Earlier this year I picked up a slick MetroWest Massachusetts 2015 Winter/Spring Guide brochure at a local bank branch and was surprised to see the lack of Wellesley references in there (The Cottage, Wellesley College Davis Museum were among the few).
It got me thinking about whether Wellesley is even considered to be part of MetroWest, a geographical concept that my friends and colleagues who once worked for the Middlesex Daily News/MetroWest Daily News say was the creation of a newspaper reporter back in the 1980s.
Wikipedia backs them up on that story, and says that Wellesley is generally not included in definitions of MetroWest. Exceptions to that are Metropolitan Area Planning Council, whose MetroWest Regional Collaborative includes Wellesley, and the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority, which offers bus service in Wellesley. Young Wellesley athletes also take part in the MetroWest basketball league.
Susan Nicholl, executive director for the MetroWest Tourism Bureau, told me earlier this year: “When our nonprofit was launched 3 years ago, the state legislature designated our ‘MetroWest’ service area as 19 towns, which did not include Wellesley. However, as we hear from more and more people from towns outside the 19 towns, our service area has unofficially expanded to about 30 towns, including Wellesley.”
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