Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! is a citywide collaborative planning process that will engage the Chelsea community to envision the future of our city and produce a long-range plan that will provide a coordinated roadmap for the future development and evolution of Chelsea.
This process will explore issues such as housing, land use, economic mobility and opportunity, environmental justice, recreation and culture, transportation and mobility, services and infrastructure, among others.
This plan will stitch together past and current planning efforts into a comprehensive framework for implementing more detailed studies down the road and to guide planning and policymaking over the next 15 years.
This comprehensive plan isn’t just about buildings and streets—it’s about building community power. It’s about ensuring that decisions about the Chelsea neighborhoods reflect the hopes, needs, and creativity of everyone who calls our city home.
Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! can’t rely on technical expertise alone but on the beautiful intersection of professional knowledge and community wisdom. Together, we’re writing a new chapter in Chelsea’s story—one where every voice matters, every dream has value, and the future is shaped by all of us —por todos nosotros.
WHY PLAN NOW
Chelsea has drastically changed since the city’s last comprehensive plan in 1970. The demographics, the growth trends, and the city’s organization and government are drastically different today. With the current development momentum, there is a unique opportunity to assess the City’s goals and vision and provide a long-term guide for Chelsea’s growth and policies.
In recent years, the City and its partners have launched various planning projects focused on specific topics. Notable initiatives include the City of Chelsea Hazard Mitigation Plan (2022), the update of Chelsea’s Fair Housing Plan (2023), the Chelsea Creek Municipal Harbor Plan (2022), the Digital Access Plan (2023), and the Arts and Culture Strategic Plan (2021-2025), among others. The City has seen updates to its zoning code with the inclusion of the Transit Community Overlay District, and the Downtown Broadway Project is currently underway. Now is the time to integrate all these planning efforts accomplished thus far into a unified framework.
Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! will build on past and current planning efforts and the community’s wisdom and integrate a shared vision into a comprehensive plan to shape and guide the City’s physical development for the next 15 years and for it to better align with the community’s vision and needs.
STUDY AREA
Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! is a citywide plan, and will involve planning across all our city.
TIMELINE
The almost two-year process for Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! will be guided by an intentional community engagement centered on equity and love for our city. This process started in January 2025 with the first meeting of the plan’s Steering Committee and will continue until the summer of 2026.
Through collaborative workshops, bilingual engagement, and partnerships with trusted community organizations, we’re transforming urban planning from a top-down process into a celebration of community wisdom and collective problem-solving.
Phase 1: SOMOS CHELSEA
The Learning Phase at its heart, Somos Chelsea (We Are Chelsea), is about deep listening to and authentic understanding of the issues and opportunities Chelsea, ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! can address.
We will begin by listening and learning about neighborhood and citywide needs and opportunities, exploring previous and current studies and plans, and validating data and trends.
Phase 2: NUESTRO CHELSEA
The Collective Visioning Phase, building on the foundation of Somos Chelsea, Nuestro Chelsea (Our Chelsea) will transform individual stories and experiences into a collective vision for the future and actionable planning strategies.
This second phase includes testing initial future scenarios, working with the community to evaluate future visions, and prioritizing actions and recommendations. We will collect and synthesize all community feedback to produce a clear and coherent citywide plan.
TOPICS
This plan will explore a wide array of topics related to the city’s development and growth. Some of this topics are housing, land use and urban form, economic mobility and opportunity, environmental justice, recreation and culture, transportation and mobility, services and infrastructure, among others.
Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! will expand upon and align with previous planning efforts, weaving them together with new analysis and community input to create an integrated framework that will prepare the city for further studies that explore specific topics in greater detail or focus on smaller areas.
STEERING COMMITTEE
The Chelsea Pa’Lante Steering Committee will play an instrumental role in guiding the City through its Comprehensive Planning process. The Steering Committee will work closely with City staff, the broader community, and the consultant team, to develop the plan’s recommendations, to provide oversight and guidance on the comprehensive plan content.
The City selected the Chelsea Pa’Lante Steering Committee members following an open call for applications.
The members are: Jose Abreu, Maranatha Boyer, Mayra Balderas, Kyle Browne, Julie DeMauro, Vivian Ianotti, David Matute, Saira Carreto Romero, Jake Small, and Roy Valentin. Additionally, Chelsea City Council President Norieliz DeJesus, Vice President Todd Taylor, and Planning Board Liaison Sarah Ritch serve on the committee to ensure transparency, communication, and participation from the City Council and Planning Board.
PROJECT TEAM
Together with the office of the City Manager and the different City Departments, the City is working with an interdisciplinary team of consultants led by Utile, a Boston-based Architecture & Planning firm.
Consultant team:
- Utile (Urban Planning and Design)
- Consult LeLa (Community Engagement and Equity)
- La Colaborativa (Community Organizer + Local Advisor)
- Landwise (Economic Analysis and Strategy)
- Nelson Nygaard (Transportation and Mobility Planning)
- Nistch Engineering (Infrastructure Advising)
- MAPA (Translation services)