Franklin Park plan to guide $28m investment

Circuit Drive still in debate with call for closure

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu joined city officials and local activists Tuesday for the release of the Franklin Park Action Plan, an overarching road map, still open to public comment and input, for an approximately $28 million overhaul of the historic park.

Designed by famed architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1880s, Franklin Park is Boston’s largest public open space, but it has seen decades of neglect and deterioration. 

The 460-page plan unveiled by the Wu administration seeks to not to “reinvent” the park, the report states, but to “re-imagine” it — or, at least, wide swaths of it — with the aim that the park “must return to its original principles: linking people and landscape, and cultivating access to natural open space and outdoor recreation.”

Designed by famed architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1880s, Franklin Park is Boston’s largest public open space. BANNER FILE PHOTO

“Our parks bring us together and remind us of the life all around us, the soil beneath our feet and sometimes beneath our pavements, the trees and grass and plants that will grow if we let them, if we take care of them,” said Wu in a press conference announcing the plan.

“Most importantly, these are opportunities for us to connect with each other in spaces that cut across every language, every generation, every background,” Wu said. “Whether it’s over a game of pickup, making new friends while out with your kids, or sledding right after a snowfall, parks are spaces that build community.”

The draft plan proposes changes and projects at various levels, from protecting and maintaining the miles of small trails that wind through the park, to significant overhauls of the Franklin Park Zoo and White Stadium, to rethinking the network of roadways that traverse the park.

Those roadway efforts include a potentially controversial makeover of Circuit Drive, the throughway that bisects the park and connects the neighborhoods of Grove Hall and Forest Hills.

While the Action Plan does not detail a specific outcome for Circuit Drive changes, it does seek to advance a plan to close the drive to auto traffic temporarily during the summer months — for as long as two to three weeks — as part of a pilot study that would include traffic analysis and community feedback in order to “gain a better understanding of design opportunities and constraints” presented by Circuit Drive, the plan says.

The Action Plan also calls for a full-time park administrator to oversee park improvements and maintenance and to “ensure proper coordination, planning, and communication across all aspects of a park and its users.”

City officials said the draft plan was informed by the input of more than 8,000 individuals. They have emphasized the continued role community input will play in the development of the Action Plan and are soliciting public comment throughout the coming months.

Rickie Thompson, president of the Franklin Park Coalition, praised the plan in a press release issued Monday, calling it “the result of the hard work of the Boston Parks Department and the City of Boston, in collaboration with other community groups and organizations.”

“We have been involved from its inception and will continue to monitor its implementation, as we strive to make Franklin Park a destination for all,” Thompson said. “We look forward to all of the wonderful improvements that the plan proposes.” 

But at least some civic leaders expressed exasperation with, if not outright antipathy to, some of the proposals in the draft plan, especially those relating to Circuit Drive. The road currently serves, among other things, as a significant commuter artery for residents of neighborhoods abutting Franklin Park, as well as an access point to various park amenities, like a popular public picnic area. 

The plan has for now backed away from an earlier proposal for permanent closure of Circuit Drive — an idea that has caused much consternation in recent community meetings. Instead, the plan suggests implementing “Make Safe” changes, including adding crosswalks, retooling intersections, and overhauling sidewalks and bicycle or pedestrian paths along the roadway. 

But many see the temporary closures as a back-door way to the earlier proposal, which would redirect traffic entering the park at the Blue Hill Avenue entrance to exit at Humboldt Avenue, rather than Forest Hills.

“This is a bad idea,” said Louis A. Elisa, president of the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association and a founding member of the Franklin Park Coalition.

“The Black community has been opposed to anything that would close Circuit Drive,” Elisa emphasized, saying that such a closure would represent “an obstruction instead of a park we get to utilize.”

Fatima Ali-Salaam, chair of the Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council, was similarly taken aback by the current proposal to temporarily close Circuit Drive, as well as by the prospect of some further future closure.

“It’s one thing to talk about encouraging biking and other ‘multi-modal’ uses of Circuit Drive,” Ali-Salaam said. “That’s fine — roads are supposed to be multi-modal. In this day and age, you’re supposed to be able to walk across the street safely, or bike safely, or be in a car or other vehicle safely.”

But Ali-Salaam called any move to close Circuit Drive entirely a mistake.

“Why would we want to reroute people, when people worked to get that not being the way, to make sure traffic would stay on Circuit Drive?” she asked.

Among other proposals that have so far left Ali-Salaam less than enthusiastic about the draft plan are renderings that appear to show an expansion of the more developed parts of Franklin Park, notably the Franklin Park Zoo, and the proximity to park facilities of supportive housing units at the site of the aging Shattuck Hospital.

“We have to understand, these changes aren’t just for the next 10 or 20 years,” Ali-Salaam said. “They’re for the next hundred.”

The Franklin Park Action Plan is available for review online at franklinparkactionplan.com along with an electronic form to collect public input. City officials say they will be collecting feedback for a 60-day comment period ending Feb. 10, 2023.