Town awarded $75,000 community mitigation grant to market outdoor recreation assets

The Town of Hampden received a $75,000 award from the State Gaming Commission’s Community Mitigation Fund to market and brand the town’s outdoor recreational assets, the Town Administrator told the Select Board.

The grant’s scope, as presented at the meeting, includes a unified design concept and website, signage for trails and parcels, and some trail improvements. The project team is expected to convene stakeholders that the town and administrator named at the meeting: Mass Audubon, the Opacum (Opakum) Land Trust, local land trusts and the town. The sponsor said Opacum is pursuing a parcel acquisition and the grant scope would fold that property into a coordinated marketing effort.

The administrator said the next steps are to wait for the grant contract from the Gaming Commission (expected in roughly two weeks but delayed by commission staffing constraints), convene the stakeholder group and issue an RFP for marketing and branding services once the scope is finalized. "We would have a unified design concept for a website...signage for the different parcels...some improvement on the trails," the administrator said.

Board members said the marketing effort aims to drive visitor traffic to support local businesses and potentially encourage new residents, tying the work to broader economic-development goals in the town master plan. The board did not take final contractual action at the meeting; staff will notify stakeholders and return with an RFP and project schedule.