At Shattuck Hospital, a proposal for 400-plus units of supportive housing

But proponents say the Shattuck initiative will meet the critical needs of some of the most vulnerable residents.

The current proposal calls for all new buildings that would contain 326 treatment beds, 200 units of permanent supportive housing for individuals, 120 emergency housing beds, and 205 more residential units of family and supportive housing, according to state officials.

That is larger than what the state had previously sought, when it solicited proposals for 75 to 100 units of permanent supportive housing at the Shattuck. It received just one submission, from a group led by Boston Medical Center. That coalition this week announced it earned provisional approval from the Healey administration to redevelop the hospital campus. The BMC-led team will now start refining its proposal based on public feedback and funding availability, according to state officials.

“It is a big vision, it is a bigger vision than what was put forth in the” initial request for proposals, said Mary Beckman, a senior adviser at the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. “It’s extremely ambitious.”

There is no set timeline for the project, but the next step will be to engage with local community stakeholders, officials said. The supportive housing would come with a host of services, including case management, life skills tutoring, financial coaching, and clinical services, including care management.

The 13-acre Shattuck campus at Franklin Park currently offers housing and mental health and addiction services. In response to the announcement Wednesday, Mayor Michelle Wu’s office called the campus a “critical health resource for Boston residents inside a treasured park.”

“We are grateful to BMC and the providers who submitted the application and look forward to reviewing the proposal alongside our state partners,” a spokesperson for Wu said.

But some park advocates have pushed for the Shattuck to be returned to parkland.

Among those is Karen Mauney-Brodek from the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, who said “flawed” plans to build at Shattuck will not “result in the best results for these neighborhoods.” She said this is a generational opportunity to add a significant amount of open space to underserved neighborhoods.

“This is a time when we can make a choice,” she said.

Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association, echoed the desire for the area to become open space. He said the proposal would “dump 400 units in a part of Roxbury that they don’t think anybody’s looking at.”

“It just perpetuates the problem,” he said. “It doesn’t fix the problem.”

State Representative Christopher Worrell said it’s important to have more community input and avoid shuffling the issues of Mass. and Cass around and into his district.

“It is imperative that this same mistake is not made again for neighbors in Dorchester, sadly, another part of Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain,” he said.

Others, however, say the proposal would make good use of a significant amount of underused land in a city that doesn’t have much of it.

“We finally see the light out of the tunnel,” said the Rev. Dieufort Fleurissaint, known as Pastor Keke, who has advocated for this type of project for the past year.

“The Shattuck is well positioned and strategically centrally positioned,” he said. “It’s ample land, it offers ample opportunities as well. It could definitely benefit many communities.”

Brendan Little, a Jamaica Plain homeowner who formerly worked as the policy director for the city’s recovery services, said he understands some of the trepidation about the scope of the project but said similar models in Boston such as those by the Pine Street Inn have shown success.

“Right now there’s a huge need for supportive housing, and BMC is phenomenal,” he said. “I have no doubt that the supports that need to be there will be there.”

Authorities said the total cost of BMC’s proposed development is $543 million, including a request for $207 million from the state. State officials said that while the proposal “[merited] further discussion,” there is no funding commitment from the state, as “it is BMC’s responsibility to secure the necessary funding.” The BMC-led coalition said the proposal includes a 30 percent increase in green space for the Shattuck campus, located near the proposed facilities, along with new pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit connections.

The vision for the site, said Josh Cuddy, director of housing and special initiatives for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, “meets the moment we’re at in the Commonwealth.”

In 2021, Massachusetts had a nearly 10 percent increase in overdose-related deaths, Cuddy noted, and the housing crunch continues to pose problems. According to state estimates, Massachusetts will need an additional 200,000 housing units by 2030, at least 20,000 of which will be needed for people who are “extremely low income” and 10,000 for “extremely low income” residents who require supportive services, Cuddy said.

He thought there were “a lot of misconceptions about permanent supportive housing.”

In Boston, problems continue to plague the Mass. and Cass area, which has become an open-air illicit drug market. In the first quarter of this year, Boston reported 654 opioid-related EMS incidents, according to state records.

Neighbors and businesses there have long advocated for decentralizing services concentrated at Mass. and Cass, including health care, homeless shelters, and methadone clinics.

Abi Vladeck, director of public-private development with the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, said substance use disorder is a problem that touches nearly every family in the state in some way. While there will undoubtedly be pushback to the plan, Vladeck thought there would also be “a lot of support for the vision BMC has outlined here.”

The Shattuck proposal, said Rob Koenig, executive director of strategic programs for Boston Medical Center System, won’t succeed without long-term community input.

“We are committed to a robust community engagement process,” he said.

The proposal aims to create a continuum of services for people in need of recovery from addiction, homelessness, or mental health problems, Koenig added. Right now, that spectrum of care is fragmented, he said. For example, it can be difficult for a person to progress from detox to clinical stabilization services; there can be administrative bottlenecks that pose challenges for people in recovery, he said.

The Shattuck project, he said, represents a chance to address many of those challenges.

“We intend to create a continuum of services that patients can progress along,” Koenig said.

The state plans to move some of the medical and psychiatric services currently at the Shattuck to the South End in 2026.

The cottages currently at Shattuck that offer low-threshold housing for up to 24 people are portable, and the state plans to move them once on-site construction begins.

Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Danny__McDonald. Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com.Follow him on Twitter @cotterreporter.