Thanks to a generous grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Greenbelt Alliance and a consortium of partners—Cascade Land Conservancy, Envision Minnesota and the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance—will help local communities create more housing choices, design healthy neighborhoods, and increase economic vitality.
This project is funded by U.S. EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program. The Building Blocks program funds quick, targeted assistance to communities that face common development problems. Three other nonprofit organizations have received competitively awarded grants under this program this year to help communities get the kinds of development they want — Global Green USA, Project for Public Spaces and Smart Growth America.
Greenbelt Alliance and its three partners will receive approximately $365,000 over the next year to provide smart growth technical assistance to communities in the four metropolitan regions they serve: the Bay Area, Seattle, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and Boston. If the consortium ultimately receives full funding from the EPA, this award would allow the consortium to give $1.5 million of technical assistance over a five-year period to approximately 125 communities.
Greenbelt Alliance will continue helping Bay Area leaders put smart growth plans into place. “We’re thrilled to receive this grant along with our partners,” said Executive Director Jeremy Madsen. “We hope to fuel the creation of walkable neighborhoods where people can live close to where they work, boosting the economy of the Bay Area’s great cities and towns.”
