The current plan for Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square is still in the design stage, but Mayor Martin Walsh said there could be a groundbreaking by next summer on the mammoth road reconstruction project.
The Rutherford Avenue/Sullivan Square plan would reconfigure the roadway, provide new green space, institute new bike lanes, retain the underpass at Sullivan, provide new surface building lots and completely reconfigure the roadway network – and that’s just part of the plan.
Mayor Walsh – in a meeting with the business community on Monday at The Anchor in the Navy Yard – said he hopes the project can get underway next summer.
“Unofficially at the moment, but we hope by July we’ll break ground on Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square,” he said.
The project is still in the design stage, and has significant funding set aside from Encore Boston Harbor, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) and the federal government. At this point, the project has gone through numerous public vetting processes and meetings – many of which were contentious. But the current plan is at 25 percent design, and the mayor said they would be advancing that soon.
“We’re filing with the state the 25 percent design this month,” he said. “They will take four or five months to conduct a thoughtful review and it will go to 100 percent design.”
The Rutherford Avenue/Sullivan Square redesign has been discussed for 25 years or more in the community, but the process was re-started and ignited by the numerous development projects on the edges of the Town – including Encore.