The National Center of Afro-American Artists and Elma Lewis Partners, Inc. thank all of you for your support and encourage over the period of competition for development rights on Parcel Three, the last major portion of land in Roxbury remaining from the Urban Renewal demolitions of the l960s. With your help, something of great promise has happened.

Elma Lewis Partners, Inc., a for-profit entity created by the National Center of Afro-American Artists, has been awarded tentative designation as redeveloper of Parcel Three in Roxbury by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). This caps a decade of effort by the NCAAA to bring a bold vision for culturally-driven development to the nearly nine acre site opposite the Tremont Street Boston Police Headquarters.

Under terms of the BRA, Elma Lewis Partners, Inc. has a year to convert the tentative designation to a permanent one, after which licensing and construction can begin.

The new development, called Ruggles Place, will consist of offices, housing, retail, parking, cultural and health facilities. Whittier Street Health Center will relocate back to the parcel not far from its original facility built in the mid-thirties. The National Center of Afro-American Artists will build a new Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts and a 60,000 square expansion of its museum, which will continue to operate programs at its present Walnut Avenue building. In a second phase, the NCAAA will also build a new performing arts center anchored by a grand theater.

Ruggles Place hopes to open in 2011.