A Franklin Park For All
Take Back the Meadow
Franklin Park’s golf course has consumed 142 acres of public land since 1896. This proposal returns every acre to the people it was taken from — as housing, ecological restoration, and a park that actually works.
Version 3.15 · May 2026 · trainsbikesbus.com
The Historical Record
Olmsted designed this for working people.
Then golf happened.
Franklin Park was Frederick Law Olmsted’s largest and most ambitious project — bigger than Central Park. He called it his masterwork. The city carved a golf course into it eleven years after it opened.
130 Years, Event by Event — a timeline of exclusion
Olmsted commissioned
Boston hires Frederick Law Olmsted to design the Emerald Necklace — a connected chain of parks from the Back Bay Fens to the Blue Hills. Franklin Park is conceived as the crown jewel: the largest, most ambitious piece.
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site — NPS ↗Olmsted’s design completed
The Country Park opens — 527 acres of pastoral meadow, native woodlands, and open water. Free to all. Olmsted describes it as his most important work: designed specifically for factory workers and immigrants who could not afford to leave the city for fresh air and open land. [1][2][4]
Emerald Necklace Conservancy — Franklin Park Overview ↗Golf course imposed — against Olmsted’s explicit objection
Just eleven years after the park opens, the city converts the Country Park meadow into a 9-hole golf course — a mile long, three-quarters of a mile wide. Olmsted, still alive at the time, objects. The city proceeds anyway. This is the original act of exclusion: a public meadow redesigned for a private sport. [8]
Frederick Law Olmsted Papers — Library of Congress ↗Circuit Drive becomes a through-road
Olmsted’s carriage loop — designed for a slow, contemplative circuit of the park — is widened and opened to automobile through-traffic. The park is now physically divided. Roxbury residents to the north and Dorchester residents to the south face a road crossing to reach one another’s side of the park.
Boston Parks & Recreation — Franklin Park History ↗Redlining, disinvestment, and demographic shift
Federal redlining maps designate Roxbury and Dorchester as “hazardous” — denying mortgages, driving white flight, and concentrating poverty in the neighbourhoods directly adjacent to the park. Park maintenance budgets fall. The golf course continues to receive resources. The surrounding community does not.
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America — University of Richmond ↗Course expands to 18 holes over community objection
The Devine Golf Course expands from 9 to 18 holes. Community groups from Roxbury and Dorchester formally object — the expansion is approved anyway. The public record from these hearings is a quiet document of who Boston decided to listen to. [3]
Boston Parks & Recreation — Devine Golf Course ↗Franklin Park Action Plan
Boston commissions Reed Hilderbrand and Mass Design Group to develop a vision for the park. Their report recommends removing Circuit Drive from through-car traffic and restoring parkland character. The golf course lease continues unchanged. For the first time in decades, the city acknowledges something is wrong. [7]
Franklin Park Action Plan — City of Boston ↗Lease renewed. Nothing changes.
The golf course lease is renewed. Boston has made no public commitment to convert or phase out the course. 130 years after the original exclusion, the same 142 acres remain fenced off. The same neighbourhood continues to be told it will have to wait.
Devine Golf Course Lease — City of Boston Parks ↗“The park was designed for the people who lived next to it. It has never served them.”
130 years is a long time to wait. The case for change doesn’t rest on what might be possible — it rests on what was always intended, and what was taken.
What We See Today
The same exclusion.
A different wrapper.
Who plays the Devine Golf Course vs. who lives nearby
How Franklin Park’s 527 acres are used today
Land use: golf course vs. accessible park
Foregone property tax revenue
Municipal golf courses pay $0 in property tax. Franklin Park For All would generate $46.2M+ annually from 9,240 housing units — cumulative impact shown below.
Revenue grows at 2%/yr with property value appreciation. Source: Boston Assessing Dept / comparable parcels.
Who plays golf vs. who lives here
National golf demographics vs. Roxbury + Dorchester residents.
Daily golfers on a busy summer day
Observation-based estimate. The City of Boston has never published formal attendance data on course users. Walk past the first tee on any given afternoon: the mismatch with the surrounding neighbourhood is immediate.
250 users per day across 142 acres = 1.76 people per acre. Boston Common draws 50,000+ on the same summer day. The course has no formal visitor count because the city has never required one — an accountability gap that makes the land’s real cost nearly impossible to audit.
Boston Parks & Recreation — Franklin Park ↗Roxbury + Dorchester residents who are Black
The two neighbourhoods that border Franklin Park are among Boston’s most diverse. The golf course serves a fraction of 1% of them.
Golf in the US is played by a population that is 77% white and skews high-income. The structural mismatch between who lives here and who uses this land is not accidental. Devine Golf Course sits in one of Boston’s most Black and Brown neighbourhoods and has historically served neither.[10][9]
US Census Bureau — Boston QuickFacts ↗Acres behind fencing or cart paths
For five months of the year — November through March — most of the Devine Golf Course is functionally closed, sitting empty and inaccessible on public land.
Unlike a park, which stays open 365 days a year, golf infrastructure is purpose-built for the sport alone. The fencing, cart paths, and maintained turf actively exclude residents for nearly half the year. On the days it is open, public access is limited to cart paths at the course’s periphery.
Boston Parks — Franklin Park Golf ↗Daily park visitors the new design could serve
The adjacent Playstead and White Stadium area already draws thousands daily. The restored 142 acres would multiply that.
Franklin Park Zoo alone draws 230,000+ visitors per year — 630 per day on average, peaking much higher in summer. A restored meadow with active programming, markets, and community space could easily draw 5,000–20,000 people per day within five years of opening, based on comparable urban park transformations.
Franklin Park Zoo — Annual Attendance ↗Of Americans who golf at all
Golf is among the least participatory activities in the US. In urban, low-income neighbourhoods the figure falls below 1%. A public asset built for 6% of the country serves almost nobody in Roxbury.
The National Golf Foundation reports ~25 million American golfers in a country of 330 million — about 6%. Among Black Americans the participation rate is roughly 3%. In low-income urban communities it approaches 0%. Boston is dedicating 142 acres of public land in a majority Black and Brown neighbourhood to a sport its residents don’t play.[9]
National Golf Foundation — Golf Industry Research ↗Property tax paid on 142 acres
Municipal golf courses are exempt from property tax. If converted, this land would generate millions annually — revenue the city currently forfeits every single year.
Under Massachusetts General Law, city-owned recreational land is fully exempt from property taxes. The Devine Golf Course pays nothing. Our proposal’s 9,240 housing units and commercial space would generate an estimated $46.2M+ per year in property tax—funding schools, roads, and city services the surrounding neighbourhood currently lacks.[43]
Massachusetts DOR — Property Tax Exemptions ↗Boston ranks #6 nationally for park inequality — worst in the Northeast
The Trust for Public Land ranks Boston 6th worst nationally for park access inequality by income.[42] Lower-income residents have dramatically less usable green space. 142 acres sit locked behind a golf fence two blocks away.
The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore index measures park access by income across the 100 largest US cities. Boston’s lower-income residents have less than half the park acreage per capita of higher-income residents. In this context, 142 acres of locked public land in Roxbury isn’t an anomaly — it’s a defining example of what that inequality looks like on the ground.
Trust for Public Land — ParkScore Index ↗Scale check
Daily visitors — golf course today vs. the world’s great parks
Average daily visitors across comparable urban parks.[33] Franklin Park For All, at full build-out, would sit in the same league as Prospect Park and Vondelpark — parks that define entire city districts.
By the numbers
Daily visitors: golf course today vs. Franklin Park For All
Every bar is labeled. Red = golf course today. Green = projected daily visitors to Franklin Park For All. The golf course is closed November through February.
100-year projection
The cost of doing nothing
vs. the return on doing something.
Cumulative fiscal value to the City of Boston. Golf course: -$580K net drain per year, no growth, no upside. Franklin Park For All: $101M/yr at build-out (year 5), growing 2% annually as property values, rents, and park activation compound. Hover any bar to see the numbers.
Golf course · 100 years
-$58M
cumulative net fiscal drain
Franklin Park For All · 100 years
+$41.3B
cumulative combined value
Figures in nominal dollars. FP For All assumes 5-year build-out, $101M/yr base annual value (property tax + commercial + solar + park activation + ecosystem services), 2% annual growth. Golf course assumes continued -$580K/yr net fiscal position with no appreciation.
Scale Check
142 acres is not
a small number.
Boston has been told the golf course is a modest amenity. Here is what 142 acres of public land actually looks like when measured against parks and places the world already loves — and what it becomes when we use it right.
This is not a small parcel tucked behind a highway. It is land larger than Boston Common and the Public Garden combined. Larger than Vondelpark. Nearly the size of Parc de la Villette. Already owned by the public. The only thing required to use it better than a golf course is the decision to do so.
The True Cost of Inertia
What this golf course
actually costs.
Golf presents itself as a quiet amenity. What it is, in practice, is one of the most resource-intensive, chemically dependent, ecologically damaging land uses in urban America — subsidised by public money on public land.
The GCSAA reports the average 18-hole municipal maintenance budget at $999,585 in 2023 — and that doesn’t include capital expenditures, administration, or the opportunity cost of the land itself.[35]
The USGA’s Northeast regional data puts water use for an 18-hole course at 12–25 million gallons annually.[36] At Boston Water & Sewer rates, that’s $240,000–$260,000 in water alone.
Approximately 250 golfers benefit on a peak summer day.[6] For a course that costs over $1 million per year to maintain, that works out to roughly $11 per golfer-visit in public subsidy.[5]
The course generates no meaningful benefit for Roxbury and Dorchester residents — no jobs pipeline, no environmental return, no cultural programming, no affordable access.
$1M+ in annual maintenance divided by ~250 peak-day users. Every round of golf at Devine is subsidized by Boston taxpayers — including the 99% of Roxbury and Dorchester residents who never set foot on it.
Golf participation in low-income urban neighborhoods is below 1%. The primary users of this course drive in from wealthier ZIP codes. Public land in Roxbury is being managed for visitors, not neighbors.
A fully built-out Franklin Park For All would generate an estimated $46.2M annually in property tax from 9,240 new mixed-income housing units — revenue that currently doesn’t exist because this land sits off the tax rolls entirely.
The golf course was imposed in 1896. For 58 years beforehand, this was open meadow — exactly what Olmsted designed. The “tradition” of golf here is younger than the tradition of public green space it replaced.
Golf Course: Annual costs breakdown
Franklin Park For All: Annual benefits
The Other Wounds
The golf course isn’t
the only thing wrong.
Franklin Park has a second wound, and it runs right down the middle of it. Circuit Drive — the main road bisecting the park from Forest Hills to Blue Hill Avenue — cuts the park in two. With only two crossings along its entire length, it functions as a wall as much as a road. You can be standing fifty feet from a meadow on the other side and face a genuine question of how to get there safely.
Then there’s the maintenance infrastructure — the irrigation system, the chemical storage, the cart barn, the clubhouse — all of it occupying park land, built for the exclusive use of a sport that most of the surrounding community has never played and cannot afford.
Flip any card below to see what each problem becomes when the course is removed.
The Park vs. The Course
- Circuit Drive through-traffic bisecting the park
- Chemical lawn maintenance, fertilizers & pesticides
- Cart barn occupying public park land
- No public bathrooms along the route
- Seasonal closure — dark 5 months a year
- 80 acres of restored wildflower meadow & forest
- Year-round trails — open 365 days, no seasonal closure
- 8 solar-powered public bathrooms along the route
- Community farm, food forest & cultural pavilion
- 9,240+ mixed-income homes at the park perimeter
- 20.1 MW solar + geothermal — zero fossil fuel hookups
- Stormwater wetlands restoring the natural watershed
CLICK ANY CARD TO FLIP
Circuit Drive today
A road bisecting the park from Forest Hills to Blue Hill Ave. Cut-through traffic. Drag racing. Driving around it takes 1–3 extra minutes. It costs the park everything.
Flip to see what changesA green promenade
Remove through-car access entirely. Convert the roadway to a wide multi-use path — pedestrians, cyclists, and rollers. The asphalt becomes a tree-lined promenade. The park becomes one unfragmented 527-acre space, the largest urban park addition in Boston since the Emerald Necklace was completed. Boston has already done this at the Riverway and Jamaicaway. Other cities have given back loop roads to cars in 2018. Boston can do the same.
↩ Flip backThe equity test
The current reroute proposal sends displaced car traffic down Humboldt Avenue and Seaver Street — predominantly Black and Latino residential neighborhoods. That is not an acceptable answer either.
Flip to see what changesNot just closing a road
Closing Circuit Drive only works if Boston invests simultaneously in Blue Hill Ave and Seaver Street as proper pedestrian-priority boulevards — not as suburban overflow routes. The suburbs driving through the park were never owed that route. The neighborhoods that live beside it deserve streets that serve them, not streets that serve through-traffic.
↩ Flip backThe Bear Dens
1912 granite enclosures, fenced off and crumbling on Walnut Street — the north edge of the park, one of its most accessible thresholds. No entrance. No ramp. No reason to stop.
Flip to see what changesA gateway for everyone
The Bear Dens granite is reborn as a monumental arch at the Walnut Street entrance — the north gateway to the park. Through it, a grand staircase and accessible ramp rise from street level to park grade — solving the elevation barrier that has excluded wheelchair users and stroller-pushers for a century. Retail and cafés at grade, residential floors above, a glass community pavilion cantilevering over the park at the top. Stone that witnessed 130 years of exclusion becomes the threshold of a park that belongs to everyone.
↩ Flip backAir quality + public health
Roxbury has some of the highest childhood asthma rates in Massachusetts.[12] A significant driver: traffic — including cut-through traffic using parks and residential streets as shortcut routes.
Flip to see what changesThe body keeps the score
Quality green space reduces depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease.[11] Traffic noise and exhaust worsen all three. Roxbury and Dorchester residents don't have real access to Franklin Park as it currently exists. Healing it isn't just a quality-of-life issue — it's a public health intervention with measurable outcomes.
↩ Flip backThe Shattuck Hospital site
13 acres taken from Franklin Park in 1953.[41][39][40] Shattuck is closing, the building coming down, and the land's future is undecided. A once-in-a-generation chance to give it back.
Flip to see what changesHousing + park. Not either/or.
The street-facing Morton Street edge is a natural site for 25–30 story mixed-income towers — the largest single housing opportunity in this proposal. The park-facing interior returns to Heathfield meadow as Olmsted designed it. State-owned land means advocacy targets the Governor and EOHHS, not City Hall. Mixed-income housing with senior floors and childcare is a different ask from the failed BMC recovery campus — and a winnable one.
↩ Flip backScarboro Pond
Olmsted designed it as a centrepiece. Today it's eutrophied, choked with invasive species, and barely visible from any path. A body of water that should define the park is ignored by it.
Flip to see what changesA restored centrepiece
Invasives removed, native aquatic plantings established, a loop path that makes water central to the park experience again. Habitat for migratory birds, pollinators, and amphibians. A rain garden buffer filters stormwater before it reaches the pond. The centrepiece Olmsted always intended — alive, accessible, and free.
↩ Flip backZero public bathrooms
485 acres. Zero public restrooms. The golf clubhouse has the only toilets in the park — seasonal, locked when the course is closed, and inaccessible to anyone just using the park.
Flip to see what changesModern. Accessible. Everywhere.
Eight solar-powered pavilions dotted throughout — one near every playground, trailhead, and gathering area. Geothermal temperature control and mini-splits for warm months. Clean, well-lit, fully accessible year-round. Designed for parents with toddlers, new mothers, elderly visitors, and long-distance runners. A park without bathrooms isn't a park — it's a field people tolerate.
↩ Flip backThe Wilderness
Ellicott Dale — once Franklin Park's beloved picnic and gathering meadow — is now overgrown and inaccessible. No paths in. No programming. Decades of neglect have reclaimed what was once the park's social heart.
Flip to see what changesEllicott Dale restored
Accessible loop paths, picnic groves, and open lawn for community use. The overgrowth becomes a managed woodland edge — beautiful, not abandoned. Programming returns: summer concerts, community picnics, school groups, weekend markets. The social heart of the park, beating again.
↩ Flip backSevered from the Emerald Necklace
Franklin Park is supposed to be the crown jewel of Olmsted's Emerald Necklace. In practice it's cut off — Circuit Drive, the Arborway gap, and missing trail connections make it an island rather than a link.
Flip to see what changesReconnected to the Necklace
Close Circuit Drive, restore the Arborway pedestrian and cycling connection, and Franklin Park rejoins the Emerald Necklace as Olmsted designed it. A continuous green corridor from the Fens to the Blue Hills — walkable, bikeable, connected. Every investment in the park becomes more valuable when people can actually reach it from the rest of the city without a car.[22]
↩ Flip backThe Full Picture
What taking back 142 acres
actually unlocks.
Housing. Energy. Jobs. Food. Green space. Culture. Click any card for the full numbers.
The Perimeter
Buildings that belong to
the neighborhood.
Buildings sit primarily along the western edge (Forest Hills Street), with three larger mixed-use nodes at Walnut Street, Morton Street, and the Shattuck Hospital site.
Vertical community stack — every floor serves a purpose
A grand arched passageway at street level — civic scale, weatherproof, and lit at night. Market stalls line both sides. A dedicated protected bike lane runs down the center connecting Forest Hills station directly to the park entrance. Tap to flip back.
The first 8 floors above the arcade are intentionally non-residential — childcare at grade, vertical farming on floors 3–6[25], a maker space and co-working hub on 7, and a community hall with a rooftop terrace on 8 and 9. This is where the building earns its place in the neighbourhood.
15 floors of mixed-income housing — 60% and 80% AMI units alongside market-rate apartments. A dedicated health services floor at level 15. Co-working and small-office suites on 10–11. Views of the park begin here and improve with every floor.
20 floors of mixed-income housing with dedicated senior floors at 25–26 (ground-floor-accessible elevator priority). Every unit faces either the park or the city. Solar-integrated facade panels on south and east exposures from floor 30 up. Geothermal loop heating throughout.
The top six floors step back to create terraced community roof gardens — open to all residents, not private penthouses.[31] A weather and air quality monitoring station. A 500 kW rooftop solar array. On a clear day: the Blue Hills, Boston Harbour, and the full arc of the Emerald Necklace.
The granite that witnessed 130 years of exclusion becomes the threshold of a park that belongs to everyone.
The Bear Dens granite is reborn as a monumental arch at the Walnut Street entrance — the north gateway to the park. Through it, a grand staircase and accessible ramp rise from street level to park grade — solving the elevation barrier that has excluded wheelchair users and stroller-pushers for a century. Retail and cafés at grade, residential floors above, a glass community pavilion cantilevering over the park at the top.
Housing Yield Calculator
Drag the sliders — every number updates live
👤 What you get
A coherent new neighborhood with corner stores, coffee shops, and a daycare. Walking distance to the park, transit at your door.
🏛️ What Boston gets
Meaningful but small — adds 2,500–3,300 homes on land the city already owns.
👤 What you get
A familiar, neighborhood-scaled building. Park views from upper floors. The lowest-friction path to actually getting it built.
🏛️ What Boston gets
Easy approvals — no precedent issues. But fewer affordable units funded per acre. Boston gets a safe number, not a transformative one.
👤 Can you live here?
Public school teachers, nurses, baristas, MBTA operators — the people who make Boston work — can afford a unit here. Mixed-income means lasting access.
🏛️ What it does for the city
Cross-subsidy works at this rate without needing public subsidy. Market-rate units fund affordable ones internally. Boston gets affordability without writing a check.
👤 What it does for you
More affordable homes added in one project than Boston typically produces in a year. If you’re a teacher, nurse, or first-time homebuyer — a real shot at the city.
📉 What it does to rents
Crosses the threshold where Boston’s housing crisis measurably eases. Citywide median rents stop rising. Surrounding neighborhoods see real downward pressure.
☀️ Energy & sustainability
💡 What it means for your bill
Surplus power flows to surrounding streets. Existing Roxbury and Dorchester homes see lower electric bills — even if you don’t live in the new buildings.
🔌 What it does for the grid
Thousands of homes’ worth of clean power generated where it’s used. Reduces transmission losses, reduces grid strain at peak hours.
🏪 Commercial & park revenue
28 residential units/floor · 2.3 persons/unit · $5,000/unit avg annual property tax · figures illustrative
The outcome of four decades of politically managed failure. Not a market outcome. A policy outcome. Every hearing where the “neighborhood character” argument prevailed is in that number.[14]
Central Park in New York is surrounded by towers 20–50 stories tall. The park is fine. The buildings didn’t harm it — they made it the irreplaceable heart of the densest city in the country.[18]
The buildings occupy the western edge only — the same strip already defined by Forest Hills Street and the Orange Line. The park itself grows from 0 accessible acres to 527 unfragmented acres.
The land is already public. No eminent domain. No buyout. No displacement. The biggest obstacle to affordable housing in Boston — land cost — is already solved. The question is whether the city will use what it already owns.
“The city already owns the land. The only thing standing between 9,240 homes and the families who need them is the willingness to say yes.”
Boston has approved towers of this scale before — at the Seaport, in Kendall Square, along the waterfront. Those approvals benefited people who already had options. This one would benefit people who don’t. That’s the real courage argument: not whether the buildings are too tall, but whether Boston is willing to build them for the right people in the right place.
Inside the 142 Acres
A park that works
in every season.
The golf course’s deepest failure is its blankness. The park that replaces it needs to be alive in January as much as July — designed so every person who walks through the arcade immediately finds something for them.
HOVER OR CLICK TO FLIP ZONE CARDS
Great Meadow restored
The core of the park returns to Olmsted’s original pastoral vision — wide open lawn, native grasses, and a restored meadow edge. No fencing, no cart paths, no chemical management.
flip to see what changes →The restored meadow
Ellicott Dale and the former cart paths become a managed native meadow — beautiful, diverse, and carbon-sequestering. Accessible loop paths edge the meadow; the center is open and unfragmented.
↩ flip backHagborn Pond restored
The pond at the center of the park — choked by invasive species and cut off from the public by the golf course — is restored to its original ecological function as the park’s centrepiece.
flip to see what changes →A restored centrepiece
Native aquatic plantings, a rain garden buffer, and habitat for migratory birds and pollinators. A loop path makes water central to the park experience. The centrepiece Olmsted always intended.
↩ flip backEllicott Dale revived
The former wilderness area — overgrown and largely inaccessible — becomes a managed woodland edge with accessible paths, picnic groves, and programming.
flip to see what changes →The social heart
Accessible loop paths, picnic groves, and open lawn for community use. Programming returns: summer concerts, community picnics, school groups, weekend markets. The social heart of the park, beating again.
↩ flip backAdventure & fitness zone
A purpose-built active zone with fitness trails, climbing structures, and a permanent outdoor exercise circuit — designed to serve the community that already uses the Playstead.
flip to see what changes →Year-round activation
Fitness trails, outdoor gym equipment, climbing structures, and a multipurpose sports court.[32] Linked directly to the Orange Line entrance so it’s walkable from every direction.
↩ flip backVertical farm & food hub
150,000 sq ft of food production in building podiums and a dedicated food hub pavilion — providing fresh produce to the surrounding neighbourhood at subsidised prices.
flip to see what changes →Closed-loop food system
Year-round produce for Roxbury and Dorchester. Subsidised prices. Jobs for community members. A CSA program rooted in the neighbourhood. The farm at Franklin Park — making the park productive, not just decorative.
↩ flip backCultural grounds
A permanent outdoor performance venue, a community gallery pavilion, and a year-round market space — anchored by a new neighbourhood cultural centre at the Blue Hill Ave edge.
flip to see what changes →Culture returns to the park
Year-round programming: concerts, farmers markets, cultural festivals, outdoor cinema, school performances. The cultural centre becomes the community living room that Franklin Park has never had.
↩ flip backNative wildflower meadows peak April–June. School groups from across the district visit for habitat education.
The perimeter bike loop connects to the Southwest Corridor and Blue Hill Avenue protected lanes.
Weekly outdoor market at the cultural grounds — local food, crafts, live music every Saturday.
The restored pond and Ellicott Dale woodland edge become a migration stopover. Guided walks every weekend in April and May.
Boston Public Schools students from surrounding neighborhoods plant crops as part of their science curriculum. Each class adopts a row and harvests later in the year.
Fully fenced off-leash area near the Seaver Street entrance. Separate zones for small and large dogs, water stations, owner seating. Free, no permit required.
Children’s water play area adjacent to the restored pond — free and open seven days a week.
Evening concerts, film screenings, and community theatre in the cultural amphitheatre.
The vertical farm’s first harvest season supplies subsidised produce to neighbourhood residents at below-market prices.
A purpose-built pump track at the Adventure Zone — open to all ages, free hire helmets at the gateway building. The on-ramp to Blue Hills’ full trail network for kids who’ve never ridden off-road.
Dusk screenings on the Great Meadow lawn — programmed by the cultural centre with a focus on Black and Latino cinema. Bring your own blanket. Free admission always.
The cultural market grounds become a weekend food plaza — local vendors, rotating cuisines, a deliberately diverse lineup that reflects who actually lives here.
Annual harvest celebration at the farm hub — the replacement for every autumn event the golf course never hosted.
White Stadium and the park loop become a regional cross-country circuit for Boston Public Schools.
Guided nature walks through Ellicott Dale woodland edge — led by park naturalists and school volunteers.
The meadow and woodland perimeter become a natural cyclocross circuit in October and November — one of the only urban cyclocross venues in the city.
Lantern-lit trail walks through the woodland edge, carved pumpkin display on the Great Meadow, community costume walk. Franklin Park’s gothic woodland atmosphere, finally used.
Every BPS school within a 2-mile radius is guaranteed an autumn farm visit — the vertical farm, the composting loop, the restored pond. Science class without a bus trip.
The restored pond and surrounding path become a seasonal ice experience when temperatures allow — the only urban skating in this part of the city.
Annual light art installation throughout the park — making January a destination, not a gap. The lit canopy paths become the installation’s spine.
The ground-floor fitness centre in the gateway building operates year-round, heated and free. No membership. No barrier. Open before sunrise for the early shift workers.
Monthly indoor winter market in the covered undertrack space — warm, weather-protected, stocked with produce from the vertical farm year-round. Nothing closes in January.
Marked Nordic walking and snowshoeing loops through the woodland edge — one of the only places in Boston where winter makes you want to be outside rather than inside.
The cultural centre doubles as a warming space January through March — free wifi, free coffee, open every day regardless of weather. Not a charity. A park that works in February.
Franklin Park’s restoration includes a network of lit, canopied paths designed for year-round use. The tree canopy provides shade in summer, shelter in autumn, and a distinctive winter silhouette. Every path is designed to a specific width: two parents walking side by side, each holding a child’s hand, without either stepping aside.
That sounds simple. It is not how most park paths are designed. It is what this park insists on.
Trees aren’t decoration. A mature canopy reduces surface temperatures by up to 12°F, absorbs stormwater, filters air, and cuts noise. This isn’t a park amenity — it’s public health infrastructure for neighbourhoods that have been heat islands for decades.
A woman who runs after work in October doesn’t stop running because she’s unfit. She stops because the path goes dark at 5pm. A lit path — warm, designed, consistent — gives back the hours between sunset and bedtime to everyone who lives within walking distance of this park.
Most Boston parks are unusable after dark — not because of crime statistics, but because of perception. Darkness is abandoned space. Lit, canopied paths signal: this place is maintained, activated, and yours. That signal changes who uses the park, and how often.
Night shift workers leaving at midnight. Elderly residents who won’t walk without good light. Teenagers who currently have nowhere to go after 7pm. Parents who could take an evening walk if the path didn’t disappear into shadow. A lit park doesn’t just stay open longer — it belongs to different people.
Rooftop arrays plus building-applied facade panels. Powers the buildings and feeds the grid.
Your electricity bill runs roughly 40% lower than a comparable Boston apartment. The building generates more power than it uses in summer — the surplus flows to your neighbors.
All buildings served by a district geothermal loop beneath the park. 60% more efficient than air-source heat pumps in Boston winters.
No gas bill. Ever. Your heating and cooling runs on the same thermal loop as your neighbors, drawing heat 400 feet below the meadow. When it is -10°F outside, you are warm without burning anything.
Combined effect of solar, geothermal, park carbon sequestration, and mode shift. Equal to removing 7,600 cars from Boston roads every year.
Your entire year of commuting emissions, and your neighbors, is offset by what this park produces. The restored meadow sequesters carbon. The trees sequester carbon. Walking to the Orange Line instead of driving sequestered carbon.
No gas infrastructure in any building. Every unit heated, cooled, and powered by electricity from renewable sources.[27]
No gas leak risk. No carbon monoxide anxiety. No utility company raising your heating bill when natural gas prices spike. Every appliance runs on clean electricity.
Eight deep bore fields under the park, serving all buildings via a shared thermal exchange network.
The same ground growing the wildflower meadow is heating your home. Eight bore fields, 400 feet deep, run silently beneath the park root systems. They will work for 50 years without replacement.
Distributed battery storage provides 4 hours of peak demand coverage and grid stability for the Orange Line corridor.
When there is a grid outage, your building stays on for up to 4 hours. The hallway lights stay lit. Your food does not spoil. For seniors on the top floor, that is a life-safety system.
The restored meadow and rain garden network captures and filters 5 million gallons of stormwater annually, reducing combined sewer overflow.
Heavy rain in Roxbury overwhelms the sewer system and pushes sewage into the Muddy River. The restored meadow is a giant sponge. Every raindrop absorbed is one that does not flood your street.
Average annual utility savings per household versus a comparable gas-heated Boston apartment.
$800 per year is one month of MBTA passes. For a family in an affordable unit at 60% AMI, it is the difference between a bill that is manageable and one that is not. Energy savings are part of what makes affordable housing actually affordable.
Mobility
Every way in,
made better.
Franklin Park sits at the center of Boston’s most transit-underserved neighborhoods — and within reach of three rapid transit lines, a commuter rail station, and a corridor that once carried streetcars to the Blue Hills. The park didn’t fail because people couldn’t get here. It failed because there was nothing worth coming for. That changes now.
Forest Hills is already one of the busiest stations on the line — a major bus terminal, Commuter Rail stop, and the gateway to Jamaica Plain. It currently has no destination worthy of it on the park side. The new Forest Hills Hub changes that with a direct, covered, step-free arcade connecting the T platform to the park entrance. Rain, snow, stroller, wheelchair — it works for everyone, every day.
The E branch terminates at Heath Street — 0.8 miles short of Forest Hills. That gap has existed since 1985, when the city cut the extension as a “temporary” budget measure and never restored it.[21] Closing it would create a direct Copley–Huntington–Franklin Park connection, give Mission Hill and Roxbury Crossing a one-seat ride to the park, and complete a line that has been half-finished for forty years. The infrastructure corridor still exists. The political will is the only missing piece.
Truly protected lanes — not flex posts, not paint — connecting the park from four directions: Jackson Square along Centre Street; Forest Hills through the arcade spine; Blue Hill Ave from Mattapan; and Columbus Ave from Roxbury Crossing. Each connection is also a safe route for the surrounding neighborhood on any day — not just a park amenity. Franklin Park becomes the hub of Boston’s south-side bike network, the place every lane leads to.
Boston is currently building a dedicated bus lane on Blue Hill Ave — the highest-ridership bus corridor in the MBTA network, carrying over 37,000 riders a day.[19][20] That lane is the right first move. But a bus lane is not a destination. Buses can’t compete with rail on reliability, capacity, or weather resilience. They get stuck in traffic during snowstorms, break down more often, and move fewer people per vehicle. The bus lane buys time and builds the ridership case. The permanent answer is a train.
The undertrack opportunity
What goes beneath the rail
A 20–30ft wide ribbon of covered, controlled-light, weather-protected space running the full length of the corridor. Most cities treat it as dead space. The best cities treat it as their most underrated public asset. Flip each card to see what the design can do.
End-to-end cycling, protected from snow, rain, and traffic the full corridor length.
Boston winters kill cycling. A sheltered, protected route from Roxbury to Mattapan makes biking your default — not your emergency option. Model: Eindhoven’s Hovenring covered cycle path, Netherlands.
Independent shops, makers, food halls — arch rents naturally lower than street-front.
Lower rents make it the perfect incubator for first-time business owners from the surrounding community. New shops, not chain stores. Model: London’s Brixton railway arches — 70+ independent businesses.
Free summer cooling. No pool required. The rail above shades and cools the space below.
Urban summers keep getting hotter. Unstaffed splash pads are public health infrastructure. Model: NYC’s 60+ playground spray showers, open dawn to dusk.
Native plantings designed for low-light. The undertrack zone mimics forest understory.
Hostas, ferns, hellebores, Boston ivy — beautiful, low-maintenance, ecologically valuable. Model: Brooklyn Bridge Park’s plantings under its elevated paths.
The thing every Boston outdoor event lacks — a continuous covered corridor for all-weather programming.
Farmers markets, art fairs, community celebrations, food trucks — events that need rain insurance. Model: Druid Street Market and Maltby Street, London.
Somewhere to sit that doesn’t require buying anything. Boston has too few of these.
Critical for elderly residents, parents with strollers, and anyone who needs to rest. Model: Copenhagen’s strøget benches and lingering parklets.
A continuous canvas. The underside of a guideway is a mile of wall, owned by the public.
Commission local artists from Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester. The corridor becomes an outdoor gallery. Identity-building, not beautification. Model: Atlanta BeltLine’s living walls and mural program.
Charging hubs for e-bikes, e-scooters, and EVs powered by rooftop solar on the guideway deck.
Solar panels on the guideway deck power the charging stations below. The infrastructure that carries the train also fuels the last-mile connections at every station stop.
A dedicated Blue Hill Ave piece is coming.
A full design and planning exploration of the corridor — elevated rail, road diet, building-integrated stations, the green network from Roxbury to the Blue Hills — deserves its own article. What’s here is the version that fits inside a Franklin Park piece. The real story is bigger, and we’re writing it.
Proven Elsewhere
Three parks that show
this works.
None of this is experimental. Every element of this vision has been built, tested, and loved in cities that took their public green space seriously.
Central Park
843 acres of designed landscape surrounded by towers 20–50 stories tall. The buildings didn’t harm the park — they made it the irreplaceable heart of the densest city in the country.[34] Density and green space complete each other. The lesson for Franklin Park: height around the edges doesn’t threaten the interior. It funds it.
The BeltLine
A 22-mile loop of trails, parks, and transit converted from abandoned rail corridors through Atlanta’s most underserved neighbourhoods. The BeltLine has generated $14.2B in private investment, $23B in total economic output, and 91,000 jobs — with housing values within half a mile rising 17–26% without anti-displacement protections in place.[29][30] Corridor revitalisation works. The Franklin Park perimeter follows the same logic: infrastructure drives investment drives housing.
Cheonggyecheon Stream
In 2003, Seoul demolished an elevated highway over a buried stream and restored a 3.6-mile waterway through the heart of the city. Property values within 1km increased 30% in five years. A highway became a park. A golf course — built on top of a meadow — can just as easily become one again.
The Living Spine
Healing the scar.
Circuit Drive reimagined.
The Road Itself
Circuit Drive as a low-speed shared promenade. No through-traffic.
Wide Sidewalks
10–12 feet wide — two strollers side by side. Forest Hills to Blue Hill Ave.
The Utility Strip
Tree wells, light poles, hydrants. Snow plows push into the strip — not onto the walking surface.
Lit End to End
Continuous lighting. The park’s relationship with the neighbourhood changes at night — 365 days a year.
Pavilion Nodes
Glass pavilions — coffee, sandwiches, community space. 280° park views. Heated in winter.
Event Infrastructure
The spine closes to all vehicles for markets, 5Ks, festivals. Power and water at regular intervals.
The Arrival
A circular civic pavilion in inlaid natural stone, directly across from the zoo’s giraffe entrance. A swirl beginning with the Wampanoag at the center, spiraling outward through Boston’s immigrant history. The outer edge reads welcome in every language spoken in Boston.
People already do tai chi every morning at Franklin Park — in the parking lot. The Arrival gives them the space they already claimed.
Franklin Park For All
527 acres.
One park. One vision.
Sports Fields
Baseball fields with removable mounds doubling as cricket pitches — ending the turf conflict near White Stadium.
Outdoor Schools
BPS-backed outdoor daycare, pre-K, kindergarten year-round. Forest Days already piloted at Curley scales up here.
The Bike Hub
Protected bike lanes radiating from Franklin Park to surrounding schools. The difference between a field trip and a habit.
Places to Sit
Benches into rock faces, between trees, on stone walls. Franklin Park should have more seating than any park in the city.
Managed Mosaic
Some areas wild, others maintained for outdoor classes. Shelter nodes make a thunderstorm an experience, not an emergency.
The Park as Classroom
Nature literacy without a bus trip. Curley, Hennigan, Grew, Bates, TechBoston — all within reach.
The Path Forward
This doesn’t happen
without pressure.
The obstacles are real. The golf course has a lease and an organized user base that knows how to show up at hearings. The National Historic Landmark designation requires federal review. Boston’s political culture rewards incumbency — 250 golfers on a summer Saturday are more likely to call their councilor than the thousands who have never had access to that land. But the case for change has never been stronger.
Read the full proposal →Data & Sources
References
All statistics, claims, and historical facts in this article are sourced from official government documents, peer-reviewed research, and published journalism. Superscripts throughout the text link to the numbered entries below.