Boston's 210 acres in the suburbs
City can't develop land in Burlington, Woburn
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size ? + By John C. Drake
Globe Staff / July 29, 2008
When Mary Cummings bequeathed 210 acres of old farmland in Woburn and Burlington to the City of Boston, she asked that it be kept forever as a "public pleasure ground." But 80 years later, angry suburban residents say Boston officials are failing to preserve the wealthy widow's vision. The public's pleasure, they contend, is not being served at all.
The residents, organized as Friends of Mary Cummings Park, filed a complaint last week with Attorney General Martha Coakley's Public Charities Division alleging that city officials have neglected the land, abused a trust fund by using it to pay legal and survey work, and plotted to sell the valuable tract near Route 128 for a residential development.
Residents complain that last year the city ripped out handsome, hand-carved welcome signs neighbors placed on the property at their own expense, while keeping "No Trespassing" signs posted around the property.
The organization is asking Coakley's office to strip the city of its oversight responsibilities and to place the park in the hands of local and state park advocates.
"They've been engaged in a system of neglect of the land," said Laurel J. Francoeur, the group's lawyer.
Officials in Mayor Thomas M. Menino's administration counter that they are doing all they can to protect and maintain the forested land and former pastures, though the property is more than 20 miles from the city.
The city plans to fight the residents' effort to replace Boston as the trustee, saying such a move would be "inconsistent with the charitable intent" of Cummings's bequest, said Lisa Signori, Boston's collector-treasurer. City officials also deny misusing trust funds. And, while acknowledging that they considered selling the land in the past, city officials say they have concluded that the trust prohibits a sale and that the concept has been dropped.
What the city is left with is 210 acres along one of the most prosperous interstate highway corridors in the country that it cannot develop and has little or no desire to run as a park.
A spokeswoman for Coakley, Jill Butterworth, said the letter has been received and is under review. She declined to comment further.
The rift between bureaucrats on City Hall Plaza and a band of suburban activists seeking to preserve local parkland was sparked by one woman's generous gift. Cummings was the widow of John Cummings, a state lawmaker who was president of Shawmut Bank in Boston. When she died in 1927, she left farmland straddling the Burlington-Woburn land that the couple owned to the City of Boston, as well as an office building next to Faneuil Hall.
Today, the only structure remaining on the old farm is a small cinderblock building. It is in disrepair and slated for demolition. There are a few trails marked by area residents through the woods and a small clearing that had been intended for a baseball field. A model-plane group uses a portion of the property, and pictures on the Friends of Mary Cummings Park website show a little landing strip complete with a miniature windsock.
Otherwise, the large tract of land is largely undisturbed. The groups of city youths that the Recreation Department once brought for summer programs stopped coming in the 1990s.
Residents have been fighting to have the land turned into a vibrant park, which they say would better honor Cummings's intentions. They formed the nonprofit Friends of Mary Cummings Park in 2007.
"People have lived their entire lives in Burlington and never even heard of Mary Cummings Park," said Steven Keleti, president of the group. "It was thought of as abandoned property and treated by the local people as abandoned property."
But Boston officials said the group had no right to install signs on the land last year. While acknowledging it considered selling the land for a residential development in the past to help pay for other city parks, including the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, Menino's administration says that terms of Mary Cummings's bequest prohibit a sale. One recent proposal by the city has been to use some of the land for a tree farm, which could be used to put more greenery onto city streets.
"I am fully aware of the legal restrictions on the sale and development of the property," Signori said. "The city's interest has always been, what can we do within those restraints that best serves the interests of the residents of Boston? We can't develop it for residential housing."
The trust fund to maintain the park currently holds about $375,000.
Signori disputes a contention by Friends of Mary Cummings Park that the trust fund should currently hold $15 million.
The organization set the $15 million estimate based on the value, plus interest, of the downtown building that Cummings gave the city, which was seized, apparently without compensation, in 1929 by the Boston Transit Department to allow for construction of the Sumner Tunnel.
Signori said that city research has shown that the city was under no obligation to compensate property owners for buildings and land seized to make way for the tunnel.
"I think this is another case of the Friends using selective facts to support a claim that may not reflect reality," Signori said in an e-mail Friday.
Robert Mercier, Burlington's town administrator, said town residents and officials are considering a Town Meeting resolution this fall to protect the land and zone it as open space. Woburn made such a move on its section of the land, which will take effect in January.
"The City of Woburn's interest is to preserve the sprit of the trust of Mary Cummings," said Mayor Thomas L. McLaughlin of Woburn. "And that's spelled out in her trust documents."
John C. Drake can be reached at
jdrake@globe.com.
? Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
