The rebuild of downtown Broadway has been coming for so long that its plan sheets carry a 2021 date and a 2023 presentation cover. Tonight it takes its first legally binding step. The City Council is asked to vote its intention to alter the layouts of Broadway, Bellingham Street, Marlborough Street, Sixth Street, Washington Avenue and Chestnut Street, which is the procedure a city uses before it takes private land for a public way. Four parcels are named. The state expects to put the job out to bid in December and have contractors on the street in spring 2027. Then Broadway is a construction zone for 18 to 24 months.
What is being built
The project is MassDOT number 609532, “Targeted Safety Improvements and Related Work on Broadway, from Williams Street to City Hall Avenue,” a little over half a mile of the city’s main street from City Hall to the district court. The presentation attached to the packet lists the scope: drainage, new sidewalks, repaving, bus stop improvements, new traffic signals, a permanent bus and bike lane, pedestrian safety work, and landscaping of Bellingham Square and the streetscape generally. A new signal goes in at Broadway and Congress Avenue at Third Street. The bus and bike lane that has run as a pilot since 2023 becomes permanent.
The plan also settles a fight the council had in June. The MBTA wanted a third bus berth at the Washington Avenue stop by Broadway, where its engineers said a single berth fails 30 percent of the time in the morning peak and 20 percent in the evening, meaning a bus pulls up with nowhere to stop and blocks the travel lane. Fitting the third berth means the Washington Avenue lane becomes bus and bike only, and drivers lose the right turn onto Fifth Street; they are directed to Chestnut or Cherry instead. The council postponed that item once in June before letting it through. The Traffic and Parking Commission approved the full construction plans on September 2 and gave Housing and Community Development and the Department of Public Works authority to make minor changes in the field.
What it costs, and who pays
City Manager Fidel Maltez’s letter describes the project as “more than $14 million in federal investment.” MassDOT’s project record is more specific. It lists a total project cost of $17,594,297.40, with $17,329,612.70 as the federal participating construction cost. The 2027 Transportation Improvement Program has $10,804,213 programmed for it under the Highway Safety Improvement Program, split $9,723,791.70 federal and $1,080,421.30 state. The design reached 100 percent in August; MassDOT logged “100% Package Comments to DE” on August 3. When the regional planning organization first approved the project in 2019, its budget was $5.75 million. It has roughly tripled since.
The city’s own share is not spelled out in the packet. The presentation lists funding as “MassDOT and Chelsea City Council,” and the city has been moving money toward Broadway for years; in April the council moved $90,000 of unspent capital money from 2020 projects into the roadway safety improvement account.
The land
Tonight’s order is a vote of intention, not a taking. Under state law a city that wants to change the layout of a public way sends the plan to its Planning Board, which gets 45 days to comment, and then holds a public meeting and votes the alteration itself. The plan in question is the “Preliminary Right of Way Plans” prepared by Green International Affiliates and HNTB, dated October 29, 2021 and revised through August 11, 2026. It identifies four pieces of abutting land, Parcels 31-C, 36-C, 38-C and E-64, that need to come inside the new street lines.
The packet does not say whose land those are. The right-of-way sheets included with the order are reproduced at a scale where parcel labels and owner names cannot be read, and the letter does not name the owners or estimate what the city will pay them. Anyone who owns frontage between City Hall and Williams Street, and particularly around Bellingham Square, should ask.
What two years of construction means
Downtown Broadway is where Chelsea’s buses converge. Routes 111, 112, 114, 116 and 117 all use the Washington Avenue and Broadway stops that the project rebuilds. It is also the commercial spine of Bellingham Square, which the state’s own project write-up says has seen no significant investment since the 1970s. Eighteen to 24 months of drainage, sidewalk and paving work through that corridor is a long time for a shop on a thin margin. The presentation and the letter say nothing about business support, detours, or how the bus stops will operate during construction. Those are the questions for tonight and for the Planning Board’s 45-day window.
The council meets at 7 p.m. at City Hall. If the Planning Board answers within its window, the final layout vote could come back to the council in November.