Using city and Community Preservation Act funds, officials in Springfield are working to expand a stretch of conservation area and connect pieces of a larger preservation effort in the process.
With $500,000 dollars in Community Preservation Act money as well as $134,000 from the city, leaders in Springfield announced plans to acquire several acres of land in the city’s Hungry Hill neighborhood.
Under the plan approved by the city council earlier in July, nine parcels totaling over 230,000 square feet, or over five acres, would be acquired from O’Connell Oil Associates.
Speaking before the council on July 8, Tina Quagliato Sullivan, the city's Director of Disaster Recovery and Compliance, laid out how much of the land on Liberty Street would figure into a broader conservation effort in the city.
“This will serve as a connector between approximately 21.46 acres of conservation land on the east side of Liberty Street around Abbey Brook, and 25 acres of conservation land on the west side of Liberty Street,” she said. “The project is supported by the Hungry Hill Neighborhood Council, which is the impacted neighborhood, and the Hungry Hill Neighborhood Council and neighborhood residents were the primary advocates for this. The properties will be permanently restricted for conservation and passive recreational purposes.”
For years, the city has been working to preserve the Abbey Brook conservation area, which features a brook that acts as a tributary to the Chicopee River.
Efforts to restore the urbanized watershed have been ongoing, as well as in neighboring Chicopee, where the water continues to flow and enters into the river.
On the Springfield side, that has included two large sections along Liberty Street — one to the east, bordering the Van Sickle/Renaissance schools on Carew Street, and another on the west, near the Valley West School in Chicopee.
Separating them besides the busy roadway is an assortment of privately owned parcels that, at one point, seemed destined for anything but conservation.
“For many years, [it] was targeted to be a gas station or a strip mall, which really would have been a tragic outcome to see such a large and otherwise uninterrupted conservation area filled with that,” Council President Mike Fenton told reporters on Liberty Street last week.
Fenton was among a crowd of officials who ventured to one of the parcels Wednesday, July 17, including Mayor Domenic Sarno and Congressman Richard Neal of the 1st district.
Fenced off to the public at the time, officials say the lot, which now bears a “Community Preservation Act” project banner, was believed to once be home to a gas station – now covered with overgrowth and some remaining pavement.
“The project we're here to celebrate today is making what I believe to be now the largest contiguous conservation parcel in the city - it's about 80 total acres, when you add up the east and west side of Liberty Street here,” Fenton said.
According to Quagliato Sullivan, some of the acres making up that total appeared to include privately-owned wetlands, but the vast majority of acreage is controlled for conservation by the city.
Sarno said keeping and preserving green spaces in the city of over 150,000 has been a priority – and after finding the funding, supporting the conservation area expansion effort made sense.
“... it's so important in urban centers that we have green oases,” he added.
A representative with O’Connell Oil says the company is glad to see the land be put to use in this way.
According to the Springfield Community Preservation Committee, the area purchased is to be protected “in perpetuity” with Mass Audubon picked to act as land steward.
