When returning to Lexington after time away, I learned that the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection had received a request for an appeal to the Lexington High School’s order of conditions. To me and many others, this is great news. Bloom, or as I call it “The Palace in the Park”, should have never been proposed on this environmentally sensitive land. Bloom would destroy our large center open space that has served all Lexingtonians for over a century. Its connectivity to the rest of our center playground is a vital part of our large contiguous open space. This land was gifted to all Lexington’s citizens by Augustus Scott in 1915 exclusively for “parks and playgrounds”. It’s truly a Town treasure.
The land is a flood plain hosting various wetlands that serve as critical protection to land susceptible to flooding. I’ve lived within a block of these fields for over 77 years. I’ve seen flooding many times.
While chairing the Town’s building committee in the nineties, during the renovation of the present High School, we considered use this land but quickly rejected it for both environmental and functional reasons.
The Bloom proposal, a sixty-foot-high masonry monster, has been a terrible plan since its conception over 3 years ago. Lexington has been coerced into accepting it because better alternatives were not seriously debated. SMMA, our designers, offered a very viable plan, C6, back in 2024. It was never discussed in public. It would have stayed off our park, avoided all wetland impacts, avoided Article 97 protected land and delivered much needed classrooms two years before Bloom could.
From the beginning, Bloom was forced upon us to the point people thought it was “too big to fail”. Political pressures were unduly applied.
The courage of the citizens who are challenging it should be applauded. We, now, have a chance to do the right thing for Lexington’s future citizens. Open land built upon is lost forever. The proposed replacement fields on the other side of Bloom will not offer the large connected open space we all now enjoy.
It’s never too late to do the right thing. Please, Lexington, do the right thing.
Peter Kelley
Thank you, Peter. It was disheartening, and infuriating, to see town counsel make an ad hominem attack on the petitioners. I hope the Select Board will chasten them for it. They work for us, and should be reminded of that.
The project team, the town, the Conservation Commission, the state legislature, and the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs did already consider the wetlands and open space for this project, and after a lengthy process that included multiple avenues for public comment, it was approved and certified. This appeal/request for superseding order of conditions by twelve residents does not seem to contain any new information; these residents already submitted comments previously that were considered during the process that said the exact same things as they’ve put in the appeal paperwork. The only thing the appeal does is force the construction team to rework the schedule and plans of early site work/construction prep that began on July 6 and require the project team to redo more paperwork. And worst of all – forces all of us in town to pay for that repeated work. Personally, I feel they deserve the opposite of applause for trying to delay this project and for raising costs for everyone else in town.
You can view the order of conditions the for the project, the appeal, other documents (plus already-considered comments with the same info) in Lexington’s online permitting database: https://lexingtonma.portal.opengov.com/records/116143
Or the appeal signed by 12 residents directly here: https://vpc3uploadedfiles.blob.core.windows.net/vpc3-files/lexingtonma/Request_for_Superseding_Order_of_Conditions_received_7.13.2026_Mon_Jul_13_2026_14-33-34.pdf?sp=r&sv=2017-11-09&sr=b&st=2026-07-30T18%3A15%3A45Z&se=2026-07-30T19%3A15%3A45Z&sig=oBB7lTe%2B8PwvMcqMjYV5bBY6dyr%2FfXNiEXnEfNE6V0I%3D
It’s time to stop re-litigating the decision about Bloom and to move on from this nostalgia for the lost cause of renovating the current California Campus building by building.
Brielle Kissel Meade is correct. We have already been down this path once with the same exact comments from the same exact residents. This argument was rejected by the town and it was rejected by the state. The only thing this appeal is going to accomplish is to delay the inevitable start of the project, jacking up the costs for all residents.