Some solar projects feel especially close to home.

For PV Squared Solar, the new Clinical & Support Options housing and shelter campus at 60 Wells Street in downtown Greenfield is one of them.

Our cooperative was founded here in Greenfield in 2002. Our office is here. Our coworkers live, shop, eat, volunteer, and participate in civic life here. Wells Street is part of the downtown many of us walk through every day.

Now, it is also home to a transformative new supportive housing development, and we are deeply proud to have provided the solar energy system that will become part of its long-term infrastructure.

The approximately $27 million project brings together 36 permanent supportive housing apartments, expanded emergency shelter for up to 42 people, and wraparound services for people experiencing homelessness, all within one downtown campus.

For PV Squared, this is exactly the kind of project that reminds us why local clean energy infrastructure matters.

Investing in People at 60 Wells Street

On July 29, community members, project partners, elected officials, and supporters gathered in Greenfield to celebrate the new facility with a ribbon cutting.

Led by Clinical & Support Options (CSO) with development support from Rural Development, Inc. (RDI), the project transforms the longtime Wells Street shelter into something much more comprehensive.

The existing building has been substantially renovated to provide updated shelter space for men and women, a dining area, resource center, and space for clinicians and case managers. A new three-story addition creates 36 furnished studio apartments, including accessible units, for people who have experienced chronic homelessness.

Residents and shelter guests will also have access to behavioral health care, nursing, addiction and recovery resources, employment and housing assistance, and other support designed to help people move toward greater stability.

As CSO President and CEO Karin Jeffers shared at the ribbon cutting, stable housing creates a foundation from which health, recovery, employment, and connection can grow.

That philosophy resonates with us.

Infrastructure matters most because of the people it serves.

Clean Energy as Part of Supportive Housing

PV Squared was proud to contribute the solar energy system serving the new 60 Wells Street development.

Solar is only one piece of an extraordinarily complex project like this, but it is a piece designed to keep contributing for decades.

For nonprofit organizations and affordable housing providers, thoughtfully designed solar can help reduce long-term exposure to electricity costs while supporting broader sustainability and climate goals.

And when those systems are installed on buildings providing essential community services, the intersection becomes particularly meaningful.

The electricity generated on Wells Street will support a building whose purpose is fundamentally about resilience.

To us, those things belong together.

Bringing a Proven Model Home to Greenfield

The vision for 60 Wells Street also has roots elsewhere in Western Massachusetts.

CSO’s Friends of the Homeless program has operated a comprehensive shelter, resource center, and supportive housing model in Springfield for years. The organization serves people experiencing homelessness not only with emergency shelter, but with case management and connections to employment, permanent housing, health care, behavioral health services, and other supports.

The Greenfield development adapts that successful model for the needs of Franklin County, bringing emergency shelter, permanent supportive housing, and services together in one location.

CSO is simultaneously continuing to invest in this approach in Springfield. Its Friends of the Homeless campus there is currently expanding with another $20 million supportive housing development at 775 Worthington Street that will add 36 additional permanent supportive housing units.

Seeing this model grow across both Franklin County and Hampden County speaks to the scale of the regional need, but also to what becomes possible when housing organizations, municipalities, funders, contractors, service providers, and community partners work together.

The Partnerships Behind Community Infrastructure

Projects of this scale are never the work of one organization.

We are grateful to Clinical & Support Options for leading the vision for 60 Wells Street and to Rural Development, Inc., the nonprofit affordable housing development arm of the Franklin County Regional Housing & Redevelopment Authority, for helping guide the project from planning through construction.

For PV Squared, participating in projects like this is also part of a much larger network of relationships across Western Massachusetts.

Through our commercial solar work, we have had the privilege of partnering with affordable housing organizations and community development leaders, including Valley Community Development, on projects designed to make housing more sustainable and affordable over the long term.

These relationships matter to us.

Because the strongest regional infrastructure is rarely built by one company, one nonprofit, or one municipality acting alone. It is built through organizations bringing different kinds of expertise to the same table and committing to a shared outcome.

A Project We Get to Walk Past

There is something particularly meaningful about installing solar on a building in your own downtown.

This isn’t a project hundreds of miles away that we’ll only ever see in photographs.

It’s part of our daily landscape.

We’ll walk past it.

We’ll drive past it.

We’ll watch people move in.

And for decades to come, the solar system on that building will quietly generate electricity above a place designed to provide something even more fundamental below it: safety, stability, dignity, and a place to call home.

That is the kind of long-term impact we want our work to have.

Building a More Resilient Western Massachusetts

At PV Squared, we talk often about resilient infrastructure.

Sometimes that means solar panels, electrical systems, battery storage, and buildings designed to operate efficiently for decades.

But community resilience is bigger than energy alone.

It means housing people can depend on. Access to health care and support. Strong local organizations. Stable jobs. Thoughtful public investment. And communities willing to take care of the people who live within them.

The new 60 Wells Street campus brings many of those things together.

We are grateful to CSO, RDI, the City of Greenfield, the project’s many funders and partners, and everyone who spent years bringing this vision into reality.

And we are incredibly proud that when the doors open and people begin calling 60 Wells Street home, a little bit of Greenfield sunshine will be helping power it.

That’s solar close to home.

READ THE EDITORIAL: https://recorder.com/2026/07/29/greenfield-shelter-ribbon-cutting