By John Dieckmann
For the past 30 years, the 28-acre former UMass Field Station at 240 Beaver Street in Waltham has hosted the Waltham Fields Community Farm and several other nonprofit organizations. The property includes an office building, a boiler house, greenhouses, and sheds. Ownership has recently transferred to the city of Waltham, and as a result, significant change may be in the offing.
History of the UMass Field Station
The property is a portion of the 200-acre, mid-nineteenth century Cedar Hill estate that was owned by a successful business man named Samuel Dennis Warren, the namesake of the S. D. Warren paper company. Notice that current roads Beaver Street and Forest Street existed then, as well as the Fitchburg and Mass Central railroad tracks.
His daughter Cornelia Warren inherited the estate in 1901. She died in 1921, leaving the land in several major pieces. Seventy-five acres were left to the Girl Scouts, now the site of the present day Camp Cedar Hill on the north side of Beaver Street.
Twelve acres were donated to the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture. Fifty-eight acres were left to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be used by the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which became the UMass Field Station.
The balance of the land was given to the city of Waltham for schools, open space, and/or parks. The land given to the city is now occupied by some Bentley University dormitories and, along Forest Street, the Gann Academy, Veterans Memorial Athletic Complex, Forest Street Park, Cornelia Warren Park, and Waltham Woods.
The land for the Mass Agricultural College is located on either side of Beaver Street, the Field Station itself on the south side, and an additional 30+ acres on the north side, known as Lawrence Meadow, much of which is wetlands. The field station land is considered to be some of the best agricultural land in this region, and has been farmed continuously since the mid-17th century.
Boundaries of Cornelia Warren’s estate circa 1900.
Source: John Dieckmann
In the mid-1990s, UMass ceased to operate the Field Station as an agricultural college and research station. In 1994, the Green Rows of Waltham (GROW) community gardens was established on part of the field station land and shortly after that, the Waltham Fields Community Farm (WFCF) was established on a significant portion of the acreage.
WFCF operates as community-supported agriculture, selling shares of its output to more than 700 families, and donates a significant amount of produce to food pantries in Waltham and Greater Boston. In addition, various nonprofits have rented office space in the office building, including the Waltham Land Trust, GROW, WFCF, the Boston Area Gleaners, the Federation of Massachusetts Farmers Markets, and Grow Native Massachusetts.
Change was precipitated by the UMass acquisition of Mount Ida College when Mount Ida faced bankruptcy in 2018. In the wake of the acquisition, UMass determined that it had no further use for the field station and negotiated the sale of its land to the city of Waltham. A portion of the purchase price was financed with Community Preservation Act funds and a portion with regular city funds. The sale from UMass to the city closed on March 1, 2022.
The city has decided that the future use of the field station will be determined by a competitive bidding process on several parts of the property. As of this writing, requests for proposals are being developed and will be put before the Waltham City Council for approval.
It is not clear how much, if any, of the status quo (farming by WFCF, use of office space by the current nonprofit tenants) will continue into the future.
John Dieckmann is a director of the Belmont Citizens Forum and the Waltham Land Trust.
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