RE-IMAGINE THAT!
WITH ITS SIX-ACRE HARBORWALK, ENCORE BOSTON HARBOR HAS OPENED A STRETCH OF SHORELINE TO THE PUBLIC FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MORE THAN A CENTURY.
With its six-acre Harborwalk, Encore Boston Harbor has opened a stretch of shoreline to the public for the first time in more than a century.
IT IS OPENING WEEKEND AT ENCORE BOSTON HARBOR, AND AN EARLY SUMMER CROWD OF VACATIONERS STROLLS THE PUBLIC GARDENS, stopping to take pictures at a sculpture of three women gazing out to the Mystic River. Herring gulls and double-crested cormorants swoop over the waters, scanning for fish. It is a tranquil scene— but not one that locals to this area have ever seen. Because this public park is the product of a massive remediation project on the 33-acre site of a once-blighted abandoned chemical manufacturing district—uninhabitable for more than a century. In 2016, Wynn Resorts took on the task of reclaiming the land, improving the health of the shoreline and restoring it for the community that shares the Mystic River.
When Everett Mayor Carlo DiMaria speaks of the revitalization of this area, you can hear in his voice what it means to him. A lifelong resident of the city, he reminisces back to when he was just a kid in Everett, disregarding his mother’s strict instructions to stay away from the waterfront. “For our residents to be able to access the water, to enjoy it, it’s truly amazing,” says DiMaria. “It’s been cordoned off by industry for years, and you couldn’t get down here, and then Wynn comes in and cleans it up, restores the waterfront, builds that living shoreline—it’s just awesome.”
The largest private development in the history of the Massachussetts Commonwealth did not happen without some considerable effort. “There are two parts to this story,” says Chris Gordon, who, as president of Wynn Development led the charge to bring the massive Encore Boston Harbor project to fruition. “There’s the remediation of the harbor, and then there’s the new public space—the Encore Harborwalk.”
Gordon offers an understatement about this land that had been leaching chemicals into the Mystic River for generations. “It was a very very difficult site,” he says. “It was used for producing chemicals for a hundred years, and abandoned for 30 years while people debated what to do with it. When Wynn acquired the site, we got approvals to clean up both the land side where the building was, and then we dredged about seven acres of the harbor to remove the sediments. It cost $68 million in four months —with private money.”
In all, 840,000 tons of soil were removed from the property—enough to fill Fenway Park. “When you remove contaminated soil, you have to take it to landfills that are EPA-approved for that kind of contamination,” explains Gordon. “So we put in a train line, and we carried 6,000 train cars of soil to various landfills all over the country—and then we had 5,000 trailer trucks in addition that went to different landfills.”
But removing the soil wasn’t enough. “When we did our original environmental studies, we used a robot that went out and sampled the waters all over the inlet and out into the river,” says Gordon. “And it came back it was a biological desert—nothing organic, no life at all. So we dredged up an enormous amount of material and then we put in clean material and if you go out there today, there’s jellyfish and fish and ducks in the harbor, so we’re pretty thrilled with how it turned out from a remediation perspective.”
After the cleanup came the fun part. “We were able to create a very distinctive outdoor and public space that the community could use," says Gordon. “That includes the Harborwalk, the big events lawn, the landscape areas, and it allowed us to do the living shoreline.” The rebuilt
shoreline helps reduce erosion and will continue to boost the ecosystem by filtering water from the Mystic River.
Adjacent to the waterfront, and open to the public year-round, Harborwalk is an inviting locale for resort guests and the public to listen to live music, picnic, or just walk the scenic shoreline paths.
This idyllic place gets its lush background with help from Patrick Chadwick, director of horticulture and floral for Encore Boston Harbor, who had the responsibility of bringing the landscape to life. Originally from Montana, Chadwick joined Wynn in Las Vegas as a gardener, moved up through the ranks, and relocated to Everett in 2018 to undertake the project from concept through its bright future.
“Encore Las Vegas was the basis for what Encore Boston Harbor would look like,” says Chadwick. “The triumphant entrance, with the pine tree backbone—we planted 91 full-size specimen Scotch pine trees in the landscape.” Accented by deciduous trees such as serviceberry, weeping cherry, dogwood, thundercloud purple-leaf plum, chanticleer pear, and aristocrat pear, these trees are the foundation of Encore Boston Harbor’s landscape design. Along with spruce, grand pine trees are a signature Wynn feature (Wynn Las Vegas is famous for its Aleppo pines, which favor a hot, dry climate), and here they work well with the array of trees that will change color each fall. “The maple trees that line Harborwalk are called Autumn Splendor,” says Chadwick. “Those particular maples put on a brilliant fall show—oranges and reds and yellows. There’s also Japanese maple that have burgundy color foliage, a brilliant pink color.”
All told, the resort planted more than 55,000 flowering annuals, more than 100,000 shrubs and nearly 1,000 mature trees. Thousands of annuals are swapped out every two weeks, and new color schemes are created to align with the seasons. And seasons do have their advantages, as Chadwick learned. “I’ve wanted to use calibrachoa, or million bells, in Wynn since the beginning, but it wasn’t the right climate. So that’s one of our fall highlight features, along with cold-hardy mums.” The mums are also a nod to the neighboring community. “I went through the town of Everett for inspiration, and the mums are phenomenal, just fantastic. But where they use five, we’ll use a hundred. We’ll take the color palette and plant selection that they use locally and augment it.”
It isn’t just the gardens that required a horticulturist’s touch. Part of building a living shoreline was inserting riparian, water-loving plants that contribute to the ecosystem and create a habitat for wildlife. The former eyesore is now fully in bloom. “It is green and getting greener,” says Chadwick. “There are about 20,000 grass seedlings that are growing right now—the seed for those is collected from shorelines in this region. We planted a bunch of sea lavender, which was wildly collected and sustainably harvested.” This means seeds are collected in a way that doesn’t harm existing plants and only a certain amount are collected from any given area.
All of this adds up to a fully revitalized waterfront. “This was an ecological desert. Now there are cranes and ducks with ducklings being born, and rabbits and baby bunnies—life has returned to this area. And the final piece of the landscape—what makes it come alive—is the people populating it,” says Chadwick. “These gardens are meant to be enjoyed by people walking through and sitting among them—that’s the whole purpose of bringing back the landscape. That’s our gift to the people of Everett and to this region.”