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Residents put final touches on plans for neighborhoods

Date: 12/20/2011

Dec. 21, 2011

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

SPRINGFIELD — About 50 people gathered at the J.C. Williams Center on Florence Street on Dec. 14 to finalize their vision of a new post-tornado neighborhood with the intention that their ideas will be incorporated into the master rebuilding plan for the city.

Residents of the Maple High Six Corners, Old Hill, Upper Hill and Forest Park neighborhoods reviewed suggestions and remarks made at earlier meetings. The other two district meetings – for neighborhoods that included Sixteen Aces, East Forest Park and the South End – were conducted Dec. 13 and 15.

Geraldine McCafferty, the director of the city’s Office of Housing, acknowledged to the residents, “It’s hard to look to the future when stuck in the rebuilding mode.”

She said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had originally tracked 600 properties damaged by the tornado, but revisions made by Springfield officials and residents now puts that number closer to 900 properties.

She added, “We’re making very significant progress [with rebuilding].”

Bob Berkebile, a planner working with Concordia, the consultants drafting the city-wide plan, explained that the more specific the residents are in advocating for specific measures to be taken in their neighborhoods, the greater attention those features would have in the final plan.

He said the goals of the three districts were quite different. He said the concerns of the more residential District Three of Sixteen Acres and East Forest Park centered on issues such as reforesting the communities and developing greater access to Lake Massasoit.

Berkebile said the diversity and history of the Maple High Six Corners, Old Hill, Upper Hill and Forest Park neighborhoods — District Two — impressed him. The concerns in these neighborhoods centered around job creation, developing housing on both private and city-owned properties, preserving historic properties, re-configuring key intersections, strengthening ties between the neighborhoods and the city’s colleges and developing a supermarket at the intersection of State and Walnut streets, among others.

Berkebile explained the final plan will be designed to “incent people to raise money” to fund elements of the plan.

The citywide meeting to discuss the plan will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 5 at St. Anthony’s Social Center, 375 Island Pond Road.

People wishing to add further comment on the plan can do so at www.rebuildspringfield.com.



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