On Union Street, a block made whole—forty-five homes, a new storefront, and artwork by local hands woven into the façade.
Along the spine of downtown New Bedford—a lot on Union Street that’s waited twenty years is about to rejoin the block. The city spent the past decade preparing this corridor for what comes next: new sidewalks, new lighting, new public realm. The Keystone Mixed-Use project takes its place along that frontage.
Forty-five homes will rise around a landscaped courtyard, above 2,500 square feet of ground-floor retail. Studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments will share the small architectures of daily life: a place to grill, a place to gather, a place to leave a bike out of the weather. The Zeiterion (The Z), is a few blocks one way, the harbor a few blocks the other—which is to say that downtown is already home.
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 has long been a city of makers—the AHA! cultural nights alone gather sixty venues across the downtown each month—and the project takes its cue from the community it joins, offering, at the ground floor, a sidewalk worth walking and a storefront worth stopping for.
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 will complete a block, and a block that will complete a downtown that’s still being written.