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The Town of Sudbury acquired the Broadacres Farm property on Morse Road in 2019, and it’s now home to a proposed project that could add as many as two baseball diamonds to the property.
On Wednesday, November 19, Park and Recreation Director Dennis Mannone presented a design project to the Community Preservation Committee (CPC). If supported by the CPC and passed at Annual Town Meeting, the funds would cover the topographic survey, geotechnical evaluation, layout/grading/drainage plans, permitting, and bid-ready documents for the project to add fields and amenities to the site, as well as the adjacent Featherland park. The construction of the final project would need to get funding at a future town meeting.
There’s considerable ambiguity in the intent of the project. One clear priority is the addition of a 90-foot baseball diamond on the Broadacres land. The existing softball field at Featherland may be converted to a 60-foot combination field with synthetic turf, but no decisions on that change have been made. The presentation also contemplates additional parking on the Broadacres property, rearranged parking at upper Featherland, and paved walkways connecting all the fields with parking lots and the nearby Bruce Freeman Rail Trail.
During the CPC discussion, concerns were raised about the impact of changes to the softball field for the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School (LSRHS) softball program. Mannone acknowledged that it could be problematic for LSRHS if the softball field is removed. The softball field at Featherland is the only lighted softball field in the Town.
A project to fix the drainage problems on the softball fields at Frank Feeley field has been delayed for multiple years. Mannone has commented publicly that the Town will try to get that project out to bid in the months ahead. Should the Featherland project eliminate the softball field, there are currently no plans to add a softball field or add lights to an existing softball field. The Park and Recreation Commission is prioritizing Davis Field improvements and Broadacres Farm in the next few years as a result of the recent Field Needs Assessment.
The presentation also notes that the new baseball field at Broadacres would allow the Town to eliminate the baseball diamond at Haskell Field, convert it to a multipurpose rectangular grass field, and in turn give more rest to the heavily used Haskell Fields.
The design funding request is for $214,000. The construction phase of the project is loosely estimated at over $3 million, but that will almost certainly change once the exact final project is designed and key decisions are made. The design project still needs to make it through the CPC process and Annual Town Meeting in 2026.
Broadacres Farm — Something For Everyone
The Town of Sudbury has acquired quite a bit of land in recent years, but Broadacres Farm appears to be a hub of development activity.
Following the acquisition, a FlashVote was conducted to understand public preferences for the property, and then a design forum was held to dive deeper into uses of the land with residents.
The first major project was to add a parking lot and gathering area for the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail on the west end of the recreation parcel. That serves as a critical and popular access point for the rail trail.
The Conservation Department mowed a trail and developed a trail map for the conservation parcel of Broadacres, which sits to the south of Morse Road. An old, unsafe structure was demolished in the years following the acquisition, but a gravel parking area remains for convenient access. The work on this parcel was documented in a article from the Conservation Department. The trail guide is here.
Meanwhile, the parcel with the farmhouse and horse arena on the property has been included in Sudbury’s Housing Production Plan as a “study parcel.” The plan defines those as “In addition to the developable land, there are other Town-owned parcels with significant potential for housing development. However, these sites require further feasibility studies to assess their suitability. These studies could focus on factors such as environmental impact, infrastructure needs, and community considerations. Given the importance of these areas, a more extensive public engagement process will be necessary to ensure that the residents of Sudbury can help identify the highest and best use of the land, considering the interests of all stakeholders.” (Page 24)
While the property has received steady investment and improvements since the acquisition, the proposed field project before the CPC would be, by far, the largest investment since the acquisition itself.