Hot off the DRAFT-Board! Offshoots is excited to announce we will be acting as horticultural and phytoremediation consultants for the design and construction of The City of Malden’s first public riverfront park! The project – led by Landing Studio and Horsley Witten Group, and its process – led by residents of color, aims to be a model for future equitable and resilient waterfront development in Malden. The project received funding through the award of the Leventhal City prize granted by MIT’s Leventhal center for Advanced Urbanism, which supports innovative design and planning approaches for equitable resilience.

The 5-acre project site is the home of Malden’s Department of Public Works (DPW) – second responders in Malden’s Disaster Recovery System – and is owned by Malden Redevelopment Authority. As a climate resilient greenway park, the park will provide quality access to river for the public, prevent coastal flooding, and combat other inland climate impacts.

Offshoots will be designing phytoremediation buffers comprised of native plantings to not only clean up existing contamination on the site, but to also proactively buffer potential future air and stormwater pollution and provide a native seed bank to revegetate the river system currently dominated by invasive species.

📷 Image Credit: Landing Studio