WORCESTER, Mass. - The Healey-Driscoll administration announced funding for projects through Community One Stop for Growth in Worcester at the Greendale Revitalization project site. Among the many projects benefitting will be an effort to turn the recently demolished industrial site into something new.

“What I personally love about these projects is they're all they're from the communities," Gov. Maura Healey said. "They're from the community leaders and planners and those who know their communities best and what those communities need.”

About $161 million will fund 313 grant awards to support local economic development projects in 171 communities across the state.

Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao said Community One Stop for Growth offers a streamlined process for municipalities and organizations to apply for 12 state grant programs to fund economic development projects.

“These are investments in fundamental projects that will lay the foundations for all kinds of economic development," Hao said. "Right now, here we're in Worcester at the Greendale Revitalization Project. This is a huge, massive undertaking to take an old industrial site and renovate it and make it ready for new companies, new jobs.”

“We're very excited about this project," Craig Blais said. "It's the largest project ever undertaken by the Worcester Business Development Corporation.”

WBDC president Craig Blais said the project at the 51-acre site, once home to Norton Corporation and donated by Saint Gobain, is being awarded $2.8 million for infrastructure to bring back a public way for new businesses.

“This site has all the bones of a great future development," Blais said. "Our goal is to turn this brownfield site into a green technology type site where we create a lot of jobs with essentially addressing the new manufacturing of our economy.”

Additionally, the state estimates the One Stop awards will help create more than 18,000 new units of housing and 31,000 new permanent jobs, all with the goal of creating opportunity and supporting affordability.

“There's all kinds of other grants as well," Hao said, "to rural development programs, to urban renewal, for site readiness, for all different types of economic development across the state.”

Hao says many of these projects take years to develop, beneficiaries have been working hard to prepare for these investments and her office is excited to get the checks out and get work started across the state.