Lexington’s Munroe Center for the Arts, a town-owned arts center on Massachusetts Avenue, is in the early stages of designing a “Summer Stage’ on its front lawn.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea — it’s creative, it’s engaging, it involves more of the community, it spreads an already strong arts community out even further and makes it more accessible,” Jeff Leonard, director of Lexington’s bicentennial band, told the Observer. “I’m 100 percent for it.”
But many neighbors aren’t. A few argue traffic and noise will increase, and the design conflicts with historic district rules.
“We moved here because we like the fact that this area is aimed to be preserved and what they’re proposing is far from that — it’s an incredibly ultramodern piece in front of a building you can’t even see once they put that up,” Doug McDonald, who lives next to the Munroe Center, said. “How could that be considered historically appropriate?”
The Summer Stage would include a 25 by 28 foot accessible stage. Christina Burwell, executive director of the Munroe Center, imagines hosting performances such as play readings, a capella music, dance performances, and its annual Lemonade Social, among other events. Attendees would have to buy tickets for some larger events, she added.
“We’re imagining it more like a coffee house,” Burwell said.
The imagined new stage would be larger than the temporary one currently on the front lawn and would be accessible for people with physical disabilities to access by either lift or ramp — that detail isn’t nailed down yet.
The project imagines adding about 2,200 square feet of brick-paved patio to accommodate 120 audience chairs. The patio would match the mid-century modern style streetscape in Lexington’s town center.
Covering the audience chairs and stage would be a canopy connected to 10-foot pylons. The canopy would have a peak height of 26 feet.
To enhance performances, there would be dark-sky compliant down-facing lights to the canopy pylons. The plans suggest adding outdoor speakers and a fence to separate the sidewalk from the front lawn.
The project would be funded by an unnamed donor.
The idea to build a summer stage was born somewhat out of necessity, Burwell explained. The Center has hosted an eight-week summer camp for about 30 years. At the end of the day on Fridays, campers put on some kind of performance. Those performances took place behind the building until last year.
The building is in the process of getting all new HVAC and an elevator to make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. When renovations began on the back of the building last summer, campers’ Friday performances were relocated to the small temporary stage on the front lawn.
Now, the Munroe Center wants to make the front lawn stage its permanent outdoor performance space.
The stage would be up and running between May and October, in accordance with the town noise ordinance.
“If we were going to have a puppet show, that might be a Saturday afternoon…if we are having a jazz trio, that might be a cool evening,” Burwell explained.
From November to April, the canopy and chairs would be stored away.
McDonald and fellow abutters, Clint Smith and Ethan Settembre, noted the noise of the small performances campers put on doesn’t bother them.
But they disapprove of the Summer Stage project as it’s currently designed.
“It’s going to be a permanent blight,” Smith, who lives two doors down from the Munroe Center, said.
His main concern? Location.
Smith thinks the performances the Munroe Center wants to host could just as well be held at the community center or Antony Park, which was designed like an outdoor French meeting space that can host concerts.
He and other neighbors worry that if the Summer Stage is built as it’s currently designed, traffic will increase, noise levels will increase, and people could get hurt due to overcrowding the sidewalk to view a performance on the lawn.
“As I think about what affects everyone in Lexington, not just the few of us where noise will be an issue, traffic will be impactful,” Settembre, who lives across the street from the Munroe Center, said.
Leonard, who was also Lexington High School’s jazz director for about 25 years, thinks abutters are suffering from “not-in-my-backyard syndrome,” or NIMBYism.
“They’re already living on Massachusetts Ave., there’s a busy school, you’ve got Muzzey Street down there, you’ve got the Munroe Center — It’s already a busy street, there is parking all up and down, there’s already accessibility on it, it’s never going to draw so many people that it’s going to create a problem,” he argued
Settembre disagrees.
“It’s easy to dismiss things you don’t agree with as being NIMBY…but as soon as people start going down to the next level, they realize, actually, there are meaningful issues here that need to be addressed,” he said.
Safety and noise aside, Settembre, Smith, and McDonald argue this type of renovation breaks the rules of the historic district.
“If I can’t put up a pavilion tent that looks like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, why can they do it? There is no historical basis for doing [this],” Smith said, comparing the project to the UFC fight cage on the White House lawn.
There are many rules home-owners in the historic district must follow. For example, residents can’t install vinyl shutters instead of wooden shutters, they’re limited in what color they can paint their house without approval from the Historic District Commission, and the list goes on.
As residents who live in the historic district do, the Munroe Center will have to appeal their renovation plan to the HDC for approval. The HDC will look at the project and determine whether the changes are appropriate. If the Commission finds the project is appropriate, it will issue the Center its blessing through a “Certificate of Appropriateness.”
Munroe leaders understand neighbors are upset and have tried to find middle ground.
“We’re all trying to be good neighbors, so it would not be a tap dance, we’re not going to be having a drumming group out front,” Burwell said. “Our goal is to figure out a way that everyone feels great about it and the neighbors’ concerns are not just heard, but reacted to, and mitigated, and taken into consideration.”
Originally, the Center planned to have enough seating for 150 people, but after hearing neighbor concerns, they reduced the number of seats to 120. One neighbor expressed concern to Burwell about how her friends and family will find parking if she wants to have a party on the same day as a performance. Burwell told the Observer the Center is going to work to have their schedule of performances distributed ahead of time so neighbors can be aware in advance.
“That’s been our goal all along — to hear the concerns and find the workarounds and compromises so it can work for everybody,” Burwell said.
But the neighbors LexObserver spoke with aren’t satisfied with Burwell’s efforts.
“What goes on currently already has impacts,” Settembre said, referencing Smith’s recollection of hearing drum practice happening inside Munroe from his house, among other instances. “In some ways, there already has been compromise by allowing many of the current things to continue to happen in the way that they’re happening.”
The Munroe Center’s next step in the process of advancing the Summer Stage project is to meet internally and come up with what a performance program might look like. Jumping ahead, Burwell hopes the Summer Stage project will be completed by next summer (2027).
“It’s a community arts center, and so the beauty of this small performance space is to allow up-and-coming musicians, or poets, or what have you, to have an opportunity from their community arts center, which just makes sense,” Burwell said.
I love this idea! Our daughter attended Munroe’s summer camp last year and will attend again this summer. At the end of each week, the campers held a performance for the parents/caregivers on the current small temporary stage. To Mr. Smith’s point, it would be impractical/overly burdensome to host these performances at Antony Park (each of us would have to pick up our children and shuffle them by car/foot/bike down the street or the camp counselors would have to manage getting dozens of young children down Mass. Ave…).
I also like the proposed design — I think it ties into the existing roof line beautifully and would be a wonderful addition to that area of town.
I produced and managed the former Munroe Saturday Nights performance series at the Munroe Center for some years, and my first career was in the performing arts. Maggie Scales’ article highlights the concerns of neighbors focusing on history (and to a degree on concerns about parking and interference with abutters’ social events). However I want to point out the immeasurable value of supporting the performing arts – and visual arts – in this town. The arts are what make our lives come alive. We cherish, affirm and celebrate our rich history, but we can not rest on it. We must create new elements of impact, contribute to the cultural life of Lexington’s residents in new ways – and the arts make those opportunities come alive.
Instead of focusing on concerns which I find overblown and oriented toward neighbors wishing to uphold their privacy, what would happen if we instead embraced the joy, celebration, and community building that public arts performances can bring? The proposal for this arts space is seasonal and occasional – not daily and year round. At a time when the leaves bloom and the town celebrates its blessings through its cultural life, let’s lift up the initiatives being taken by Ms. Burwell and the Munroe Center – because all of us, as Lexington’s citizens, are likely to both benefit and be able to enjoy the contributions of public performing arts at the Munroe Center!
As neighbors who care deeply about both the Munroe Center and our neighborhood, we want to clarify what many opponents of this proposal are actually saying.
This is not a debate about whether the arts are valuable. The Munroe Center is a treasured institution, and many of us support its mission, programs, and contributions to Lexington’s cultural life.
The concerns raised by neighbors have centered on historic preservation, land use compatibility, and the long-term character of a residential historic district — not, as some have suggested, on privacy or the inconvenience of scheduling social events.
Nor is the central issue whether a particular noise limit, parking plan, or seating capacity can be developed.
The fundamental question is whether a covered outdoor performance venue belongs on the historic front lawn of the former Munroe School.
For more than a century, that open lawn has served as the civic foreground of a contributing structure within the Munroe Tavern Historic District. Our concern is that transforming this space into a recurring performance venue with permanent infrastructure fundamentally changes the character of both the site and the surrounding residential neighborhood — in ways that no operational mitigation can fully address.
Reasonable people can disagree on that question. But it is important to recognize that opposition to this proposal is not opposition to the arts. It is a considered judgment that this particular venue, in this particular location, is not the right fit.
Matt and Kathy Hodges
Lexington is missing a trampoline park, but I worry that it is so high up that it may be dangerous if kids fall off! I hope it is seasonal and as temporary as the blooms on the pictured trees.
When my kids went to a Munroe summer camp not too long ago, the end-of-week performances were in the basement – and parents were just fine with that.
It feels as if the Monroe Center leveraged goodwill for a temporary front-yard space and is now looking to reward its neighbors by greatly expanding the scale and season for outdoor performances permanently.
Munroe stands alone in a residential zone that can’t accommodate the ~60 parking spots required to support 120 audience members. Presumably, many of the center’s existing 45 spots will be needed for performers and staff. It also sounds as if most of the lot will now be covered by structures, paving, and impervious surfaces, amplifying the effect of noise and possibly impacting abutters with stormwater concerns.
I don’t think anyone is denying the value of performing arts, but this seems wrong footed, especially when there are clear existing alternatives. (I don’t think anyone is suggesting transporting campers to a separate location for weekly performances.)
A permanent outdoor stage/pavilion would be a nice addition to the town, but I have to question the choice of location proposed for this. The objections of the Munroe Center neighbors seem reasonable. Maybe it’s possible to fit a stage and seating for 120 people, including the pavilion roof, between the front of the building and Mass Ave, but it would be a tight squeeze. And I have to think that it would make an already difficult traffic and parking situation worse during performances.
Many who live in a historic district in Lexington will know how challenging it can be to conform with the requirements of the Historic District Commission, even for things like windows and paint colors. It is hard to imagine that the proposed structure would meet with the commission’s approval. There must be a better location for an outdoor performance space.