By Record Staff
City Manager Fidel Maltez has placed an emphasis on communicating with residents since he took office in January. Earlier this week, Maltez recorded the latest in his series of public outreach videos to air on Chelsea Community TV. The text of his August video, which focuses on a number of ongoing and planned projects in the city, including the Upper Broadway project, is below:
Hello residents of Chelsea. Welcome to Our Community. My name is Fidel Maltez and I am honored to serve as your City Manager. We have centered our administration on three values that are critical to me: responsiveness, accountability, and transparency. Responsiveness means that we will get back to all residents and we will do our best to address every concern. Accountability
means that we will own our mistakes, and we will work to improve our internal processes to better serve our community. Transparency means that we will keep open lines of communications, updating our residents and focusing on civic engagement. This month, I wanted to highlight a few exciting projects happening in Chelsea.
Let’s start with Upper Broadway, which runs from City Hall to the Revere line. The contractor has completed the base layer of pavement, and is focused on replacing over two miles of sidewalks. This project will give us accessible, new concrete sidewalks that will last for generations to come. We will also replace all traffic
signals in this corridor. When sidewalks are complete the contractor will install a top pavement coat and will do fresh line painting. We expect most of the work to be completed by November, with some minor work to be finished next year.
You have noticed that we have begun work on Downtown Broadway, which runs from Bellingham Square to the Chelsea Court House. The contractor is currently replacing all sewer pipes from Fourth Street to Congress Avenue. We expect this work to take two months. Once completed, the contractor will move to the next block, in order to minimize impact to our small businesses. We expect the water
and sewer phase to be completed next year, at which point we will begin replacing the pavement and all sidewalks. This project will install new traffic signals at most intersections and will reconfigure Bellingham square for easier, and safer traffic flow for everyone in Chelsea.
We understand the impact the ongoing construction has had on residents, visitors and businesses. The Sumner tunnel closure in July only made matters worse. We thank you for bearing with us and being patient. Chelsea is celebrating her 400th Birthday this year. While we celebrate the 400-year history of Chelsea; we know that along with that rich history comes aging infrastructure. Please accept my
gratitude for understanding the need for utility reconstruction and beautifying our beloved city.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this or any other construction project around the City. Please call 617-466-4209, use the 311 app, or email [email protected]
Let me now give you an update on our Parks. This month, we cut the ribbon on a $2.5 million dollar total renovation of Highland Park, our heavily-used soccer field, and we have been thrilled to see how much residents are already using and enjoying the field.
This year we have completed work on the new Forsyth Pocket Park, a new small park at the corner of Lafayette Ave and Sturgis Street, which provides shaded seating and new plantings to help reduce heat in the neighborhood.
We are working on two more parks, which we will cut the ribbons for this fall. Bosson Park will reopen in September, redesigned to be a more connected community space. The new park will have brand new play equipment, a half basketball court, and a splash pad to help keep kids cool in the summer months.
Finally, this year we’ll open the brand new park at 88 Clinton Street, right on Mill Creek. Chelsea is surrounded by water on three sides but we have very few waterfront parks for our residents; this new open space is part of our effort to fix that. The new park will have a splash pad and grassy lawn area looking over the river, as we are excited to get to share it with you.
Looking ahead, we will be building two more new parks at 212 Congress Street, and 29 Eastern Ave, Bear Park and Lewis H. Latimer Overlook respectively, and totally rebuilding Polonia Park to better serve our community’s needs.
There is a lot of energy and enthusiasm in our parks right now. To top it off, we are working on a new Open Space and Recreation Plan, which will determine our priorities for parks, recreation, and open space over the next seven years. We want to know what is working well in the parks, what your needs are, and what we can do better to inform those priorities. Take some time fill out a survey on
our facebook page and our website to tell us your thoughts.
See you next time on Our Community. Thank you and May god bless the City of Chelsea.