This year promises to be critical for the harbor in Salem, Mass., with construction of an offshore wind turbine marshalling yard beginning there late in the summer, and the beginning of measures to protect and enhance the neighborhood next to the site unfolding prior to that.
Acting Mayor Robert "Bob" McCarthy, who also serves the area as a city councilor, told the Salem News in February that a series of meetings will be held on the project in the coming months for several necessary construction permits, including sessions before Salem's Planning Board and Conservation Commission, as well as other community assemblies.
"We all learned our lessons from the development of [Salem's] power plant," he explained. "With the decommissioning and deconstruction of the old plant, the removal of the coal pile, the oil tanks, the construction of the new plant — at the height of it all, there were 1,000 workers a day. That was construction to a super scale.
"The [wind turbine-related] construction on this site isn't going to be to that scale," McCarthy continued. "A lot of it is going to be water related, with regard to the pier and everything around the pier."
The Salem Harbor Wind Terminal is a public-private partnership between the city of Salem, and Jacksonville, Fla.-based Crowley, a logistics, marine and energy solutions company serving commercial and government customers. AVANGRID, an energy services company from Orange, Conn., will be the port's anchor tenant through its Commonwealth Wind and Park City Wind projects.
The terminal will be an operations center for turbine pre-assembly, transportation, staging activities, and storage of assembly components. Crowley Wind Services, the company's business unit dedicated to helping develop clean wind energy resources, will operate the terminal.
Crowley Commits to Improving Nearby Neighborhoods
Even though Crowley's primary focus will be facing the water, there also is a commitment to the other side: The approximately 42-acre property's border with Derby Street, Blaney Wharf and the rest of the city.
"It really is a focus of ours, with respect to what's happening on the water and as a terminal," said John Berry, director of terminal operations for Crowley Wind. "One of the things that I was tasked with, with respect to the project, is to become a part of the community — and that's going to be our community interface, those buffer zones.
"We're paying a lot of attention and investing real dollars to improving those spaces as much as possible," he added. "There will be no reduction in any of the greenspaces. The intent would be to improve on what's in place now."
Concern over the wind terminal has dominated conversations around the project, after neighbors of the Salem Harbor Footprint power station sounded alarms for years about vibrations cracking home foundations, deafening facility and equipment tests, and other nuisances created by the construction of the billion-dollar natural gas-burning plant.
McCarthy reiterated to the Salem News that there is no large-scale building planned for the upcoming wind terminal project, adding, "Most of the space, once it's configured and laid out appropriately for everything they need on site, is going to be [an] open lay-down area that's going to have racks and storage for components that will come in via water and leave via water, once the [intended offshore wind turbine] site is ready to accept them."
The Salem City Council voted recently to approve a zoning change for the corner of the property directly abutting Blaney and Derby streets. The site, to be included in the marshalling yard and used for storing blades stacked on shelves three high, is zoned residential two-family instead of the broader industrial zoning tagged across the rest of the property.
Throughout that discussion, city councilors and planning board members focused intensely on the shaded walking area along Derby Street, demanding the space be preserved if not expanded.
"The intent would be to improve those spaces, to make them more publicly accessible," Berry explained. "My primary focus is to ensure we're involved with the community. That's a Crowley corporate goal and incentive — to really become part of the community. We want to be good neighbors in Salem, and we understand we need the support of [our] neighbors."
Those commitments will become conditions for approval of the local construction permits needed for the project, McCarthy noted.
"They're talking about a walkway along the Blaney Street side," he told the Salem News. "It's all going to come up during the permitting process, but [Crowley has] committed. In the meetings I've had with them — as a city councilor, mayor, and member of the Port Authority — that's what they've committed to."
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