Another $150k for the Powder Magazine!

The Yellow Bird Chase performed, today, beside the 1818 Powder Magazine. It got a new roof in 2014.

Thanks to the efforts of State Rep. Livingstone and Senator Petruccelli, the House and Senate just restored $150k to the State budget to complete the stabilization of the Powder Magazine.* According of DCR’s Historic Curatorship Project Manager Peter Seweryn, the State will soon be soliciting bids to replace the structure’s window and doors. Ex. Director of the Cambridge Historical Commission Charles Sullivan noted, “The powder magazine is well-known as the oldest and one of the most significant structures in the Charles River Basin National Register District. The timely and much-appreciated appropriation of $150,000 will consolidate restoration gains already made, and allow the reuse project to proceed to the next stage.”

The Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association (CNA) has been working with the MA Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) for four and a half years to revitalize Magazine Beach Park—at 15 acres, Cambridge’s second largest park. Since 2011, the City of Cambridge has committed Community Preservation Act Funds three times to study and stabilize the 1818 granite-block structure, and, most recently, to complete the landscape plan for the park. There will be a public meeting about the landscape plan in September and DCR will begin looking for a lessee for the magazine then as well. PROGRESS!

*The House and Senate overrode $100 million of Governor Baker’s $162 million proposed cuts.