State Awards Town $58K To Reimagine Danvers Square

DANVERS, MA — A state grant will go toward helping the town reimagine Danvers Square in a way that opens it for more recreation, dining and socially distanced gathering placed amid the coronavirus health crisis, which could become permanent features following the pandemic.

The $58,000 grant is part of the state's Shared Winter Streets & Spaces Program Funding Awards announced this week.

The grant will go toward what the town hopes will be a permanent structure in the town center.

The Shared Winter Streets & Spaces program, which was launched on Nov. 10, provides technical and funding assistance to help Massachusetts cities and towns conceive, design and implement tactical changes to curbs, streets, and parking areas in support of public health, safe mobility, and renewed commerce, with a special focus on the particular challenges of winter.

Grants as small as $5,000 and as large as $500,000 for municipalities to quickly launch changes for safer walking, biking, public transit, recreation, commerce, and civic activities. These improvements can be intentionally temporary or can be pilots of potentially permanent changes.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Peabody. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)