Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee

Mission

To develop a constituency to protect and expand open space and improve Chelsea’s parks and environment. The challenge is to maximize Chelsea’s historic, environmental, recreational, and scenic resources.

Overview

“Chelsea Green Space,” the Collaborative’s oldest community coalition, has dramatically changed how Chelsea thinks about its environment. Founded in 1994 to protect and expand Chelsea’s parks, Green Space has mobilized thousands of people to create a vision for the re-development of the Chelsea waterfront, conduct a tree-count necessary to make Chelsea a “Tree City,” start the Park Rangers program for Chelsea parks, raise more than $500,000 for restoration of Chelsea waterways for environmental and recreational purposes, organize numerous environmental justice campaigns to eliminate health hazards and nuisances from Chelsea’s neighborhoods, win many concessions from developers for waterfront walkways, canoe launches, parks, and affordable housing, sponsor the teen-aged “Environmental Crew,” five teens who work on environmental projects, sponsor numerous “canoeing events” and other community celebrations to introduce Chelsea youth to the wonders of their environment, provide community input to state and City regulatory activities and much more.

Projects

Chelsea Green Space’s projects for this year include grassroots organizing campaigns against major polluters in the waterfront area, opening the new Mill Creek recreational/educational walkway and continuing additional development on Mill Creek, completing the walkway and boat launch at the Island End River at Admiral’s Hill, negotiating with waterfront businesses for open space and walkways along Chelsea Creek, the Environmental Crew’s development of a movie/function room facility on Broadway, organizing for improvements in public transportation through the Chelsea chapter of the T-Riders Union (TRU), and joint work with the Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH) and the Urban Ecology Institute on the third annual River Revels celebrating the Chelsea Creek as well as other components of the group’s comprehensive plans for re-development on both the Chelsea and East Boston sides of the Creek.