The St. Patrick’s School demolition got dramatic this week, with the convent building starting to go down, making way for what will be a mixed use development from Stonegate Group. The school building demolition is slated to begin at the start of May, with some items from the buildings salvaged for possible later use in the new project.

What’s more Stonegate made a request to the Select Board on Wednesday, April 19 to amend its development agreement, allowing it to sell the 8 townhome units planned for the site directly to homeowners as condos in order to give the firm some financial relief in light of skyrocketing construction costs and interest rates. The Board approved the amendment, with some follow-up and lawyer business to come.

The plan is for the site to contain those 8 townhouse units (2 units of which will formally be “affordable”) as well as a 4-story mixed retail and rental unit complex facing Rte. 135. Overall, there will be 54 units, with 48 of them counting towards Natick’s Subsidized Housing Inventory. “Our schedule to complete the entire project is approximately 22-24 months from completion of the ongoing demolition work. Work on the mixed-use building and townhomes will run simultaneously,” Stonegate’s Dean Calivas told us via email.

We’ve embedded Stonegate’s letter to the Board below.