Long-time Dorchester resident Milton Bramble stood on a vacant lot at the corner of Harvard and Standish Streets last week and recalled playing on the grassy patch years ago as a kid. It is just one of many empty, city-owned lots — many of them vacant for several decades— that still dot the landscape of the Talbot Harvard Triangle. Now, Bramble is part of a team selected by the city to build housing on the lot and others like it in the west of Washington Street neighborhood.

“It’s a very, very interesting neighborhood and I’ve lived in it all of my life,” Bramble said. “That is why I’m excited about what is going on with this development.”

The city’s Department of Neighborhood Development last week designated TLee Development, where Bramble is an employee, to take control of three lots on Standish and Harvard streets that sit adjacent to a new train station, a refreshed business community and the Sarah Greenwood School. City officials said the vacant lots have been dormant for 40 years and neighbors recalled that they were home to a shoe factory that burned down in the distant past.

The development company plans to build 22 homeownership units in two buildings at the 90 percent AMI level in hopes of attracting existing residents to own in their neighborhood.

Across the street, the Stamatos Family Properties of Jamaica Plain, poised to add more new storefronts to the district, has finally begun to renovate the collapsed Mt. Pleasant Church building. Bramble said the business district has benefited from a well-done renovation after a fire several years ago, with a popular barber shop moving in from Codman Square and a new and busy Spanish restaurant called ‘Yo Momma.’ He said even the family-owned liquor store, Gigi’s, was taken over by younger family members who noted the new Fairmount Line T stop two blocks away and thoroughly updated the store.

The improvements represent a shift from years past in this oft-forgotten hamlet of Dorchester, which Bramble said he long considered unsafe, dating back to his formative years in the 1990s.

“As a kid, it was one of the toughest neighborhoods you could walk through in Boston. I wouldn’t come to the corner store without my brother,” he said. “Now I walk safely here. There is new development in the area, and there are new businesses in the little business district. All of it has changed the temperature and feel of this neighborhood.”

Cynthia Francis, who leads a residents’ group in the Harvard-Talbot Triangle, moved into the neighborhood 55 years ago at a time when it was still a mostly Jewish enclave. She said many vacant lots in the Triangle were created after the Jewish population left and houses started to burn down frequently, an experience common to the history of the west side of Dorchester.

“When a home burnt down or became abandoned, the city would just knock it down and the lot stayed there,” she said. “The community took care of the empty lots and maintained them, and we were taught to do that to maintain the integrity of the community.”

Francis said the neighborhood has revived as it has healed, not only from high crime, but also from what she described as “horrific” police brutality in the 1980s. She said policing has improved, and leaders here forged relationships with officials like former Boston Police Supt. Willie Gross and local captains – many of whom she knew as a high school student at Boston Tech.

“Getting involved again about seven years ago was my way of trying to heal from the past and for the community to be able to move on,” she said. “Having these partnerships with people like Willie Gross and [former B-3] Police Capt. Haseeb Hosein in the community was a way of healing and moving forward from what was put on us in previous years.”

The lots throughout the neighborhood, including the one Bramble has focused his attention on, are now ready, Francis said. She and the Triangle community are ready to see them developed – provided it’s done with, and for, the community.

“At the end of the day, progress is good, but as long as the people who live in the neighborhood or grew up in the neighborhood and want to come back and stay here are the ones to benefit,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to see people from out of state, the suburbs, or from other places that want to make them AirBNBs.”

Bramble said they are in meetings with the city and expect to start development next year.

Brian Worrell, who grew up nearby and will be sworn in as the new city councillor in District 4 in two weeks, said he hopes to see more investment of this kind happening soon.

“I am glad to see that the plans for this lot center resident needs by creating affordable housing at prices that community members can afford,” he said. “We need to see more investment in, and partnership with, developers that are good community partners, represent the diversity of our city, and are focused on development that best serves the interest of our residents.”