Walking the Talk: Johnson’s Future Use Study Gets Started

By Erica Noonan

 
It was billed as a Johnson School Future Use site walk, but it may have served the most use as a trust-building exercise between Natick town officials and wary citizens. 

About 40 Natick residents–heavily represented by neighborhood residents and the Johnson parent community before the school closed its doors in 2024–turned out Saturday morning for a a town-led walking tour of 7.3 acre site that includes woodsy trails, a popular playground and sledding hill, a baseball diamond, and a street hockey rink, just south of Natick Center. 

The group divided into three tours, helmed by Town Select Board members Bruce Evans, Linda Wollschlager, and Kathryn Coughlin, with backup from Natick employees, Town Administrator Jamie Errickson, Deputy Administrator Jon Marshall, and Communications Director Jay Poropatich.

It’s very early days for the Johnson Future Use project, just four months into a two-and-half year-long effort that will culminate with a final decision in 2027. Officials say the planned timeline includes extensive community discussion and feedback, leading to a study/advisory group to sort through and present a menu of best use cases, options, and costs.     

But there was plenty of emotional baggage in tow. Most of the residents in attendance were optimistic and energized to be part of the process to steer the future direction of the site, but the bitterness of the controversial School Committee decision to close the school remained palpable. 

Other controversial town decisions and projects from recent years were also uninvited guests, including the South Natick dam removal, 5 Auburn Street housing development, and a glut of new multi-family housing developments to comply with the MBTA Communities Act.  

Many residents wondered how this process would be different. Was the Johnson redevelopment going to be a top-down decision, and all the community “input” a bunch of window dressing?   

As we walked past the sad reminders of what had once been student-cultivated garden boxes and forts, and reminisce over the back door colorful jaguar, lion, and elephant mural where the younger grades lined up for classes, our small group leader, Bruce Evans, assured us this process was the real deal. 

“We’re trying very hard to have a very deliberate, open process,” he said, admitting it was his first time walking the Johnson property. “This is a centrally located place that is so important to the neighborhood. I see this [project and eventual decision] as vital.”

Saturday’s in-person event comes after two online FlashVotes surveys that garnered well over 600 responses. More than 70% of respondents indicated they strongly prefer the Johnson space to remain undeveloped as open space, playgrounds, or some sort of community gathering space.

Only a handful of respondents wanted to see more housing, although a few did press for a sale of the Johnson parcels to the highest bidder to help ease financial pressures elsewhere in town, following the most recent property tax override. 

The most recent survey’s anonymous comments ranged from the salty: “You took away a walkable school from my son. Give him something back,” to the unsympathetic, “The entire town should benefit from whatever is done. The Johnson neighborhood has already been over indulged by the slow pace of closing the school,” to the deeply cynical, “Based on past votes by the Select Board, I think this process is theater. The Select Board wants affordable housing- period-and neighborhoods be damned!.”

The presence of Poropatich, now two years into his role as the communications director is a game changer of sorts, compared to past town business-as-usual public notifications. His department operates digital-first, with extensive details, timelines, and web documentation. 

(A former marketing executive and Natick resident, Poropatich’s dogged work to link every single piece of relevant information to the Johnson Use web page had made it hard for even the crankiest Natick resident to claim they don’t know what’s going. And on this Saturday morning, he wisely came armed with more old-school tools: plenty of Dunkin’ coffee for the crowd, paper packets of information, pens, and name tags, giving the event some structure for mingling and getting informed.)

Most in our small tour group left feeling pleased with the community building that came out of the walking tour, and respect for the work put in by Evans and Poropatch to answer our questions and take feedback and ideas. The next two years will be important ones for the Johnson site, and its future in Natick.     

Next steps: Coming next in the lengthy Johnson timeline is Wednesday’s 6:30 p.m. Select Board meeting where a report on Saturday’s Site Walking meeting will be presented. The meeting can be viewed in person, online, or via Pegasus public access TV.  

• Learn more about he Johnson Project
• Subscribe to receive Johnson project updates

Erica Noonan can be reached at noonanerica@gmail.com. She is a Johnson neighbor/parent and former Boston Globe reporter.