floor retail. The building will offer new housing opportunities and will fill a gaping cavity in the downtown streetscape.
Artwork by local hands will be set into the façade itself, carrying the city’s creative life into the building from the start. New Bedford is a city of makers. The AHA! cultural nights alone gather sixty venues across downtown each month. The project takes its cue from the community it joins.
Construction is expected to wrap up in about 18 months. What makes a downtown is the small things: a door that opens to the sidewalk, a window lit at dusk, neighbors crossing paths on the way home. Keystone Mixed-Use will contribute to those small things—a building that completes a block, and a block that completes a downtown still being written.
