Brownfields
Success Story
EPA Grant Recipient:
City of Lawrence (project managed by
Groundwork Lawrence)
Grant Types:
Assessment
Current Uses:
Public park, affordable housing, and
commercial
Former Uses:
Metals foundry, machine shop, coal
distribution facility, window manufacturing
facility
Ferrous Site
Lawrence, Mass.
The Ferrous Site, home to a new park and future housing and commercial
development, is an example of how a former mill city can leverage EPA
funding to bring a defunct industrial site back to life. Through the efforts
of EPA's Brownfields program, the City of Lawrence and community
organizations, the Ferrous Site has become central to the new Lawrence
Gateway neighborhood, with its affordable housing, parks, restaurants,
and stores.
Lawrence, created as a planned industrial community in 1848, has had
2.73 Brownfield sites over the years. This city, renowned for textile and
paper production, saw factories shut down, resulting in jobs leaving town
with the demise of the New England manufacturing industry. Historically,
Lawrence attracted immigrants from all over the world seeking jobs in the
city's massive mills. The city's industrial roots were powered by a network
of canals moving water through raceways under the mills and powering
the mill machines through a system of belts and wheels.
As technology advanced, turbines under the mills generated energy to
support production. By the 1950s, industrial production was migrating to
other regions of the US with less expensive production costs. An increase
in textiles being imported in the 1970s led to a rapid closing of many
factories and the layoff of many thousands of workers. Many factories
remained vacant for over four decades..
Priming the Property for Redevelopment
$3.6 Million in US EPA Brownfields Funding Helped Lawrence Meet
Redevelopment Goals
The Reviviendo Gateway Initiative was created by an all-out coordinated
effort of public agencies, businesses and community groups all working to
improve the economy, environment and quality of life in Lawrence. The
Gateway Initiative has been funded by private and public sources including
over $3.6 million in EPA Brownfields funds awarded to the city for a number
of sites in that area since 1996. The project focused on improving
transportation and infrastructure, cleaning up four mill complexes,
transforming landfills, and creating affordable housing and parks. Over the
past 20 years, two community development corporations - Lawrence
CommunityWorks and Groundwork Lawrence - have played important roles
in the transformation of the Gateway District. Groundwork Lawrence,
established through a partnership between the EPA and the National Park
Service, has played a leading role in Brownfield remediation and park
SERA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
"Opportunity Zones: helping to bring
investment to distressed communities"
Figure 1 - Courtesy of the City of Lawrence, Mass.
Figure 2 - Courtesy of the City of Lawrence, Mass.

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Figure 3 - Courtesy of the City of Lawrence, Mass.
development. Lawrence CommunityWorks has played an important role by creating
affordable housing and commercial development. The two organizations are
collaborating on the Ferrous Site - one of the last redeveloped sites in the Gateway
District. The 7.5-acre site, located at the confluence of the North Canal and the Spicket
and Merrimack rivers, for over 100 years hosted a foundry where machines and parts
were forged to support the city's textile and paper mills. When the foundry closed in
the 1990s, it left behind multiple buildings and a large sprawling mound of spent burnt
orange sand castings. An investment of about $164,000 in the city's EPA Brownfields
funding paid for the assessment of the Ferrous Site, leading to its cleanup and
redevelopment and serving as a catalyst to the overall revitalization of the Lawrence
Gateway.
Today
The Ferrous Site redevelopment marks a significant milestone for the Reviviendo
Gateway Initiative. Over the past decades, a vision of transformation for this area of
the city has become reality - and with it, the creation of an entire new neighborhood.
In 2014, Groundwork Lawrence acquired three acres of the Ferrous Site to establish
the Ellen Swallow Richards Park, a park that prioritizes restoring natural ecology and
creating green infrastructure to support runoff from the adjacent foundry site. Funding
for the project came from a $2.75 million grant from the Massachusetts Gateway City
Parks Program. One of the goals behind developing the park is to encourage
redevelopment of the adjacent foundry. To realize this goal, the park included a large
swale and rain garden at the top of the bank along the Merrimack River and sand
castings were consolidated into a landform with a sloping meadow and steep grassy
side slopes. A pavilion now sits in the park near the end of the North Canal where the
water spills 20 feet into the Spicket River. Lawrence CommunityWorks, which
redeveloped several mill buildings west of the Ferrous Site creating 133 units of
affordable family housing, last year bought the remaining 4.5 acres of the Ferrous Site
for the Island Parkside Housing project. The goals of the project are to build 80 units of
affordable family housing, provide more parking to support adjacent commercial
properties, and expand the Ellen Swallow Richards Park by setting aside over two acres
of open space. Island Parkside will be funded by the state, the federal government and
Lawrence CommunityWorks. The entire project is scheduled to be done by the summer
of 2023.
Figure 4 - Courtesy of the City of Lawrence, Mass.
"The Ferrous site is the
culmination of work that
represents the best in
Lawrence; housing
development and park
green-space that will
improve the quality of life of
all Lawrence residents. I
want to thank the EPA for
their commitment to making
Lawrence better as well as
our state and federal
delegation and community
partners who have helped to
transform a once dilapidated
site to a flourishing
community treasure/'
Dan Rivera, Mayor
City of Lawrence, Mass.
For more information:
Visit the EPA Brownfields website at
www.epa.gov/brownfields or contact
Christine Lombard at 617 918 1305 or
Lombard.chris@epa.gov.
EPA 560-F-20-012
April 2020

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