Winchester’s new Shore Road Sculpture Park almost finished

You’ve probably passed it a million times, whether by car or just on a stroll. But thanks to a federal grant, the grassy area at the end of Shore Road on Griffin Museum property is about to become a sculpture park.

That’s right. A sculpture park.

Arts Winchester Board President Hilda Wong-Doo said the idea has been floating around for a while, even back to 2019 when Winchester’s downtown area was designated as the Winchester Cultural District by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

But with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds running out by Dec. 30 of this year, the town in August requested organizations put together applications to receive a piece of the $300,000 in available money.

ARPA is federal funding aimed at helping communities recover from the economic blow dealt by COVID-19. Local nonprofits were invited to apply for funding.

Wong-Doo said Arts Winchester had tried to apply for grants in 2021, but the concept for a park was premature.

“We weren’t really ready,” she said. “We were still establishing the organization.”

The idea for a park, however, never went away. So when the Select Board asked for Community Needs Grant applications, Wong-Doo said it was easy to figure out what Arts Winchester would do.

“We put that together in five days flat,” she said, of the grant. “The idea was that we would create some benches in the area out of historic canal stones.”

That wasn’t all, however.

The application also sought to add two new pieces of art, which Wong-Doo said will come from artist Dale Rogers, whose two sculptures “Away” and “Bird in Hand” are next to Town Hall as part of the Riverwalk.

Arts Winchester board member Cynthia Randall selected two pieces, “Gulls” and “Vertical Water,” which will hopefully be in place in mid-January, weather permitting, with the former being purchased and remaining in place while the latter changes out.

“When we wrapped it all together, we stepped back and were like, ‘Oh, God, this is a great grant request!’” Wong-Doo said. “We felt really good about the grant. Whenever you come together to work on something like this, it’s never wasted energy. We knew if the town didn’t give it to us, we still had a good story to ask someone else.”

Of the 11 organizations to receive funds in late September, Arts Winchester ended up with a $33,600-piece of the ARPA pie.

There was only one hitch — the money had to be spent by Nov. 26.

Putting the plan together

While it was exciting to receive the grant, Wong-Doo said there were immediate issues to nail down, including the wetlands and the fact that the land was in a flood zone. Then there were the 30 abutter letters that had to be sent out and a 10-day wait from there.

“Elaine Vreeland was amazing!” Wong-Doo said, of the town’s conservation administrator. “She spent so much time and care with me. She made sure the ads ran and the letters went out.”

Wong-Doo said the project was sliced in half. That way, she added, the information required by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) could be put in two categories: A to do list that could be worked on while the 10-day hold was in place and of course, the documents the DEP needed.

“We had an amazing group of people working on this,” Wong-Doo said, Randall, landscaper Julie Khuen and Conservation Commission member Ann Storer as part of her team.

And let’s not forget the Department of Public Works team bringing in all the heavy stones, MC Landscaping leveling the ground, creating pathways and bringing in the sod and Nevola Irrigation and Lighting, which has been installing irrigation and wiring for future lighting on the site.

Getting to work

The work officially began Oct. 26, when ConCom organized a group of volunteers to clear out the brush and invasive plants along the wetlands, including Randall and her husband, Scott, as well as Storer, who worked late into the day beyond the planned hours.

Wong-Doo and her team also went out and started laying out what the park could look like using chairs, buckets, planks of wood and rakes.

On Nov. 5, the DPW moved 16 fieldstone boulders to the park site.

“They just had them at the DPW garage and transfer station,” Wong-Doo said, of the stones. “They were an amazing group of people. They moved all our stones in two hours. We even have a canal stone from the Middlesex Canal.”

Wong-Doo said she was on site Election Day when the stones were laid out. That night, she went back and found a woman sitting on the stones, eating a sandwich in the quiet construction zone.

“I was like, ‘That’s awesome!’” she said. “I felt like people like it. This spot is going to work!”

Over the last few weeks, Wong-Doo said sculptor Josh Ruder was onsite, working on shaping the benches. She said Ruder was expected back Nov. 20 to finish and cement the benches together.

Wong-Doo said Arts Winchester is already looking forward to an official opening of the park sometime in the spring. And, she added, Crista Dix and the Griffin Museum team are looking forward to collaborating to create new programs and events at the park during the summer.

Plants and lighting are also expected to go in next year.

“I’m just so excited about it,” Wong-Doo said, of the venture. “Cynthia and I keep pinching ourselves and we keep looking at it and saying, ‘We built a park!’ This has been a real community-led effort and the goal is for everybody to use it.”