The Natural Resources Commission held a Land Conservation Charette last month at the Wellesley Free Library to gather ideas from the community on a plan to preserve open space in town. Members of the NRC hope that by engaging in a town-wide planning process and gathering support now, the town will be prepared when conservation opportunities come up in the future.
The goal: to become proactive instead of reactive when a parcel of land comes up for sale that the town deems desirable from a conservation point of view. As it stands now, the town can’t even put down a deposit with the kind of speed that real estate transactions in Wellesley demand. First, there are open meetings to hold, as well as discussion and a vote on the floor of Town Meeting. By the time that process plays out, a desired property is long gone.
We met with NRC chair Michael D’Ortenzio and NRC director Brandon Schmitt at Simons Park ahead of the Charette to learn more about what the meeting would cover. Some of the quotes in this story come from that first meeting, and some are from the Charette.
Who attended the charette
About 80 concerned citizens attended the public meeting, and the vast majority were there to advocate for land conservation, trees, and wildlife. NRC chair Michael D’Ortenzio served as emcee of the charette, and NRC director Brandon Schmitt and members Bea Bezmalinovic, vice chair Jay McHale, and secretary Lisa Collins were on hand. There were consultants, of course—Pete Steckler, a principal at Northeast Conservation Services, and colleagues came armed with an array of maps. This is an involved and ongoing data collection project.
Mapping things out
One map gave an overview of protected, restricted, and unprotected infrastructure land in Wellesley. Seven additional maps showed:
- Flood Hazard Areas in Wellesley
- Existing Recreation Opportunities
- Canopy Trees & Forest Cover in Wellesley
- Unique Landscape and Historic Features in Wellesley
- Areas that Support Water Quality in Wellesley
- Areas that Support Public Water Supply in Wellesley
- Areas that Support Wildlife Habitat in Wellesley
You can see all the maps, as well as goals and for an open space and recreation, plan here.
Some interesting facts that Steckler brought:
- About 49% of Wellesley is forested. “There’s a lot of fragmentation, a lot of strips of trees between houses and that sort of thing. So it’s not half of your town are these blocks of large forest.”
- About 41% of Wellesley’s land is developed and impervious
- Close to 10% is water or wetlands.
- About 1% is agricultural
- About 82% of Wellesley is unprotected land.
Steckler gave Boulder Brook Reservation as an example of protected land. The 64-acre property is subject to Massachusetts Article 97 land, which means it shall not be used for other purposes or disposed of without a 2/3 roll call vote of the legislature. He called that a very high standard for protection.
Restricted lands, such as those held by the Wellesley Conservation Land Trust, make up about 3% of the land in town.
The town of Wellesley has a total area of 10.49 square miles (10.18 square miles is land, and 0.32 square miles is water). That’s approximately 6,700 acres in all.
Steckler noted that although the North 40 area acquired by the town from Wellesley College in 2014 is expected to have restrictions on part of the property, it is currently unprotected land. “But somebody who goes out on the trails of this property may think it was protected, but it might not be in all cases.”
Let the people speak
After the introductory presentation, attendees were let loose to examine the various maps, each laid out on a separate table, and ask questions. Each table was facilitated by an NRC member or a Northeast Conservation Services consultant. Attendees placed stickers on areas they wanted to see protected, and could also write comments on a large pad, or directly onto the maps. By the end of the evening, there wasn’t a parcel of open space or a single tree that didn’t have its fan base. “This just isn’t realistic,” sighed a participant.
In the near term it doesn’t have to be. It’s now the job of Northeast Conservation Services to review residents’ feedback and come back with suggested priorities for the town. Not every parcel will be able to be saved.
Schmitt said the crux of the project will be a two-phase plan—first, identify properties “that are valuable for which reasons, which environmental benefits.”
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The next phase will be about money. The goal of this is with pre-planning, with saving money over time, the town will be able to get ahead of decisions instead of having to react when situations come up.
“We have to be sophisticated,” D’Ortenzio said. “It’s not just going to be ‘oh, this parcel comes up for sale, we’re going to try to buy it’. It’s going to have to be, ‘OK, half of this parcel is wooded. It contributes to as a wildlife corridor crossing, it’s contiguous to public land…we need to do the thinking ahead of time to say alright, where are these high value locations?’ ”
What goes up, must come down
What the NRC seeks is to upzone parking lots and downzone forests. Developing on the already developed space in Wellesley such as on the many Haynes properties that are coming available for sale in town, is an example of upzoning. Conserving forested space is an example of downzoning.
D’Ortenzio pointed to The Nines apartment complex as an example of successful upzoning. That area in 2017 was a small building with a large parking lot. Today The Nines is “a new apartment building with 350 units of housing without any loss of forested area. That’s an example of what I would say is successful upzoning,” he said.
Fieldstone Way came up as a good example of the kind of denser housing, such duplexes and triplexes, that Wellesley needs. But “You can see the forest loss that occurred. That was acres of forest that was providing habitat and that was mostly cleared in order to provide for this development,” D’Ortenzio said, also using the Bristol at the corner of Weston Rd. and Linden St. as an example of a forest that was felled to make way for luxury condominiums.
“We have tons of Class B office space, acres of Haynes office space coming up for sale, crumbling parking lots. Those are ripe for redevelopment,” he said.
The vision is to increase development opportunities on already developed land and encourage projects on parking lots and on Class B office building sites that are going to be torn down anyway.
The money part
After identifying properties that should be conserved, the NRC will seek to get partners in town government to buy into that vision. Ultimately, a recurring revenue stream will be needed to support this kind of a project. That could be a stabilization fund, which would require Town Meeting approval to spend from, but from which the Select Board could decide whether taxpayers should make a contribution every year, or only some years.
Another possibility would be a Conservation Fund. Wellesley used to have one, but it was discontinued when the town adopted the Community Preservation Act in 2022. The Act creates a dedicated funding source, financed by a property tax surcharge and state matching funds, for the purpose of open space, historical preservation, community housing and recreation. A Conservation Fund would allow the NRC to, for example, put down a deposit if a property came up that was on the Town Meeting approved plan, without further TM approval.
“I would argue that everyone values living in Wellesley because of the open space and the green space, Schmitt said, adding that with more people will come an increased need for space they can play in and appreciate.
“This is an attempt to get good government and really do the work ahead of time so that when an opportunity comes up we can say look we’ve thought about it, this makes sense, it’s on our list. Or it’s not, “D’Ortenzio said. “And hopefully, if we can get people to buy into the plan, we can start saving some money every year. Hopefully over the next decade we can really move the needle.”
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