Natick Report

Teens sought for Natick community read of Frederick Douglass’s ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July’

June 25, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

The Natick Historical Society invites local teens to participate in a socially-distanced community read of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

The read will take place on Thursday, July 2 at 6:00pm on the front steps of the Morse Institute Library. Each teen will have the opportunity to read 1-3 paragraphs from the speech, which takes about thirty minutes in total to read. The event will be filmed by local cable station Natick Pegasus.

Teen readers should email director@natickhistoricalsociety.org if interested in participating.

“It feels like an important time to try to pull this together locally – and especially to give teens a real opportunity to connect with Douglass’s words and the ongoing relevance,” says Historical Society Director Niki Lefebvre.

This event is inspired by the Mass Humanities Reading Frederick Douglass program.

I happened to be lucky enough last July, during a lunch break at my job working for the Commonwealth next to the State House, to take in a good chunk of the speech reading orchestrated by the Mass Humanities program. It was truly inspiring, as a mix of state muckety-mucks and people who just happened by, stood in line on a sweltering day, grabbed a section of the speech and one-by-one went up to the mic to read their part.

Frederick Douglass speech reading in Boston, 2019

Natick Historical Society’s live event is open to the public, but they’re not really encouraging a big crowd in light of health concerns. Those reading will wear masks when not reading, and will be socially distanced. The focus will be more on sharing the recording.

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Log-gone it: South Natick Dam’s log has disappeared

June 24, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

The water is flowing freely at the South Natick Dam, no longer impeded by that pesky log that sat atop it during the winter and only recently slid part of the way down.

Reports of the log’s presence go back to at least mid-December, and #logwatch surfaced on social media.

Was it pushed? Did Mother Nature do its thing? Did the fish join forces?

Perhaps we’ll never know, but we’re open to your theories and stories in comments below or at natickreport@gmail.com

south natick dam log — Log-free spillway at South Natick Dam

log at south natick dam fishing — Where the log stood as recently as June 6

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Natick going big time al fresco with expanded & artsy outdoor dining plan

June 23, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

Even as the state has given restaurants the go-ahead for indoor dining, Natick is moving ahead with plans for four new temporary outdoor dining areas along Main Street and Washington Street.

James Freas, the town’s community & economic development director, will present on the plan at Wednesday night’s Natick Board of Selectmen meeting (June 24). Safety and health officials have already given the plan a thumbs up.

“The four locations identified in phase 1 are intended to serve restaurants in the adjacent buildings. In each case, the Town will provide concrete and steel barricades that will serve to protect restaurant patrons from passing traffic. The restaurants are responsible for providing tables and chairs as well as operating/maintaining the spaces to keep them clean and compliant with COVID 19 restaurant requirements,” according to a document describing the plan.

Restaurants such as Comella’s, Agostino’s, Lola’s and Java’s Espresso Bar & Cafe are among the establishments along these stretches.

The next phase of the expanded temporary outdoor dining plan will add designated pick-up locations, consider partially closed streets, and work non-restaurant businesses into the mix.

Community & Economic Development has also scored a $5K grant to support a public art component to the temporary outdoor dining and business set-up.

More: Next up for Natick outdoor dining: Trend Pure Asian Cuisine, more Buttercup

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Night Shift Brewing, Level99 eye Natick Mall for ‘Willy Wonka meets Dungeons & Dragons’

June 22, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

The Natick Mall in early 2021 seeks to welcome Night Shift Brewing and Level99, which will join forces to offer an interactive “world of challenges” designed to get people off their butts to solve physical and mental games while enjoying food and beverages.

The remnants of Sears, whose 180,000 sq. ft. went dark in Natick Mall at the start of 2019, continue to be erased and replaced with anything but old-fashioned retail businesses. Sports bar/arcade Dave & Busters arrived first, about a year ago. The Natick Planning Board this past week heard a pitch from the mall and its partners about Level99, which looks to take mall amusements to a whole new level (though the meeting was really just about the signage).

Update (6/14/21): Read our opening day review

Level99 is spearheaded by Matt DuPlessie, whose work through a company called 5 Wits you might be familiar with if you ever visited the now-defunct TOMB interactive space in the Fenway or the 20,000 Leagues or Espionage adventures at Patriot Place in Foxborough. Now DuPlessie & team, via engineering firm Box Fort of Norwood, are envisioning Level99 in 48,000 sq. ft. on the second level of the Natick Mall, which has been looking for non-apparel-based tenants for that space in re-imagining itself. Box Fort’s clients include museums and theme parks, to give you a sense of what you might be in for with Level99.

Level99 is a plan 4 years and $10 million in the making, according to DuPlessie.

The concept, of which a mock-up was shown at the meeting, would include 43 separate rooms, each clustered into small groups and featuring different games that groups of 2 to 6 people will have a few minutes to try to win. You might have to put black and white tiles together in a certain pattern, avoid stepping on “lava” as you solve a puzzle, or sequence colors and sounds, like with the old Simon game. DuPlessie described a diverse collection of themes, from ancient caves to modern art to a candy factory. The rooms will turn red and a buzzer will sound if you fail (you can try again).

Some games will be more public, or arena-like, with the opportunity to compete vs. others or to just spectate. Seventy-plus pieces of art, including works from local artists, will decorate the space and double as items in a scavenger hunt.

The idea is that you’ll pay $20 for an RFID wristband that will give you access to the game rooms. In all, there’s about 30 hours of play available to people.

Level99 mockup — Some Level99 challenges will be physical

DuPlessie, who began his career managing theme park projects in Florida, said that Level99 borrows heavily from video game mechanisms that people love to play on smartphones and computers, and transfers it to the physical world. He emphasized it is not a place to play video games or walk around in virtual reality goggles.

“This is get your rear off the couch, get up, get active, get into the space and play,” he said.

While this all might sound like fun, DuPlessie said partnering with Night Shift, the state’s #2 best-selling craft brewery, is what will help lure more people to the venue, entice them to stay a while, and encourage them to revisit. The target audience is young adults, say ages 21-39, but expect some hours that will allow younger participants, too.

For those of drinking age, a taproom somewhat separated from the fray will be accessible. For those who want to soak in the experience while eating and drinking, tables will be located in the middle of things.

Word of this Night Shift project comes on the heels of the brewery scrapping plans to open its “second ‘forever home'” in Philadelphia, a project that would have cost at least $10 million and was 4 years in planning. “It wasn’t meant to be. The COVID-19 pandemic shook our business to the core, and obviously almost everything outside of it. We’re lucky that we’re still in operation and able to see ourselves coming out of this crisis intact,” the owners wrote on their website in May.

Who needs Philly when you have Natick—plus Everett and Boston—anyway?

Back to the overall Level99 concept. Planning Board member Julian Munnich’s reaction to the plan summed things up nicely: “It was bound to happen, Willy Wonka meets Dungeons & Dragons.”

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Don’t space on this: You have ’til June 30 to comment on Natick’s draft open space plan

June 21, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

Communities are supposed to refresh their open space & recreation plans every 7 years to keep in good standing with the state and qualify for possible grants to fund everything from water clean-ups to new playground gear. Natick’s a little behind in getting its new Open Space & Recreation plan formalized (its last one is from 2012), but it’s close.

You can check out the draft (embedded below) and comment on it between now and June 30.

It’s an interesting read not only about open space and recreation, but a good catch-up on town demographics and history, too.

The report waxes poetic in parts: “Heading east toward South Natick village, the views to the south of the Charles River and the large undeveloped expanses of woodlands on the opposite shore are exquisite, topped only by the turn down past the historic Bacon Free Library and the South Natick Dam, where the Charles River cascades over the falls and under a historic stone arch bridge, as canoeists and a variety of birds share the water.” (Didn’t see any mention of the possibility of Natick scrapping the dam, as neighbors and visitors fear could happen.)

The report acknowledges that there isn’t a lot of land in Natick to play with these days, even though needs are increasing for resources such as new or at least refurbished playing fields. Meanwhile, the town looks to protect various wildlife species in jeopardy due to development.

The town also seeks to improve connectivity among its trails, even as the system blossoms with the emergence of the rail trail. What’s more, it sees a need to better promote, through signage and other means, the open space opportunities that exist to residents and visitors, including those with accessibility challenges. Pocket parks, better cycling opportunities (road and mountain), and pickle ball courts are among other interest areas cited in the draft plan.

Download (PDF, 16.08MB)

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