Polar Park Public Engagement and Marketing, Worcester

City of Worcester
Worcester, Massachusetts

HSH worked with the City of Worcester to create and carry out a community engagement and marketing campaign for travel and parking in the Canal District during a collection of redevelopment projects anchored by the construction of Polar Park (home of the Red Sox’ Triple-A affiliate team). We developed a message-driven campaign to educate and engage the community, encouraging people to come to the district during construction and ensuring that they understood how to get there and where they could park if they chose to drive. Our engagement tools included

  • A custom website with interactive online parking and construction maps;
  • Mass email outreach delivering construction information to area stakeholders;
  • Social media and press messaging, coordinated with City of Worcester staff;
  • Pop-up and field engagement at area businesses including establishing neighborhood events like the Canal District Farmer’s Market;
  • Targeted meetings with key partners, business owners, and area stakeholders to keep them informed and help magnify our engagement to their established audiences;
  • Physical materials, from fact sheets to windshield flyers to outdoor parking maps to support outreach; and
  • Dedicated local staff to share information and respond to people with a personal touch.

From the groundbreaking through Opening Day and beyond, HSH was there every step of the way, keeping people informed, maintaining open lines of communication, and helping minimize the temporary pains of construction to deliver the next inning in Worcester’s storied history of baseball, strong local economies, and vital, unique, vibrant neighborhoods.