By Dan Murphy
The Esplanade Association’s annual meeting was held virtually on Tuesday, April 8, and included an update on the much-anticipated Charlesbank Landing, among other projects now in the works.
Jen Mergel, the group’s executive director, she said the Charlesbank Landing project, which has been nearly a quarter of the century in the making, will reclaim a two-acre site in and around the former Lee Pool complex, which sits between the Longfellow Bridge and Museum of Science and adjacent to the Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox Fields.
Besides overseeing fundraising for the more than $20 million project, EA will handle operations of Charlesbank Landing, which is set to open in ’26, over its first few decades.
The project’s design, created by Maryann Thompson Architects, includes an 8,800 square-foot, two-story universally accessible building with a staffed Welcome Desk, offering information about the park and its programs in multiple languages; multiple year-round public restrooms; a café, offering both indoor and outdoor seating; a roof deck, with views of the Charles River; free public Wi-Fi; an outdoor nature play area and new green space; and multi-purpose sports courts, among other features.
As construction gets underway in June, EA will temporarily move its operations to the area of the park near the Dartmouth Street entrance, said Mergel, and the project is expected to wrap around next June.
Meanwhile, the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), in collaboration with EA, also intends to open the Gronk Playground, located next to Charlesbank Landing, in June.
Rob Gronkowski’s Gronk Nation Youth Foundation donated over $1.8 million to fund a full renovation of Charlesbank Playground, which, with support from the Commonwealth, will be renamed in honor of the former New England Patriots tight end upon its reopening.
Coming in May, EA will also undertake a complete restoration of Silvia Lopez Chavez’s ‘Patterned Behavior’ mural, which adorns a concrete underpass along the Esplanade, said Mergel.