Woburn To Receive $269K For Hurld Park Project

WOBURN, MA — Ongoing discussions around the future of Woburn’s Hurld Park site between Sheridan Street and Bedford Road received a new batch of state funding on Tuesday in the form of a roughly $269,000 grant.

The announcement was part of a larger rollout of $32.8 million in Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program grants aimed at helping communities identify and mitigate local impacts of climate change.

Woburn’s grant was termed “Hurld Park - Heat Resilient Park” in an announcement on Tuesday from Gov. Charlie Baker.

Woburn Mayor Scott Galvin and Councilor Jeff Dillon later shared a joint statement with the Mystic River Watershed Association, saying the funding will further the park project and its related efforts to manage urban flooding and heat.

“This funding will allow us to meaningfully engage residents in co-designing a range of open space and recreational park amenities for people to enjoy,” Galvin and Dillon said.

Alongside Hurld Park, the Hurld site also includes the former Hurld Elementary School, which closed in 2018 with the opening of the new Hurld-Wyman Elementary School.

The city has eyed next steps for the area in years since, sharing a concept plan last May. That plan showed a mix of active recreation space, restored wetlands and new constructed wetlands, among other things.

Congresswoman Katherine Clark later secured $262,000 in federal money to pay for engineering designs for an eventual 11-acre park at the Hurld site.

She visited Woburn in March to discuss the funding. During that visit, she highlighted benefits of eventual Hurld Park work including stormwater pollution mitigation and new Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible paths.

“We look here and we see an old school, but I look forward to in a few short years, hopefully, that I can invite you back here and we’ll look at this together and say thank you again, Congresswoman,” Dillon said to Clark at the time.

Recent Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grants set records for the program, which was launched in 2017, distributing $32.8 million across the state through this latest round of funding.
The Mystic River Watershed Association celebrated $8.6 million in grants to its participating communities, including money for similar nearby wetland and stormwater work in Stoneham and Reading.

See a full list of grant recipients here.