Springfield will receive a $300,000 grant from the federal government to help revitalize public housing in the city’s crime and poverty-plagued South End neighborhood.

Marble Street Apartments, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) classifies as a "distressed public housing complex," and two HUD-assisted multifamily projects, Concord Heights and Hollywood Apartments, will reap the benefits of a HUD Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant.

Among other things, the grant will be used to prepare for the demolition of the Marble Street Apartments and plan for rehabilitating 22 buildings that comprise the federally subsidized Hollywood development, said Geraldine McCafferty, Springfield’s director of housing. After the plan is conceived, the city will apply for grants to implement it.

"It involves a lot of enhancements to the neighborhood, including planning to reconstruct a community center that was destroyed in last year’s tornado … and providing support for neighborhood residents toward education and job training, as well as trying to figure out how to bring in market housing to the neighborhood," McCafferty told Banker & Tradesman. "This is one small piece of a lot of work that is ongoing in the South End."

It is also hoped the planning grant will help create a new public housing development where people actually want to live, and not just because they don’t have any alternatives. The city hopes to bring market-rate housing to the area "to raise the average income to make it a safer and more attractive neighborhood," McCafferty added.

"Springfield can now begin the comprehensive planning needed to turn the distressed housing in the city’s South End, a long-neglected neighborhood, into a viable and sustainable mixed-income community that supports positive outcome for families," HUD New England Regional Administrator Barbara Fields said in a prepared statement.

The city of Springfield applied for the funding with the Springfield Housing Authority to help develop a transformation plan for the targeted housing and neighborhood using a community-based planning process. Springfield is one of 13 communities nationwide receiving funding to begin grassroots efforts to revitalize less prosperous neighborhoods.

"Springfield’s receipt of this highly competitive grant demonstrates that we are on the right track in our work to revitalize the South End neighborhood," said Mayor Domenic J. Sarno. "These funds will support our continued transformation of the South End into a neighborhood of choice."