Gateway Cities in Massachusetts: Designation, Programs, and Incentives

Gateway Cities in Massachusetts are 26 mid-sized municipalities designated under state law as former industrial centers with strong assets but below-average incomes and college attainment, a designation that channels targeted state funding, tax credits, and technical assistance into their downtowns, housing, and infrastructure. The 26 are Attleboro, Barnstable, Brockton, Chelsea, Chicopee, Everett, Fall River, Fitchburg, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lawrence, Leominster, Lowell, Lynn, Malden, Methuen, New Bedford, Peabody, Pittsfield, Quincy, Revere, Salem, Springfield, Taunton, Westfield, and Worcester.¹

Together they hold about a quarter of the state’s population, 44 percent of residents below the federal poverty line, over half of Massachusetts’ nonwhite population, and roughly 40 percent of its foreign-born residents.² Collectively, they have been majority-minority since 2020.¹

How a City Qualifies

The statutory definition sits in M.G.L. Chapter 23A, Section 3A, enacted by the Legislature in 2009 and 2010. A Gateway City must meet three criteria: a population greater than 35,000 and less than 250,000, a median household income below the statewide average, and a rate of bachelor’s degree attainment below the statewide average.³

The term was coined in a 2007 MassINC report produced with the Brookings Institution, which studied 11 former mill and manufacturing cities outside Greater Boston: Brockton, Fall River, Fitchburg, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Pittsfield, Springfield, and Worcester.⁴ Applying the codified benchmarks pushed the list to 26. Attleboro and Peabody were the last additions, in 2013 under Governor Deval Patrick.⁵

The framework was built around common assets these cities share beyond the raw numbers: rail and highway connections, colleges and hospitals as anchor institutions, walkable downtown cores, and relatively young, diverse populations.

What the Designation Unlocks

Gateway City status is a gateway to a bundle of state programs. Some are open only to designated cities; others prioritize them or set aside larger awards for them.

Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP)

Established under M.G.L. Chapter 40V, HDIP gives developers who build or substantially rehabilitate market-rate housing inside designated zones in Gateway Cities two things: a local property tax exemption on the value added by improvements, and state tax credits for qualified rehabilitation costs.⁶ Cities including Lowell and Springfield have adopted Housing Development Zones to define eligible areas.⁷ Legislation backed by the Gateway Cities Legislative Caucus would raise the annual tax credit cap to $100 million and double the per-project cap to $5 million.⁸

Transformative Development Initiative (TDI)

Run by MassDevelopment, TDI is the state’s flagship place-based program for Gateway City downtowns. It uses a three-year accelerator: a local cross-sector partnership, an embedded mid-career practitioner known as a TDI Fellow, strategic planning support, small grants, and access to larger equity investments. As of early 2026, 28 TDI districts have graduated or are active. MassDevelopment reports $54 million in direct investment influencing more than $400 million in additional public and private investment.⁹

Inside TDI, the Equity Investment Program provides capital improvement grants up to $250,000 for projects that activate ground-floor commercial space. Its first three rounds awarded roughly $7 million, leveraged nearly $80 million more, supported 83 businesses, and activated about 352,000 square feet of commercial space.¹⁰

Economic Development Incentive Program (EDIP)

EDIP gives businesses tax incentives in exchange for creating jobs, and Gateway Cities are prioritized for larger awards.¹¹ In Worcester, EDIP projects have generated $401.4 million in private investment, 925 full-time permanent jobs, and $222.5 million in new taxable property value.¹² In June 2026, the state’s Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved $52 million in EDIP tax credits for 11 projects, six of them in Gateway Cities, committing businesses to create 2,793 new jobs and retain 1,503.¹³

CommonWealth Builder

Administered by MassHousing, this program subsidizes new homes and condominiums for first-time buyers earning 70 to 120 percent of area median income in Gateway Cities and Boston. The Affordable Homes Act authorized $100 million in capital for the program, and MassHousing has provided over $570 million in mortgage financing for more than 1,600 first-time purchases in Gateway Cities.¹⁴

Greening the Gateway Cities

Run by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, this program plants trees to raise urban canopy cover, cut household energy costs, and lower surface temperatures. It has planted more than 40,000 trees across 23 of the 26 Gateway Cities, beginning in Chelsea, Holyoke, and Fall River.¹⁵

Gateway City Parks Program

Funds the creation and restoration of parks and recreational facilities in underserved urban neighborhoods, with grants averaging $500,000.¹⁶

Gateway Housing Rehabilitation Program

Provides funds to develop blighted residential properties.¹⁷

Community One Stop for Growth

A single application portal that bundles 12 grant programs across economic development, housing, and MassDevelopment finance into one process. It gives Gateway Cities and other communities a consolidated door to capital for infrastructure, brownfield cleanup, vacant storefronts, and site readiness.¹⁸

Why the List Hasn’t Changed Since 2013

The statute contains no mechanism for periodic review. No city has been added or removed since 2013, even as underlying incomes and education levels have shifted. Cities like Salem, Quincy, and Methuen have improved on the qualifying metrics and may no longer meet all three criteria, while Weymouth and Marlborough appear to meet them but are not on the list.⁵ Salem received more than $8 million in conditional HDIP tax credit awards for four housing projects in 2024 and 2025 despite that ambiguity.¹⁷

Two bills are pending. State Senator Bill Driscoll Jr. filed S.297, which would add two criteria (a minority population of at least 40 percent, and at least 15 percent of households speaking English less than “very well”), require the secretary of economic development to recertify eligibility after every decennial census, and change the threshold to any three of five measures instead of all three current ones.¹⁹ Senator Paul Mark’s S.304 would let two or more smaller municipalities combine their populations to meet the 35,000-person floor.²⁰ Both were referred to the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, heard in September 2025, and accompanied by a study order that December.²¹

Representative Antonio F.D. Cabral of New Bedford, who founded the Gateway Cities Legislative Caucus in 2008 and co-chairs it with Senator John Cronin of Fitchburg, has opposed expanding the list, arguing that adding more affluent suburban communities would dilute resources meant for older urban centers.² MassINC has acknowledged a tension in its own creation: the quantitative definition gave the framework political clarity, but shifted the story from strategic assets to a deficit-based narrative about poverty and low education.¹⁹

The Pressures These Programs Address

Housing

The MassINC Policy Center’s 2025 Gateway Cities Housing Monitor found that these communities need to double the pace of new housing production from 2022 to 2032, compared to the previous decade, just to stabilize costs. Massachusetts contains 95 “homeownership deserts,” neighborhoods where fewer than one in five homes are owner-occupied, concentrated in Gateway Cities. Residents there are 16 times more likely to live in areas of concentrated poverty than residents elsewhere in the state.²²

Some indicators have improved. The share of Gateway City census tracts with concentrated poverty (a poverty rate above 30 percent) fell from 22 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2023, and residential churn dropped from 25 percent of tracts to 10 percent over the same period.²³ A 2026 MassINC poll nonetheless found that 24 percent of Gateway City homeowners said owning a home had hurt their financial stability, compared to 13 percent of homeowners elsewhere, and 45 percent had delayed or skipped urgent home repairs.²⁴ In Chicopee, Holyoke, and Springfield, market rents are often too low to cover the cost of new construction, creating financing gaps that slow production.²⁵

Transit

South Coast Rail opened in March 2025, extending MBTA commuter rail to Taunton, Fall River, New Bedford, and Brockton. Weekday ridership reached 10,000, above the pre-launch estimate of 6,500, and a 275-unit apartment complex is under construction near the East Taunton station. Travel times between Boston and New Bedford still run 100 to 110 minutes, and the electrified “full build,” estimated in 2018 at $3.2 billion, does not appear in the MBTA’s FY27–31 capital plan.²⁶

A 2026 MassINC and TransitMatters analysis identified roughly $503 million in “no regrets” capital investments across the commuter rail lines serving Gateway Cities, including double-tracking on the Haverhill Line, a second track at Salem Station, and signal improvements on the Worcester line, with an estimated $100 million annual funding gap in the current MBTA capital plan.²⁷

Immigration and Workforce

Immigrants drive population and workforce numbers in these cities. Between 2000 and 2012, the 26 gained roughly 100,000 foreign-born residents; without that influx their combined population would have declined about 3 percent, and instead it grew by 3 percent. Newcomers (foreign-born residents and those born in Puerto Rico) account for roughly half the population in Chelsea and Lawrence and over 40 percent in Everett and Malden.²⁸

A June 2026 MassINC report projected that children in immigrant families will make up at least a third of new labor force entrants in 17 of the 26 Gateway Cities over the next decade, exceeding half in eight. The same report found Massachusetts needs at least 60,000 net new immigrants annually by 2030 to hold its working-age population steady, while national net immigration fell an estimated 54 percent from mid-2024 to mid-2025.²⁹

1
MassINC. About the Gateway Cities
2
Commonwealth Beacon. Holding the Line on Gateway Cities Designation
3
General Court of Massachusetts. General Laws Part I, Title II, Chapter 23A, Section 3A
4
Brookings Institution. Reconnecting Massachusetts Gateway Cities: Lessons Learned and an Agenda for Renewal
5
Commonwealth Beacon. No Way In and No Way Out: Beacon Hill Hasn’t Kept Track of Which Communities Qualify for Gateway City Status
6
City of Lowell. Housing Development Incentive Program
7
City of Springfield. Housing Development Incentive Program
8
MassINC. Gateway Cities Legislative Caucus
9
MassDevelopment. Transformative Development Initiative
10
New England Real Estate Journal. TDI Equity Investment Program
11
Commonwealth Beacon. Salem, Quincy Receiving Millions in Tax Credits for Gateway Cities Despite No Longer Qualifying
12
City of Worcester. Economic Development Incentive Program
13
Mass.gov. Massachusetts Economic Assistance Coordinating Council Awards $52 Million in Tax Credits
14
Mass.gov. Governor Healey Awards $24.5 Million to Create Affordable Homes for First-Time Buyers
15
Massachusetts Municipal Association. State to Expand Tree Plantings in Environmental Justice Communities
16
Mass.gov. Gateway City Parks Program
17
Commonwealth Beacon. Salem, Quincy Receiving Millions in Tax Credits for Gateway Cities
18
Mass.gov. Community One Stop for Growth
19
MassINC. What Makes a Gateway City
20
General Court of Massachusetts. S.304, An Act Updating Gateway Municipalities
21
General Court of Massachusetts. S.297, An Act Relative to Gateway Municipalities
22
MassINC. 2025 Gateway Cities Housing Monitor
23
MassINC. 2025 Gateway Cities Housing Monitor, Chapter 4
24
Commonwealth Beacon. Homeowner Satisfaction High in Gateway Cities Despite a Host of Financial Challenges
25
Mass.gov. Home for Everyone: The Many Massachusetts Housing Markets
26
Commonwealth Beacon. Gateway City Leaders Celebrate One Year of South Coast Rail, but Final Phase Remains in Limbo
27
MassINC. Harnessing the Full Potential of Regional Rail With a No-Regrets Capital Investment Strategy
28
MassINC/MAPC. Mills to Main Streets: Immigrant Entrepreneurship Report
29
MassINC. An Uncertain Future: How the Immigration Crackdown Threatens Massachusetts’ Labor Force