When Jamie Bemis moved to Dorchester three years ago, she brought her passion for confronting climate change and ensuring sustainability beyond her office and into the community. Her most recent project is collaborating with the St. Mark Area Civic Association (SMACA) to establish a Dorchester Climate Resilience Hub, which can provide the public with essential needs before, during, and after natural disasters. 

“When folks think of climate-related events, everyone thinks of Hurricane Sandy or flooding. We’re less susceptible to that,” said Bemis, who works for Verdani Partners. “Our part of Dorchester is more susceptible to extreme heat and brownouts, and heat is a very significant risk, particularly for children and elderly folks.”

Before coming to Dorchester to live, Bemis studied at MIT, and just under a mile from the campus is the Cambridge Community Center, which implemented a resilience hub of its own in 2023. 

Bemis is using the Cambridge Hub as inspiration for the Dorchester site she wants to build.

“Cambridge has already done it and they’re sharing their lessons learned with us. They’ve provided resources and connected us to all kinds of networks,” she said. 

While the support from the Community Center has been helpful, Bemis knows Dorchester will be an entirely different beast. 

“Dorchester is huge, and it’s just one neighborhood of Boston,” she said. “Cambridge is its own city, and all pretty geographically concentrated.

“I think we definitely need to reflect the reality of this community and I think we’re more open to this idea of kind of a network of organizations or network of resources that we can tap into,” Bemis told The Reporter. 

For the next six to nine months, she and her friends at SMACA will focus on community engagement. Specifically, they would like to hear the concerns and priorities of folks from the neighborhood.  

After the discussion period, locations will be selected by the start of next year.

“What we’re hoping to do is find a space at a trusted location with a community partner,” she said. “We’ve already talked about potential locations, but we haven’t chosen one. Then we would work to make sure that the facility has 24-hour power.” 

When the hub is complete, hopefully by 2027, it will be a place where people can go to cool off with AC, charge their phones, or get something to eat. Bemis also wants it to be a place for learning. 

“One of the things that we’re talking about is doing education and resource sharing and so forth and engagement, even during normal times of operation, to make sure that there is kind of a core literacy around energy topics in the community,” she said.

Though discussions and planning to get these resources in the community are underway, the project is yet to be funded. Bemis said the group is coordinating with elected officials and writing grants for budget meetings in hopes of obtaining money to launch.
In the meantime, individuals and organizations are being invited to become project partners.

“We’re excited to have anyone who is interested in this project participate in our core project group. There’s no background knowledge or expertise required. It’s just if you’re excited and you want to get involved, we’re happy to have you.” 

Those interested in learning more about the push for the Climate Resilience Hub can reach out to smacadot@gmail.com.