Open spaces may get $100M in surplus cash
Cash infusion comes from Winthrop Square sale
A massive surplus of over $100 million dollars could soon be allocated to the city’s open spaces and housing redevelopment.
The City Council is set to hold a public hearing next week on an order from Mayor Martin J. Walsh to disperse Surplus Disposition Fund cash from the Winthrop Square sale.
The order asks council members to approve over half of the total $105.4 million for investment into the Boston Common, Franklin Park and to complete the Emerald Necklace.
The Common and Franklin park would receive $28 million in total, with $23 million for capital funding and $5 million toward a maintenance trust.
The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway would also receive $5 million in an endowment fund for maintenance.
The Emerald Necklace would see $11 million dollars, according to the order and $35 million would be for the Boston Housing Authority to redevelop and improve facilities at Old Colony in South Boston and Orient Heights in East Boston, if approved.
The investment would be one the biggest to the city’s open spaces in a long time. City Councilor At-Large Michelle Wu said the financials and dispersal of funds have already been worked out, but that this will be the council’s first chance to see how the funding would actually be planned out.
“There’s many different causes bundled together from this sale,” Wu said. “All of our residents deserve access to open spaces. We have to make sure we’re equitable in how we’re carrying out that commitment. It’s important to be accountable to agreements made in the past.”
Walsh said the investment is to fulfill his commitment to open spaces and to provide more affordable housing in the city.
“It’s one-time expenditures, that’s why we’re doing it,” Walsh said. “They probably haven’t had a major investment like that since the beginning.”
City Councilor Mark Ciommo, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, agreed that open spaces are an important investment in the city.
“I think we all agree that funding for open spaces like Franklin Park is necessary, that’s a huge public space,” he said. “These are one-time funds that will improve standard maintenance.”
Walsh said open spaces like the Common and the Greenway must be kept in “first-class” shape and that this investment will go toward that.
“It really is a connection in Boston,” he said. “So, having an open space and maintaining it to a firstclass open space and allowing the people of Boston to be able to use that, and the people who come into our city, to use it, we need to make sure that we keep it that way.”