Springfield Union Station Wins National Grand Prize For Brownfield Redevelopment Excellence
Photo courtesy of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority
Springfield Union Station has won the prestigious Phoenix Award grand prize for the best brownfields redevelopment project in the nation. Announced during the December National Brownfields Training Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Union Station project also won the Region 1 Phoenix Award. Both awards recognize exemplary brownfield redevelopment and revitalization.
These awards highlight the critical environmental cleanup phase at Springfield Union Station, as well as the demolition and removal of a massive baggage warehouse and the remediation of the former site of the Hotel Charles. It also celebrates the redevelopment of a long vacant historic train station into a state of the art intermodal transit center.
Built in 1926, the original Union Station was boarded-up for 44 years before taken over by the Springfield Redevelopment Authority (SRA) in 1989. After many fits and starts, the $94.1 million redevelopment project was funded by numerous federal, state, and local sources. This included grants from the EPA Brownfield Assessment and Cleanup program, MassDevelopment, Federal Transit Administration, State Transportation Bond Funds, a state parking grant, and more. Tighe & Bond provided extensive hazardous building material evaluations, abatement monitoring, building demolition design, and the assessment and remediation of widespread areas of subsurface contamination.
After almost 10 years, Union Station has been transformed and re-purposed into a LEED certified building that opened last June, and is the new headquarters for Peter Pan Bus Lines. It also has spurred a new adjacent $15 million 265-unit housing redevelopment. Besides the Phoenix Award, the project has already won other statewide awards for historic preservation including the Preservation Massachusetts “Paul & Nikki Tsongas Best Then & Now” award for 2017.
For more information on this project, see the Phoenix Awards entry form and MassLive news.
The Phoenix Awards
The Phoenix Awards are part of a nonprofit organization, The Phoenix Awards Institute, Inc. The purpose is to recognize outstanding achievement and innovation relating to environmental and community issues. Winning projects offer a fresh take on solving significant problems, show innovation and demonstrate masterful community impact. In addition to honoring excellence, the goal of the awards program is to offer specific project examples, innovative techniques and inspiration as models for others to use in their communities.
The Phoenix Awards were created in 1997 to recognize individuals and groups who are working together to solve the critical environmental problem of transforming old, contaminated areas into productive new uses.