Jeanne Pinado. COURTESY PHOTO

When Jeanne Pinado took the reins at Madison Park Development Corporation in 1998, Dudley Square was on the verge of a major makeover, but it had a ways to go. Although street-level retail shops were thriving, the upper floors of the area’s large office buildings had been vacant for years.

Some, like the hulking Hibernian Hall, appeared on the verge of collapse.

Over the course of two decades, Pinado, who will step down at the end of this year, steered the Roxbury-based community development corporation through Dudley Square’s redevelopment. Along the way, the CDC cut the ribbon on 600 new units of affordable rental housing and 95 units of owner-occupied affordable housing, oversaw the refinancing and redevelopment of the 546 units in Madison Park Village and the adjacent Haynes House and Smith House developments.

Along with the redevelopment of Hibernian Hall on Dudley Street into an arts center and initiatives such as the RoxVote voter mobilization effort, the CDC has in the last 20 years expanded from its mission of building and maintaining affordable housing to a broader vision of community-building.

Read the entire article as it originally appeared in the Bay State Banner here.