The City of Malden has been awarded a 2021 Accelerating Climate Resilience Grant in the amount of $52,250 from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) and the Barr Foundation to support continued work on the Malden River Works project.
Malden River Works for Waterfront Equity and Resilience is a new climate resilience project in Malden. Created through a partnership between the City of Malden, Malden Redevelopment Authority, Friends of the Malden River, Mystic River Watershed Association, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the project goal is to transform the DPW yard on the Malden River for better climate change preparedness and to create a vibrant, climate resilient public riverfront park. The park will address sea level rise with an elevated greenway path and lawn area and the option to incrementally increase flood protection for the DPW. It will reduce urban heat island effect and manage inland flooding with green infrastructure solutions: bioswales, bioretention basins, and over 75 new trees. The project is led by a new coalition of community leaders of color, youth, environmental advocates, and government stakeholders as the newly formed Malden River Works Steering Committee.
The Malden River Works team recently completed a year-long community engagement process that included four public meetings, three community-wide surveys, and countless volunteer hours to develop a concept design for the site. “The community’s support for this project has been driving us forward from day one,” says Mayor Gary Christenson. “Receiving this grant reflects the enthusiasm felt for this project, both within and outside of the Malden community.” The $52,250 grant is in addition to the $150,015 awarded through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action Grant that the City received in September. Both grants will be used to fund engineering work to refine the design of the project.
MAPC and the Barr Foundation awarded a total of over $700,000 this year to eleven grantees to support “near-term interventions through local policy advances, analyses, and actions that drive long-term transformations” to improve climate resiliency.
The Malden River Works Concept Design Report was funded by a $100,000 grant from MIT’s Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) and is now available to view at http://www.maldenriverworks.org/.
More information on the Accelerating Climate Resilience Grant here: https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/accelerating-resiliency/