ARPA at Work: Improving City Parks

ARPA funds were used to construct the basketball court at Mulcahy Field.

When the COVID-19 pandemic closed us off to so much of the world, parks were a place we could feel some sense of normalcy and engage with our community. They were a lifeline back to the world we had known. That’s one of the reasons it felt so important to invest back into the municipality’s parks with the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Funds we received.

In this edition of ARPA at Work, my administration’s campaign highlighting how the municipality spent its ARPA dollars, I’ll be discussing the more than $14 million we allocated for Park Capital Improvements in Worcester.

We focused those funds on improving the parks and open spaces that serve low-income populations without access to private open spaces or resources, targeting spaces within Qualified Census Tracts.

Grant Square Park

The first project to receive funding from Park Capital Improvement dollars was Grant Square Park, with approximately $1.2 million going to support improvements to the 1.7-acre park located in the Green Hill Neighborhood.

The funding was used to enhance the improvements that started in 2015 with the installation of a state-of-the-art playground, brand new basketball court, and community garden beds.

The latest round of improvements included the installation of new lights on the basketball courts, the creation and lighting of accessible walkways, expanding the community gardens, and landscaping.

Tacoma Street Playground

Work is underway on improvements to Tacoma Street Playground.

A large chunk of the ARPA dollars is going to completely makeover the Tacoma Street Playground. The park is currently a construction zone as exciting changes are underway, but in fall 2025 it is set to reopen with a new synthetic turf field for sports from soccer to lacrosse to field hockey, a spray park, a playground, a parking lot, and a dog park. More than $8 million in ARPA funding is going toward the reconstruction.

Mulcahy Field

Residents and guests can already see changes at Mulcahy Field, where we celebrated the completion of two renovation projects, that were partially funded by ARPA, with a ribbon-cutting on Aug. 21 last year.

The renovations included transforming a little league field into a 50/70 baseball field (a field with a pitching distance of 50 feet and base paths that are 70 feet apart) with new dugouts, a backstop, a batting cage, sports lighting, and irrigation. ARPA dollars were focused on installing a new basketball court, with accessible and lit walkways installed to both the field and the court, and improvements to the playground.

Vernon Hill Park

We are currently working on completing renovations to four support buildings for our youth leagues at Vernon Hill Park with $500,000 of ARPA funding. The 15-acre park located atop Vernon Hill includes a playground, two baseball fields, two softball fields, a basketball court, a swimming pool, and a dog park.

The work on the support buildings, which we anticipate will be completed by June 2025, includes accessibility upgrades, interior/exterior upgrades, restroom upgrades, security infrastructure, painting, and door replacements.

We are also using Parks Capital Improvement funds to maintain our waterways, putting $2 million to construct a sediment basin for water coming into Salisbury Pond from the north and sediment separation structures off Park Avenue.

It is my administration’s hope that updates like these to our open spaces and parks that increase recreational opportunities and make them more user-friendly will help encourage more and more people to use them and engage with the community. Using the parks on a regular basis will help residents improve both their mental and physical health.

We are working to expand our programming in the parks as well, by simplifying the municipality’s Special Events Permitting Process and launching a lottery to select parks concession vendors for 28 parks and beaches across Worcester in 2025. We also activated Rockland Trust Plaza by selecting F.A.M. Jam! Event Group, through a Request for Interest process, to host at least 50 events in the parcel adjacent to Polar Park. Keep an eye out for the next episodes of our Buzz Video series to learn about the changes to the permitting process and the plaza activation.