Dog owners can save their pets’ off-leash time at the former Matignon school field, and other residents who feared losing their lawn have some good news too: The new owner, the Benjamin Banneker Charter School, never planned to take away legal uses.
Though the school planned to end the dog run out of exasperation with a few owners who don’t pick up after their pets, on Tuesday principal Sherley Bretous and project manager Jean Cloudmir hashed out an agreement on the fly – and on the field – with a neighbor, Steph Koufman, who vowed to organize clean-up crews and protect use of the field for everyone.
The result was at least a three-month reprieve.
“We can reassess in October,” Bretous told the dog walker. “As long as the citizens of Somerville can police themselves, we’re willing to try to be good neighbors.”
Neighbors worried that their access was about to end, even after Somerville mayor Jake Wilson tried to intercede. “No one outside the school community will be allowed to use the field or parking lot,” said a letter by Ann Marie Healey, Paul Baxter and Pam Blittersdorf, lamenting that the move would undo a community that has “used space at the school for running, pickup softball and volleyball games, ultimate Frisbee and dog walking,” as well as sledding and children’s bike-riding lessons.
Within a few hours, though, it was promised by Bretous that this was not Banneker’s plan as it moves to refresh the Matignon property.
Purchase in 2024
Banneker, a tuition-free science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics school founded in 1996, has approximately 340 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade. It paid the Archdiocese of Boston a reported $31.3 million in July 2024 so it could relocate within North Cambridge from Notre Dame Avenue to the 7-acre 1 Matignon Road property – for 75 years until June 2023, the Cambridge Matignon high school.
The campus includes the International School of Boston, which is under long-term rental agreement in former convent and administration buildings still owned by the archdiocese.
The field overlaps into the Teele Square neighborhood of Somerville. In 2024, the city of Somerville bid on the full Matignon property, then just the field, spokesperson Denise Taylor said Wednesday.
Mayor reached out
The letter writers said they explored several compromise options that Wilson agreed to bring to the school, including designated-use hours and community cleanup days, but those attempts were unsuccessful. The mayor’s public liaison, Jesse Moos, told them via email that the school officials “understand how the field was used in the past, but as the new owners they are asking the neighborhood to be respectful of their field and how they plan to maintain it.”
“The mayor did reach out to them repeatedly,” Taylor confirmed. “They expressed that they had recently invested in the refurbishment of the field and wanted to be sure that the grass had time to recover.”
Wilson walked away with the understanding that the school would consider returning neighborhood uses in the future, Taylor said, making Tuesday’s impromptu agreement a breakthrough.
A gate will stay open
The school year ended Friday, and Bretous and her staff have been moving gear from the old campus to the new, which is humming with construction inside and out. On Tuesday, workers dug holes on the slope between the field and the condos above it on Weston Avenue in Somerville; the holes are for posts for new fencing to replace older chain-link a couple of feet down. Much of the new fencing is in place around the field to eliminate all access points except for a gate on Hooker Avenue in Somerville – where anyone can continue to come in and keep picnicking, jogging and enjoying the other legal recreation (including a recent wedding) they have gotten used to.
The message hasn’t gotten out despite Bretous’ efforts to introduce Banneker to the neighborhood by knocking on doors along abutting streets, offering gift cards and hosting a spring gathering with a Cookie Monstah food truck rental. Neighbors shook their heads that the gathering was held on a Wednesday afternoon and said Banneker hasn’t communicated like the International School, “which is what people trying to be good neighbors do.”
Apparently unknown to the neighbors, Bretous said that in addition to casual use of the field, the field is open to Somerville’s organized sports teams, which will hold games in a new baseball diamond and be included on a school calendar. The Bicycle Riding School of Somerville is invited to use school property as it has since the 1980s, Cloudmir said.
“The same gate that’s been opened is going to continue to open so people can use it,” Bretous said.
Open fires, needles, theft and vandalism
But cameras with facial recognition will be trained on that entryway, part of the array of 73 placed around the field and school to watch for behaviors that Bretous and Cloudmir say they have discovered since their first presence on the campus a year and a half ago.“The cameras are a necessity,” Cloudmir said, recounting a $3,000 theft from the school – luckily that included a bike with a GPS tracker – as well as some extreme vandalism. “They broke in here and vandalized it for about $40,000. They broke everything, all the doors, the windows, the lab.”
The cameras, as well as the staff’s own patrols of the property, have turned up more surprises around neighborhood use of the field.
“There’s been live flame, because somebody’s barbecuing,” Bretous said. People put sofas on the field. They park in front of a gate meant for emergency access and tear up the grass with motorbikes. Seven needles for drug injections were found by the dugout.
Maybe because property lines have become blurred and neighbors’ fences are actually several feet deep on Banneker land, Cloudmir said, residents cut down a school tree.
School is sick of their … stuff
Irresponsible dog owners have been a persistent problem. “We’ve asked people not to let their dogs go poop and leave it,” Bretous said. “There’s literally a sign that says please curb your dog, and people pile their dog bags in front of it. We had about 20 of our students here and two people had a dog off leash, and we just said, ‘Hey, we have some little ones who are still afraid of dogs, can you put them on leash?’ And they cursed us out. In public. Two women cussed us out in front of kids.”
Having dog waste lurking on a field means a risk of rambunctious children rolling around in it, and the feces and urine is “killing the grass,” Bretous said. “The maintenance for the grass is crazy.”
A gate lock has been cut repeatedly, and fencing pulled aside. Staff have watched on camera as “people open the bottom, let their dog in, the dog poops, and then they call the dog back. You’re watching it happen in real time,” Bretous said. “By the time I get outside, they’re gone,” but the waste remains on the field.
“We’re doing everything to be neighborly, but it is private property, and just because people always used it this way doesn’t mean they can,” Bretous said.
Pleading for a chance
The misbehavior is news to the letter-writing neighbors, who say members “have looked out for the property, picking up discarded trash and beer cans and even dead animals. Dog owners have consistently shown respect for the field by cleaning up after their pets, and when the occasional oversight occurs, fellow community members are quick to help ensure the space remains clean.”
Bretous and Cloudmir agree the bad behavior they cite doesn’t apply to everyone. They can rattle off – by first name and name of dog – the good owners with which they have relationships. They include Paul (Baxter) and Pam (Blittersdorf).
Koufman is one too. She has been using the field for 28 years with three dogs, one of whom was even a Matignon lacrosse team mascot, she said. When she, Bretous and Cloudmir crossed paths Tuesday on the field, as Pearl rolled on the grass, chased after a ball and relieved herself, Koufman was nearly in despair over the prospect of losing field access. A Tufts field was taken away around three years ago, and Banneker is now the last spot around. “This is the only green space,” she said.
“Most of us now are picking up the poop. There may be a few that have ruined that at times, but the bigger picture is that we have taken such good care,” she told Bretous and Cloudmir, noting that she has watered plants over the years, patrolled for wrongdoing and brought dirt to fill in holes. She pleaded first for a section of the field for dogs, then to have the good dog owners “all pitch in for someone to have the job of being here, making sure your rules and guidelines were being kept.”
The three bargained for around a half-hour, with Bretous ultimately deciding to give the neighbors more time to get organized and keep the field clear of waste.
The next afternoon, Cloudmir came into the giant hall from which Bretous and other school leaders lead the renovation efforts. He’d been watching the camera monitors, he told her, and had seen Koufman on them – cleaning.
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