Waterfront Square is a vibrant, highly accessible new urban neighborhood on a critical transit line that has become a memorable destination for residents and visitors.
Revere Beach opened as the first public beach in the United States in 1895 and served as a major destination through the 1970s. While over the next two decades commercial investment decreased, a new master planning effort in 2006 revitalized this waterfront community, transforming 11 acres of surface parking into a transit-oriented, mixed-use development on oceanfront land. Waterfront Square creates an accessible and sustainable community, providing a series of connectivity links between the neighboring community, the transit station, the public plaza, and the beach. As of 2020, the project encompasses four multi-family residential developments, a 1,500-space parking garage, an intermodal transit station, a pedestrian plaza and bridge, a public bathhouse, two restaurants, new retail spaces, and innovative pop-ups for summer months. The pedestrian plaza and footbridge are the civic heart of the development, connecting the transit station to the beach and provide outdoor amenity space to the adjacent residential, restaurant, and hotel developments.
Through the 1970s - 1990s, coastal flooding had destroyed a significant amount of property along the beachfront. It prompted the State and City to take the land to allow for more appropriate development and the creation of parkland with improved flood management systems. As part of the master plan and design, multiple strategies were developed to address sea-level rise and climate change. These include elevating the ground floor above the flood plain, creating a double sidewalk to raise the public realm above the street, and using the elevated plaza as a second pedestrian street – which is a full story above the ground plane.
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