TEA Prepares for Charles Eliot Memorial Plaza Rehab

-By Dan Murphy

The Charles Eliot Plaza on the Esplanade. (Courtesy of The Esplanade Association)

After receiving a matching grant from the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s partnership program, The Esplanade Association (TEA) is preparing to re-landscape and revitalize the Charles Eliot Memorial Plaza on the Charles River Esplanade.

The plaza, located between Community Boating and Commissioners’ Landing, currently has “severely compacted soil and a shoreline strangled by invasive plants,” according to TEA’s March newsletter. TEA Executive Director Sylvia Salas said the approximately $300,000 project would consist of three phases – assessment and evaluation, design and implementation. The expected completion date of the project is late summer or early fall of 2012.

“The Eliot Plaza contains many of the elements that make the Esplanade’s landscape so unique-a river border, a monument, a wooded area and Founder’s Landing and Overlook, “ Salas wrote in an e-mail to the Times. “The Esplanade Association is working to create a welcoming gathering space with the addition of a richer landscape palette, including trees, shrubs, turf and more formal planting beds.”

Salas also stated that the project would complement the $2.8 million rehabilitation of the Community Boating docks, which is slated for completion this spring.

“If would be a shame, with all that work being done, to have this part of the park in disrepair,” Salas said

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