A federal grant will provide for comprehensive city planning in Somerville as the project to extend the Green Line from Lechmere Station into the city of Somerville chugs along.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Oct. 21 awarded Somerville a $1.8 million grant for city development planning to deal with the future Somerville Green Line extension.
Somerville's application, submitted in late August, originally requested $3 million, according to Monica Lamboy, the executive director of the city's Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development.
A multidisciplinary review team comprised of members from four federal agencies evaluated the grant applications and selected awardees, according to Lamboy. The team considered 538 applications from state and local governments and chose to fund 42 projects in 33 different states, she said.
The Green Line extension, scheduled to reach completion in Oct. 2015, is projected to cost a total of $953 million, according to Project Manager Kate Fichter. Somerville is hoping to fund its city planning efforts with an equal number of state and federal dollars, Fichter told the Daily.
The grant will provide for the hiring of an operations manager to handle permit streamlining, Lamboy said. The city will also use the funds to hire an area planner and a voting planner, who will lead the rewriting of the city's zoning ordinance, according to Lamboy.
"We have to create the zoning and permitting to foster sustainable growth in the areas around the new stations," Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said in an Oct. 21 press release.
Part of the funding will also go toward already existing planning efforts, such as a 60-person comprehensive planning effort that began last fall, according to Lamboy. The comprehensive planning committee worked on goal statements last fall to aid in the city's development and now is working on draft policies and action statements, she told the Daily.
"Part of what was so great about this application is that it supports initiatives that we already had underway, like the comprehensive planning effort," Lamboy said. "The HUD grant is actually supporting us in what we already started."
Lamboy said Somerville and HUD representatives plan to meet soon to determine which components the grant will fund out of the originally requested $3 million proposal.
"We have to go through a reconciliation process to find out what pieces of our application they funded and how we deal with the differences in the money," she said.
This process will involve modifying the planning budget, Lamboy said. "We have to look at the deliverables available to the budget and what pieces of the budget they want to keep in and modify," she said. "It's sort of a collaborative process."
The money provides a valuable resource for proactive city planning, according to Ellin Reisner, the president of Somerville Transportation Equality Partnership.
"It's to put together some ideas in advance of the Green Line coming, not to wait until after it is built," Reisner told the Daily. "You want to help plan for the changes."
"It will give the city some resources to do that, which they need, because the city doesn't have a lot of money to do this kind of work," she said.
Fichter echoed Reisner's sentiments, emphasizing the economic incentives to be gained from early planning.
"It's always great when the city can work in partnership and can do proactive planning so that the benefits that come from the new big transportation investment can be most realized at the local level," Fichter said.
Reisner said that city planning will also focus on job creation in the community. "Right now, most people in Somerville cannot work here. There's just not enough jobs," she said.
Lamboy said the grant demonstrates federal support for Somerville's efforts.
"It's just great to have added recognition from the federal level that we're going in the right direction, and they're now willing to commit their own money to help us finish what we've already started," Lamboy said.
