The Lid Park
A structural deck park, privately funded, free to the neighborhood — a small civic lid on top of the remediated site.
About this proposal
The Lid Park is the version of Gold Star Green that most closely follows the post-remediation precedents other cities have already tested. After the city finishes the excavation, a structural deck is built over the site. Commercial uses below the deck — parking, storage, or food service — service the construction financing and fund operations. Above the deck lives a free public park, open to the neighborhood on the same terms as any other Cambridge park. No admission. No fence. No programming fee.
The precedent set is narrow and deliberate. Little Island in Manhattan (2021) was built almost entirely on private capital over a Hudson River Park Trust operating license. Klyde Warren Park in Dallas (2012) capped a recessed highway with a deck lid run by a local conservancy. Closer to home, the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston (2008) demonstrated how a long, narrow urban lid can carry real civic programming on top of infrastructure underneath. None of those parks replaced public money. They layered private structure on top of public work that was already done.
The ask here is modest, in civic terms: open a formal process to evaluate a structural deck over the remediated site, convene a working group of East Cambridge neighbors, and commit to transparent cost and operating assumptions. The eventual operator, if the proposal is taken seriously, would be a to-be-formed community entity subject to council approval. What this campaign commits to now is the coalition letter, the public process, and a long-term operating commitment if the city engages.
The coalition letter
Draft · 400 words · Updated April 14, 2026
This is what gets sent to Cambridge City Council if 500 neighbors sign. You are not endorsing every sentence — you are saying the structural ask is one you stand behind. Signers can suggest edits before delivery.
Dear Cambridge City Council,
We are writing on behalf of neighbors in East Cambridge who have followed the remediation planning at Gold Star Mothers Park closely since the City and MassDEP disclosed the contamination findings. We thank the Department of Public Works, MassDEP, and the EPA for their sustained engagement with this site. The remediation plan that has been developed reflects serious work, and we recognize the complexity of the task.
The contamination record is not disputed. Cambridge’s own sampling data shows polychlorinated biphenyls at 68 times the RCS-1 screening threshold, lead at 41 times RCS-1, and benzo(a)pyrene at 175 times RCS-1. Those numbers explain why the site has been fenced, and they underscore how much of the public health burden the remediation team is carrying. We are writing not to relitigate those findings but to ask what happens next.
The 50-year question before this Council is what gets built on top of a properly capped and remediated site. East Cambridge is among the densest residential neighborhoods in the commonwealth. Open space is scarce. The residents who live within a quarter-mile of this site — workers, families, older adults, school-age children — have no park of equivalent size nearby.
The structural proposal we are advancing is a deck built over the remediated surface — a civic lid, with commercial uses below the deck servicing the construction financing and funding operations, and a free public park above, open to the neighborhood on the same terms as any other Cambridge park. The precedent set is narrow and deliberate. Little Island in Manhattan (2021) was built almost entirely on private capital over a Hudson River Park Trust operating license. Klyde Warren Park in Dallas (2012) capped a recessed highway with a deck lid run by a local conservancy. Closer to home, the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston (2008) showed how a long, narrow urban lid can carry real civic programming on top of public work already done. None of those parks replaced public money. They layered private structure on top of what the city had already completed.
We understand that a deck-lid involves engineering, financing, and long-term operating obligations that the City would not carry alone. Santa Prosper will not be the eventual operator — the operator, if the proposal is taken seriously, would be a to-be-formed community entity subject to Council approval. We are prepared to work with the Council and the City Manager’s office to scope public-private partnership structures, federal capital funding pathways, and long-term stewardship models consistent with the City’s fiscal posture.
We ask the Council to formally include a deck-lid feasibility study in the remediation planning record before the MassDEP consent order is finalized. That step costs nothing but creates the legal and planning foundation for what could be East Cambridge’s most significant civic investment in a generation.
Respectfully submitted,
Tim Miano, organizer, Santa Prosper LLC — on behalf of [X] neighbors in East Cambridge.
Sign a conditional commitment
I, ___, support The Lid Park if at least 500 other Cambridge residents do too. I understand my signature will appear on a coalition letter to Cambridge City Council if the threshold is reached.