Natick Report

More than you really want to know about Natick, Mass.

Natick Business Buzz: 7-11 undergoing changes; Soap Dental making plans; More lab work at the mall

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Our roundup of the latest Natick, Mass., business news:

7-11 undergoing changes

The 7-11 located at 172 N. Main St. in Natick is undergoing some changes. First off, the convenience store is now open 24 hours. In addition to that change, new owner Jainik Kumar is giving the space a much-needed interior sprucing up with interior painting, a good steam cleaning of the ceramic floor tiles, and an overall re-organization of the shelving units. Most importantly, the Slurpee machine will experience no interruption in service throughout renovations.

Natick 7-11

Soap Dental making plans

A new dental office called Soap Dental is aiming to open at 7 Middlesex Ave., formerly home to Full Circle Arts and next to Corrado’s Subs.  The dental business of Dr. Bob Cheng is currently going through the site review process in town.

 

More lab work at the mall

The Natick Planning Board on July 20 at 7pm is slated to revisit a proposal to fill the Neiman Marcus space at Natick Mall with bio labs.

Neighbors whose condos abut the space have spoken out about safety concerns and forced the town to consider whether it should put a biosafety council in place as have dozens of other communities across the state. The former Lord & Taylor space at the mall is also possibly headed for lab use.

Nearby, Wellesley just approved lab use at a Rte. 9 complex, and more could be on the way there, too. As in Natick, neighbors have spoken out, and the town mulls whether it needs a more organized plan.

Neiman Marcus mall

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Apply to participate in Natick Little Free Library Community Build

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Have you ever admired those cute Little Free Libraries around town and thought about joining in the fun? You could be one of ten Natick families that will have the opportunity to participate in a free Natick Little Free Library Community Build workshop at the Morse Institute Library. Apply here by June 20.

Natick Little Free Library Community Build workshops will take place on July 7 & 9 as Natick families and neighbors come together during the summer reading season and go step-by-step through the process of building, completing, and installing their own Little Free Library.

Participants can expect a virtual orientation session on July 7, where they’ll learn safety tips for construction, how to use their library as a tool for neighborhood engagement, and hear from a library builder and elementary school teacher in Medellin, Colombia. Actual construction will take place on July 9 at the Morse Institute Library and will be facilitated by local carpenter, DIYer, and educator Farid Quraishi.

This workshop is family-friendly for anyone comfortable with using a hammer and screwdriver and requires no previous building experience. All Little Free Libraries will include registration on the official Little Free Libraries website.

This community volunteer-run workshop is being held with support from the Natick Center Cultural District and Morse Institute Library. Each Little Free Library has a value of $240, which is being made available free of charge to participants thanks to the sponsorship of Natick Cultural Council, Mathworks, and Eversource.

Little Free Libraries around Natick

Is it a phone booth? Is it a tiny house? Is it wonderful stained glass? Yes, yes, and yes, but it’s also a Little Free Library. Little Free Library is an organization dedicated to spreading accessibility to reading material all across the world. The main way they do this is by selling their Little Free Library kits, which are then put together and maintained by members of the community. Anyone can buy a Little Free Library, and Natick residents certainly seem to have an appetite for them. In my long search across Natick for every Little Free Library I could find, (with the help of the Little Free Library app) I discovered more than twenty in total.

Little Free Library Natick Cottage Street

 

Little Free Library Natick Walcott Street

Little Free Libraries are open to anyone, anytime. Books can be taken out of these libraries and returned at the reader’s leisure, or kept if they really loved their read. While looking at all these libraries I picked up a few books for myself (something from the Discworld series), but I could have taken enough Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy books to fill a warehouse. Those two guys are seriously inescapable.

Little Free Library Natick Pond Street

On the whole the Little Free Libraries in Natick are very impressive. Many library owners, unwilling to allow themselves to be constrained by the base model that can be ordered, branch out and create unique places for people to come find books. With the sheer number of Little Free Libraries there are in town, chances are there’s one just five minutes away from you.

Town seeks input on what to do with shuttered South Natick school

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Be heard about the future of the 5 Auburn Street parcel in South Natick at two upcoming meetings.

The 5 Auburn Street Request for Proposal (RFP) Committee—the nine-member group tasked with figuring out what to do with the former Eliot School building and its 2.8 acre parcel in South Natick—is seeking input from Natick residents regarding the future of the 3-floor, 10,600 square-foot structure that dates from 1938. The Committee wants feedback from the community in order to develop an RFP for the potential sale of the building/parcel.

5 Auburn St., former Eliot School, Natick

5 Auburn Street most recently served as a Montessori school, but that operation completed a major renovation in 2020 to its campus across the street, giving it the space it needed to keep to one side of Route 16 only. The private school, which still educates toddlers – grade 8 using the Montessori model, is now known as Riverbend.

Going further back, 5 Auburn Street was a public school building into the 1970s.

The historic structure needs lots of work. The boiler has failed, it has inefficient single-pane windows, and it isn’t ADA-compliant. Upgrading it could cost upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Public meetings:

DATE: April 27, 2022
TIME: 6:30pm
LOCATION: via Zoom. Meeting ID 873 0126 2933

DATE: April 30, 2022
TIME: 3pm
LOCATION: 5 Auburn Street

And/or express your thoughts on the matter via email at 5auburn@natickma.org

Natick asks: What to do with that found $630,000 from MathWorks?

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The Natick Planning Board last week wrapped up its meeting with an informal discussion about what to do with the little old sum of $630,000 discovered to have been sitting around since MathWorks expanded into its Apple Hill campus on Rte. 9 east more than 10 years ago.

MathWorks Apple Hill Campus

Natick Open Space Planner Marianne Iarossi said that over the past 6 months she, former head of Community & Economic Development James Freas and current Town Administrator Jamie Errickson discovered the money, which had been contributed by MathWorks as part of the Apple Hill site plan review largely to address traffic issues that might arise. Now the goal is to figure out how to reappropriate the money, possibly for open space and other projects, and get Planning and later Town Meeting’s blessing for those plans, Iarossi said.

Most of the items on the extensive traffic mitigation list crafted back when MathWorks was expanding have been checked off. “The reason why… there’s about $600,000 left from the mitigation money from 2008 is that [the Massachusetts Department of Transportation] ended  up carrying forward some of the projects, so the town ended up saving that money if you will. So there’s extra that’s been sitting there for a number of years,” Iarossi said.

The big one yet to be completed is the Walnut and Bacon Street intersection, which the Department of Public Works is already moving ahead on. That project will gobble up as much as half of the MathWorks mitigation money, especially when a you-know-what (consultant) gets brought in to address engineering complexities. That intersection project was thought to be about a $60K one back in the day, but in today’s climate many years later the cost has ballooned.

walnut st bacon st intersection

 

Even after that project, plenty of money would be in play for other projects, including open space ones such as a trailhead improvement for the Town Forest at Rte. 9 (maybe a $5K project() and possible boardwalk connections between north and south Pickerel Pond trails. Trail improvements could make it easier for MathWorks employees to access the Cochituate Rail Trail and Natick Center. The key is to ensure the projects have some relation to MathWorks, which is being kept in the loop on all this.

Improvements that could help MathWorks employees who cycle or walk through the Rte. 27 and Bacon Street intersection could also be a possibility, and the DPW has improvements planned for this summer. More upgrades could come as part of the big Rte. 9 and 27 intersection overhaul that’s in the works, too.

Iarossi was looking to take the Planning Board’s pulse on all this, and the feedback was positive.

Among those in support, as long as the projects truly tie in to MathWorks, was Planning Board member Andy Meyer.

“The fact that essentially we have leftover money, I think those are great proposals, totally justifiable,” he said. “Gosh I’d like to get started on all this as soon as we possibly can.”

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First Church Natick kicks off Capital Campaign

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First Church Natick, that iconic 225-year old congregational church in Natick Center, has launched its Faith in Our Future Capital Campaign with the goal of raising $750,000 toward a $1.5 million restoration and renewal project.

First Congregational Church, Natick

The congregation plans to refurbish the building’s 1876 steeple and refresh indoor spaces. Church leadership hopes the updates and enhancements will lead to increased use of the building’s large worship space and fellowship hall, especially for performance, educational, civic and social events in the community.

The balance of the project costs will be offset by a refinance of the church’s mortgage and a withdrawal from the church’s endowment fund.

Known as Natick’s front porch, you can’t miss the historic structure. Currently Adirondack chairs just outside the massive front doors beckon passers-by to take a break; Natick artist-in-residence Amy Adams’ side-lawn installation “Am I Here” encourages conversations about support and treatment of those with mental illness; and last month hundreds of purple and red flags fluttered in the breeze to bring awareness to the opioid epidemic.

While work to preserve the safety and integrity of the church steeple was begun early last spring in advance of fundraising, the bulk of the improvements will center on the second-floor sanctuary, the church’s large worship space. A design team, composed of 13 church members and architect Ann Vivian of GVV Architects, plans for updated lighting, enhanced audio/visual capabilities and improved internet connectivity for virtual programming. New flooring in the space will improve the sanctuary’s acoustics. A redesign of the chancel, or raised stage area, will create improved accessibility for program participants and leaders alike.

FCN Interim Pastor Jonathan New says new lighting, fresh flooring, upgraded sound and ramps for the chancel “will make the sanctuary much more useable and also strongly convey the kind of welcome and inclusion that we value as a congregation, specifically for persons who are mobility-impaired. This work will allow us to live into our full embrace of them as worshipers and worship leaders to make that aspect of church life as available to them as anyone. That’s what this congregation has aspired to do and to be with regards to different kinds of people whom the church has historically forgotten or sometimes consciously omitted.”

FCN’s Faith in Our Future Capital Campaign will include visits to about 100 church member households and direct outreach to key community stakeholders. It will conclude in November with a culminating celebration at the church. Work on the interior projects is likely to begin in summer of 2022. Community members who would like to contribute to the campaign or inquire
about the use of space at FCN may contact the church office at: admin@firstchurchnatick.org or (508) 653-0971.

Learn more about the project here.