The city holds its public meeting on the downtown Broadway reconstruction tonight, Wednesday, September 23, at 6 p.m. at the Chelsea Senior Center, 10 Riley Way. It is the meeting residents were told to come to if they want a say in what happens to the main street, and it arrives nine days after the City Council took the first formal step toward altering the street layouts.
City staff said on September 14 that the session would cover the proposed changes, the process and where the project stands. Asked directly at that meeting to confirm the details, a city official answered: “The public meeting is scheduled for September 23rd at 6 PM at the Chelsea Senior Center.”
What the project is
The work is a reconstruction of downtown Broadway, run in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and paid for through the Transportation Improvement Program. City Manager Fidel Maltez’s letter to the council describes it as “more than $14 million in federal investment in Chelsea’s roadway infrastructure, streetscape, and pedestrian and vehicular safety improvements along Broadway and the surrounding downtown street network.”
The engineering plan on file covers Broadway from Williams Street to City Hall Avenue. The layout changes reach further than Broadway itself: the council’s order names portions of Broadway, Bellingham Street, Marlborough Street, 6th Street, Washington Avenue and Chestnut Street.
Maltez’s letter states the schedule as construction beginning “at the beginning of 2027, pending procurement and contracting overseen by MassDOT.” At the September 14 meeting the council was told MassDOT would put the work out to bid toward the end of this year, and that the final phase runs through calendar 2027 and 2028.
The layout vote, and what it did not do
On September 14 the council voted 7 to 0 to declare the city’s intention to alter the layouts and to send the plan to the Planning Board for review under G.L. c. 41, section 81I. Four parcels are identified in the order, numbered 31-C, 36-C, 38-C and E-64 on the right of way plans.
The word “taking” appears in the paperwork, and it alarmed people. Maltez told the council the city is “not taking anyone’s property,” and that the process is a matter of “accepting what is already out there,” meaning the recorded layout is being squared with the ground as it has actually been used for decades. That is the city’s characterisation. The parcels are listed in the plan and any property owner who believes otherwise has a direct interest in tonight’s meeting.
The vote was procedural rather than final. After the Planning Board responds, the matter returns to the council for a public meeting and a final vote on the layout alterations. Our account of the September 14 vote is here.
Why this meeting matters more than most
Broadway is the street Chelsea closed four times in five weeks for World Cup screenings, the street the city wants lined with new housing, and the corridor the comprehensive master plan treats as a commercial spine. A reconstruction sets the curb lines, the crossings, the bus stops and the signal timing for a generation. Once MassDOT bids the work, the design is effectively fixed.
Residents who use Bellingham Square have a particular reason to show up. A man fell on the loose brick sidewalk outside the Dunkin’ there last week, and whether the square’s sidewalks sit inside this project’s scope is a question the public record does not answer. We wrote about the fall here. Tonight is the room where that question can be put to the people running the project.
If you go
Wednesday, September 23, 6 p.m., Chelsea Senior Center, 10 Riley Way. The city’s notices for community meetings of this kind have not specified whether interpretation is provided or whether the session is streamed, and no remote participation line appears in the material we have seen.
If you attend and the project team gives figures, dates or design details that are not in the council packet, send them to [email protected] and we will publish them.