At a recent community meeting of the Trustees of Reservations, Amy Eynatian announced that there are two upcoming meetings scheduled to discuss the Piers Park Phase III project.
The meetings will be held on March 29 and March 30 in both English and Spanish.
“We hosted our first public design meetings in January and had about 150 folks attend those two meetings and got a lot of questions and feedback that was very helpful to the team as we continue working on the design for the park,” said Eynatian.
Residents can register for the virtual meetings at https://onewaterfront.thetrustees.org/community-events-list/2021/3/29/piers-park-iii-public-meeting-the-trustees-boston-waterfront-initiative.
The meeting will include a presentation by the Trustees of Reservations Boston Waterfront Initiative and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc (MVVA).
A first draft of the future park design will be shared during this event. This initial design was created using input from the January public meetings and from the online community survey. Attendees to this month’s meetings will be encouraged to give input on this first draft and will be invited to ask questions.
Feedback from this meeting and from the online survey will inform the next draft of the design for the future waterfront park.
The online survey can be found at https://onewaterfront.thetrustees.org/survey
“By the time of the meeting we’ll have some new design images and options to review and discuss with everyone so we will be able to have a little more conversation around that,” said Eynatian. “So that should be exciting to see updates from what you would have seen back in January.”
Eynatian said the Trustees of Reservations will also be hiring a part time community outreach coordinator to help with ongoing outreach related to the design process.
“So we’re looking specifically for someone who’s bilingual in English and Spanish to make sure that we’re reaching folks across East Boston,” she said.
Two years ago, the Trustees of Reservations submitted the only bid to Massport’s call for a private/public partner to come forward and help fund the design and construction of Piers Park Phase III.
The dilapidated pier adjacent to Massport’s award winning Piers Park and the future Piers Park Phase II is being eyed by Massport as the future site of a third waterfront park.
The Trustees of Reservations operate 120 miles of protected coastline, which includes over 60 miles of trails, and a bunch of beaches and all sorts of other natural habitats in the state.
Massport has been working with the community and other stakeholders over the last two to three years to build out Piers Park Phase II. It was around this time the Trustees of Reservations started having conversations with Massport about their waterfront initiative.
The Trustees of Reservations spent a lot of 2019 working with Massport and others to really investigate the site and understand what the conditions were so the Trustees of Reservations could start to piece together what the possibilities would be for a waterfront park that is active and engaging.