Millions of dollars for urban forest development and property transfers for affordable housing were on the agenda at this week’s Springfield City Council meeting.
Dubbed the “Speak for the Trees” grant, $6 million from the USDA Forest Service will be making its way to Springfield – intended for growing and maintaining the city’s urban canopy.
The grant, expected to arrive in three phases, went before councilors during their regular meeting Monday. City Forester Alex Sherman says at least $1 million will go toward tree planting – adding up to 1,500 trees over the next five years.
“This is going to include street tree planting, also private tree planting on private property, as well as a neighborhood nurseries program, where we plan to utilize vacant city lots to grow trees to size and then plant them out on the streets in the neighborhood, so we'll be revitalizing some underused vacant lots around the city,” Sherman said before the council.
Another $3 million will go toward urban forest health and safety - including “mature tree canopy care,” that ranges from hazard removals to trimming. All the while, an urban forest master plan will be under development, a process Sherman says is urgently needed, in addition to urban woodland management plans as officials look to take stock of what’s already in the ground.
In total, he says, with other grants received, the city hopes to get 6,000 trees in the ground over the next few years.
The grant was overwhelmingly approved by the council, as were a majority of the agenda items Monday, including a $500,000 Senior Community Service Employment grant for the Department of Elder Affairs and $240,000 from the MassDOT to support street narrowing and crosswalk work on State Street.
Also on the agenda – approving the execution of multiple quitcalm deeds: real estate transfers that turned parcels acquired by the city over to developers, intended for affordable housing proposals – most of which involving accepted bids ranging from almost $500 to $2,440.
“They are being conveyed for the purpose of constructing 12 new homes that will be affordable to people with households at two different levels, some of them 100 percent of area median income, some of them 80 percent area median income,” said Gerry McCafferty, the city’s director of housing. “These are primarily in the old Hill neighborhood, although there are two that are in Upper Hill. We have significant support for this from the Old Hill Neighborhood Council.”
McCafferty says most of the lots are vacant, while a handful are said to have blighted homes in need of demolition.
The projects, some involving Way Finders and local non-profit Home City Development, are receiving funding from MassHousing via the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and cash earmarked by the local state delegation.
Responding to a question from Councilor at Large Tracye Whitfield, McCafferty noted the city had also contributed $750,000 in federal HOME funds to the 10 houses Home City would be building.
“There is a state earmark that our delegation was able to secure for $500,000,” McCafferty said, breaking down the number further when asked by another Councilor-at-Large, Sean Curran. “There are two Neighborhood Stabilization program grants - $2 million to Home City Development, and I think it's $1.6 million to Way Finders, although they are doing these three projects, and they have other projects they'll be doing in the future that that money also goes to, and then the MassMutual Foundation has also made a large contribution to this project.”
According to the developers, the homes are expected to fetch for between $190,000-$210,000.
Construction costs are expected to be just under $500,000 for properties not needing demo work. The parcels that would need demolition, handled by Way Finders, are expected to cost around $600,000.
