land use

A land deal inked last week could mean that Lincoln will get three benefits for the price of one: a new town athletic field, a new building for the Birches School, and several acres of conservation land.

The Rural Land Foundation (RLF) and Birches together exercised an option on September 30 to buy a 16-acre property at 100 Bedford Road from the estate of Lorraine Wang, who died in March at the age of 95. She was the widow of An Wang, founder of Wang Laboratories, Inc., and helped establish the Wang Center for the Performing Arts in Boston.

Geoff McGean, executive director of the RLF, would not disclose the dollar amount of the sale, but it is expected to be below market value. The seven parcels of land along Bedford Road and Oak Knoll Road (with one piece on the east side of Bedford Road) has a total assessed value of $2.3 million and a full development value of $3 million to 4 million, he said. The RLF entered into the option with the Wang family in September, and the sale is expected to close in November, he added.

If Town Meeting approves the purchase of some of the land for an athletic field in March, the approximate division of the property will be four acres for the Birches School, three acres for the athletic field and buffer overseen by the Parks and Recreation Department, and nine acres for conservation, McGean said.

A growing school

The Birches School has reached maximum capacity at its current home in the Stone Church across from Bemis Hall and has been looking for a larger home, preferably in Lincoln, which would be in keeping with its curriculum focus. “We couldn’t realize our nature-based mission almost anywhere else in greater Boston,” said Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, head of school.

The school’s share of the Bedford Road property will include the Wangs’ 12,000-square-foot house; once it’s renovated and brought up to school building code, the entire school hopes to move there. D.W. Arthur Architects, which is headed by Lincoln residents Woodie and Loretta Arthur, will design the renovations, ten Grotenhuis said. In the interim, the school plans a phased move-in starting in September 2017 with middle-school grades, including this year’s sixth-graders.

Birches now has 45 students in grades K-6. It will eventually include grades K-8 with a projected enrollment of no more than 95 students. “We’re a micro-school—that’s what we do,” said Cecily Wardell, director of admissions and placement and director of student services.

A Wednesday evening meeting with abutters that included RLF, Park and Rec, and Birches School representatives went well, ten Grotenhuis said. Although cars will enter and exit the property from Bedford Road rather than Oak Knoll Road, there were a few concerns about traffic, but one of the school’s first priorities is doing a traffic study.

“We want to approach everything with as much transparency as possible—open heart, open mind,” ten Grotenhuis said. Neighbors seemed generally supportive, she added, partly because “we are a Lincoln organization and we tread lightly on the ground. it’s not like we’re a foreign entity moving in.”

Athletic field

Like the Birches School, Parks and Rec has been looking for more space for years. When Parks and Rec Director Dan Pereira started in Lincoln 20 years ago, the town had just finished renovating its athletic fields, “but within five or six years, they were degrading so fast, just getting heavily beat up between school sports, youth community… and it was clear we weren’t going to be able to give them the rest they needed,” he said.

Parks and Rec hopes to build a full-size 1.5-acre athletic field that will be used primarily (though not exclusively) for soccer by the town and the Lincoln School. Lincoln Youth Soccer will welcome Birches students even if they are not town residents, ten Grotenhuis said.

It would be at least 18 months from the start of work until the field was ready, Pereira said. Leveling and planting the field is straightforward, but new fields require two full growing seasons before they can be used, he said.

Conservation land

There are no specific plans for the conservation portion other than trails west of Oak Knoll Road connecting to Flint’s Pond land, and east of Bedford Road to the Wheeler Farm land, McGean said. Eventually, older Birches School students will be able to walk from the school all the way to Walden Pond entirely through conservation land.

“We can just imagine Thoreau walking through those woods,” said ten Grotenhuis, who;s already planning field trips. “What a way to study him!”