Open house to give peek at 3 Natick town seal designs being mulled

January 25, 2023 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

The Natick Town Seal Review Committee has scheduled an open house at the Morse Institute Library on Feb 5 (1:30-3:30pm) to share 3 town seal designs being considered and to give the public a chance to give feedback to the designer and committee members. You can also weigh in online.

natick seal designs — 3 town seal designs being considered

The Natick committee was created following 2020 Fall Town Meeting approval, and charged with “reviewing the history of town seals in Natick [and] proposing a new town seal after a public process.” The town’s current seal includes an image designed in 1951 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Natick’s founding as a Christian mission for Indigenous people. The image was adopted for the town’s seal in 1980, but has since been questioned for depicting an inaccurate understanding of Natick’s early history.

Town Meeting in the fall of 2021 via Article 36 got an update on the committee’s work and approved the appropriation of $11K to be used for design services related to a new seal.

This past fall the committee hired designer Sebastian Ellington Flying Eagle Ebarb, a Northeastern University associate teaching professor who previously served as the City of Boston’s design director for nearly 7 years. Ebarb’s Northeastern bio includes that “As a member of the Choctaw-Apache tribe of Ebarb, he has spent his years working to revive, hold and revere his native heritage.”

The committee last spring released a survey seeking to get public input on creating a new town seal that more accurately reflects the community. About 750 people filled out the survey, and results were released this past fall in a report.

Among its findings: “Briefly, many comments we received addressed the depiction of Native Americans on Natick’s current seal. Respondents highlighted their concerns about racist and offensive imagery and urged the committee to work with Indigenous
community members on any future depiction of Native individuals or symbols. Respondents also expressed concerns that
removing the current image would contribute further to erasure of both the history of the Christian mission founded in
Natick in 1651, and the much longer (and ongoing) Native American habitation of this area.”

Only 4% of respondents urged the committee to keep the current seal intact.

The committee and designer incorporated public feedback as well as additional research into the designs now under consideration.

The 3 designs each have their own emphasis (water and hills, leaves, a bridge, each with nods to history), though are open to interpretation. They are subject to minor changes based on feedback. And nope, the South Natick dam didn’t quite make it into the imagery.

The Town Seal Review Committee soon seeks to settle on 1 design to bring to Town Meeting this spring for approval.

Natick’s seal is used for official documents, but also serves as a town logo found on signs, uniforms, and more.

The designs are initially being presented in black and white so as to focus on the design itself. Expect colors to come later.

Natick to hold Pearl Harbor Day observance at library

December 4, 2022 by Admin 1 Comment

Michael Fabbri, from the Veterans Treatment Court of Middlesex County, will be the guest speaker at a Pearl Harbor Day observance on Dec. 7 from 6-7:30pm at Morse Institute Library.

The event is sponsored by the Natick Veterans Services Office, the Morse Institute Library
and the Natick Veterans Oral History Project.

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Pitches for 5 Auburn St. in Natick: From $1 to $2M & from autism center to affordable housing to housing village

November 20, 2022 by Bob Brown 2 Comments

The Natick Select Board now has 4 proposals in hand to mull for the possible sale and future use of 5 Auburn St., which includes a distinctive 3-story, roughly 14,000 sq. ft. brick building that has served as a school for most of its 100 or so years. The board has about 6 months to make what Town Administrator Jamie Errickson termed “a pretty big decision,” and will proceed with rankings, interviews, and maybe even field trips to applicants’ other projects in the weeks and months ahead.

The offers from those responding to the town’s request for proposals (RFP) for this property in the John Eliot Historic District range from $1 to $2M, and the uses pitched include an autism center, affordable housing, and duplexes. (Wow, not a single bio lab among them….well, the property is zoned for Residential General.).

Natick issued the RFP in early September for the property, assessed for about $3.8M by the town.

Fall Annual Town Meeting voted last year to authorize the Select Board to sell or otherwise transfer (“dispose of”) the 2.8-acre property at 5 Auburn St., which as we heard during Auburn Street RFP Committee meetings might look nice on the outside but needs lots of work inside to make it usable for most purposes (including Americans with Disability Act compliance). The selection criteria for the Select Board does include the extent to which a proposal preserves the existing structure and the open space along Eliot Street.

Changes to the property, which sits less than a half mile from the South Natick Dam park, would mark another big transition in this part of town in light of the Select Board’s recent decision to remove the spillway (aka, waterfall).

The applicants:

Grace Gable Manoirs: The applicant proposes using the existing building at 4 Auburn St., for a non-profit center where children will be evaluated for autism and receive services. The proposal includes a $1.3M bid for the property, and cites the applicant’s experience running schools, including the Bilingual Montessori School of Sharon. The applicant, Linda Chery-Valentin, cites in the proposal an earlier attempt to buy or lease the property. Separately, the applicant has proposed a condo development in South Natick at 50 Pleasant St., and is back before the Planning Board later this month with her latest proposal. The applicant also been involved in litigation with with town.
Natick Affordable Housing Trust: The bid here is for $1, though the Trust would actually issue its own RFP to partner with a developer “to build 23 units of age restricted affordable rental housing on the site, with adaptive re-use of the existing structures and preservation of the significant open space areas.” The Trust would contribute up to $600K in funding to the senior housing project, which would involve going through a friendly 40B process.
Trask: Trask is offering $2M for the property, which it seeks to redevelop as a housing village involving the existing property and a couple of new ones. Trask has developed many properties in town, and recently has been building a 2-unit property nearby on South Lincoln Street following a teardown. Trask proposes divvying the property into 3 lots—1 where the existing property stands that includes 3 units in the main building and 2 in the gym, then 2 of which would house new duplexes.
Metro West Collaborative Development: This non-profit community development outfit, which submitted by far the longest application, proposes a 32-unit rental opportunity for families earning up to 60% of the area medium income. It would put 21 units in a 3-story building behind the current 1, and have 11 units within the footprint of the current structure. Metro West cites its other affordable housing redevelopments, including at the West Newton Armory, and its ability to navigate funding sources from federal, state, and local entities. It would plan to partner with the Natick Affordable Housing Trust. Metro West has bid $100 for the property.

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Spires restored on South Natick church-turned-acrobatics school

November 15, 2022 by Bob Brown 2 Comments

The extensive work going on inside the former Sacred Heart Church at 28 Eliot St., in South Natick to transform it into an acrobatics and circus school is generally not yet visible to the public. But the replacement of once decaying spires on the front of the building in the John Eliot Historic District has been turning heads.

Jacob Skeffington of Eastern Acrobatics & Circus, which has worked its way through Natick Planning Board and Historic District Commission approvals over the past couple of years, says the business he co-founded is now in the process of executing those plans and aims to be done by spring. This includes restoration of roof, trims, siding, and decorative elements, like the spires, at the former church, shuttered in 2004 by the Archdiocese of Boston.

“The spires are certainly a big one. Not a lot of carpenters can do that kind of work anymore,” Skeffington says.

sacred heart church, Natick — Sacred Hearth Church, minus the spire on the left hand side, spring of 2020

28 eliot eastern acrobatic church spires — New spires in place

Fortunately for Eastern Acrobatics, master carpenter Joshua Oliver took on the job.

The spire restoration project began this April, with the first step involving lots of photos by drone and high-powered camera lenses, Oliver says.

“This allowed for analysis of the remaining spire and drawings to be produced.,” he said. “The drawings were incorporated into the permit application for the entire restoration and then used to make the two new copies.”

The copies were produced at a shop in Portland, Maine by carpenters Oliver, David Bernbaum, and Cris Clark, who knew each other from their time in the circus community in Montreal. They’ve known Skeffington going back almost 20 years as classmates at the National Circus School of Montreal.

“The original spires were massively built, using materials of a size and thickness that are hard to come by these days,” Oliver says. “Lamination rather than shaping was determined to be the way to go, using marine-grade adhesives and a lot of patience.

“The original spire was made up of seventy-two pieces, each of which was replaced by a composite piece made up of two to seven pieces glued together. Each new copy of the spire is made up of three hundred and eighty-eight pieces,” he said.

Having learned from the moisture-induced rotting of the original spires and attachment points, Oliver says the decision was made this time around to use polyurethane topside paint to prime the new spire pieces inside and out.

Production of the spire copies and the town’s permitting process for the project synced up, with everything coming together this fall.

It took 2 trips to transport the spire pieces from Portland to Natick. “Each spire weighs in at just over half a ton and the longest fully assembled pieces are a hundred and twenty eight inches long. Fully assembled, each spire is exactly twenty feet from bottom to top,” Oliver says, adding that installation took 2 weeks to complete (see more photos below, courtesy of Joshua Oliver).

Austin Lin, an acrobatics and circus enthusiast who has been backing the South Natick project, posted on social media: “One of my guiding principles is to leave things a little better than how they were found… whether it’s a person, place, or thing. In this case it’s the former Sacred Heart Church…”

Inside the building, impressive work is underway as well. Some 5,000 pounds of ModTruss rigging system gear has been installed from floor to ceiling by Jason Clemence with Performance Rigging Solutions.