HUDSON — Director of Planning and Community Development Kristina Johnson announced some exciting developments for the Assabet River Rail Trail at the Feb. 21 meeting of the Economic Development Commission, which is a group of like-minded Hudson residents who meet quarterly to discuss the future development of the town.
“We are trying to carry on the legacy of Michelle Ciccolo and all of her work,” said Johnson.
Work is underway to get the next segment of the Assabet River Rail Trail, a project Ciccolo spearheaded when she was the Assistant Administrator for Hudson, completed by Eversource and connected all the way to Berlin.
“That’s pretty tremendous,” she said.
The town received a $119,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation to do a preliminary design study to determine environmental constraints and any structural issues. The process being used is the federal transportation process through the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), which approves all federal transportation funds.
Johnson said they applied for “just under a million dollars” in design funds from a new design pilot program from the MPO.
In addition, the Community Preservation Committee provided $300,000 and is very invested in the project, Johnson said. The organization is plugging away at a list of things that need to be done to complete the project, she said.
Any design funding will go through the Department of Transportation, she said, and the town is working with the consulting firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, which has been involved in work on the Massachusetts Central trail network.
“They are going above and beyond their scope of work,” Johnson said. “The amount of time they’re spending with us is awesome.”
She called the rail trail a “really important legacy” for Hudson as the Assabet Rail Trail was the beginning of the town’s renaissance economically. The goal now, she said, was to move through the check list of how to make the new rail trail segment happen.
