We are a group of concerned citizens that are advocating for the city to pause the current Fernald development plan and begin again with a greater focus on community input.

The Walter E. Fernald State School was the oldest publicly financed institution in the Western Hemisphere. It was founded in South Boston in 1848 as the Massachusetts School for the Feeble Minded and moved to Waltham between 1888 and 1891. It served thousands of residents with cognitive disabilities and in many cases, multiple disabilities.

During its existence, residents were often treated badly with some subjected to medical experiments without their consent.  They were physically and sexually abused, housed in crowded dormitories and badly fed.

Conditions improved from the 70s to the 90s when Federal Judge Tauro had oversight and required the building of new housing. In 2003, Gov. Mitt Romney ordered the closure of Fernald and residents’ families sued. For the next ten years, Judge Tauro supervised the wishes of the remaining residents, many of whom had lived at Fernald for their entire life and were now elderly. The last resident left in November, 2014.

Waltham purchased the 196 acres of the Fernald in December, 2014 for $3,700,000. Approximately two-thirds of the property was purchased with Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds and the rest was purchased with general city funds. The CPA portion of the property was purchased for open space, recreation, and historic preservation.

In the eight years since the purchase, the general public has not had much access to the property but vandals have done major damage to the buildings. Most windows are broken, fires have been set and there is other damage inside the buildings. The Fernald is on the National Register of Historic Places, but no action was taken to mothball the historic buildings or to otherwise protect them. Non-historic buildings such as the Shriver Center and the Greene building have been demolished as they were full of mold or falling apart.

Over the years, citizens and city officials have put forward many suggestions for the Fernald but no final plans resulted. In December 2021 and January 2022, the Recreation Department and an outside consultant held on-line meetings to hear ideas from the public. Many comments were about showing proper respect for Fernald residents and Fernald’s history. The consultant said he would produce three different plans using these ideas for additional public comment. That never happened.  

Instead, he produced a plan that is full of amusements. It does not preserve or protect the crumbling historic buildings, it does not represent citizens’ earlier input (which largely revolved around respecting Fernald’s history), and it does not provide an opportunity for additional public comment. The Recreation Board met and approved this plan in an unusual meeting on July 20, 2022. This was unusual because the Recreation Board does not usually meet in the summer, leaving the public unaware of the meeting , yet this low-profile meeting served as the final approval for this plan.

 The attached petition is a request to put the current recreation plan for the Fernald property on hold and to reopen the planning process to give Waltham citizens a voice in the final plans for this site. 

The plan can be found here.

To Mayor McCarthy and the Waltham City Council:

We, the undersigned, are badly disappointed with the Recreation Board’s plan for the front 120 acres of the Fernald. The plan must be put on hold so that the community can participate in the final plan. Our dissatisfaction with the current plan is for the following reasons:

The input sessions from the public in December, 2021 and January, 2022 asked for substantial recognition of the history of the Fernald and its residents. That recognition would include information about the eugenics movement, the warehousing of residents, and the experiments performed on residents without the consent of those residents or their families. The approved plan shows only a small memorial.

The City’s consultant promised that three plans for the front 120 acres of the property would be presented for public comment. That never happened.

The Plan was approved at a special summer meeting of the Recreation Board on July 20, 2022 in a meeting that lasted 55 minutes with two other agenda items. The Board does not usually meet in the summer so the public was not paying attention. The meeting was not a public hearing and was not recorded

The Recreation Board gave the final approval. The City Council, the public’s representatives, played no role. The plan was included as an information item in the Council’s extremely busy summer meeting on August 1, 2022.

We greatly appreciate the rebuilding of the pond, the daylighting of the steam, and the proposed amphitheater, the following are among our concerns:

1. First and foremost, the memorialization of the site is confined to a tiny fraction of the parcel with no indication of what it will entail except a walking path on a steep hill and the misspelling of the word “braille”. It is clear that NERSA is not up to the task of memorializing such an important historic site, and a plan to memorialize the site overseen by the Waltham Historical Commission and the Waltham Historical Society should come before any additional reuse considerations.
2. Many of the amusements on the site such as an electric train, a mini-golf course, and a chipping range give the site a carnival-like character which is particularly offensive to the disability community considering the historic treatment of people with disabilities.
   
   
3. The plan does not incorporate a City Council resolution to keep Donnell fields (the fields to the right near the entrance) as general recreation fields.
4. The accessible universal playground is separate from the playground for able kids. The two playgrounds should be together.
   
   
5. The plan does not retain features used by Fernald residents such as the accessible concrete path that was on the site and in good condition.
6. The Western Greenway trail to connect Beaver Brook North to the Wayside Rail Trail, and which was approved by the City Council, is not included in the plan.
   
   
7. The plan has nine parking lots with 500 spaces. There are no considerations to making the site accessible to public transit and bicycle, meaning that the only option for accessing the site will be by car, an option not available to many families in the city.
   
   
8. Most of the facilities are redundant, duplicating similar facilities located within a short drive of the site.
   
   
9. A plan for this portion of the 196 acres at Fernald should be part of an integrated plan for the whole property. How can the public make sense of this without the full picture?
   
   

We, as Waltham residents, paid for the Fernald property and have a great interest in being fully involved in how that land is used. We want this property treated as the hallowed site that it is. We demand that the current recreation plan be put on hold and that the City hold a public meeting to receive the comments of the public on the use of the front parcel and the whole property. The plan should then be adjusted to reflect the community’s desires instead of continuing with a plan that was completed with minimal transparency and without the review we were promised.