Oak Hill's Nahanton Street Runs on Its Neighbors While Three City Projects Wait Their Turn

The stretch of Nahanton Street between Wells Avenue and Dedham Street holds most of what makes a fall week in Oak Hill work. There is a YMCA with a food truck at the curb, a 20-year-old farm, a tree nursery, a river park with a canoe launch, and a loop where people run 5Ks. Nearly all of it is run by organizations, nonprofits and private operators rather than by City Hall.

The city's own Oak Hill projects are at an earlier stage. They are a mile of sidewalk along that same street, an off-leash dog area at Oak Hill Park, and a rebuilt Memorial Playground. As of mid-October 2026 each has an approval, a hearing or a budget request behind it. None has started construction. The sidewalk is also the one project where a private neighbor is paying nearly half the cost.

A mile of road, with a different operator at each stop

Start at the Wells Avenue end. The West Suburban YMCA at 135 Wells Ave holds its Monster Smash Pickleball Tournament on Friday, October 30, from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m., and players of all levels can sign up. Out front on Thursdays and Fridays, 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., is Gourmet Kreyol. Fig City News counted the truck among the year's new places to eat in Newton. If this lands on a Thursday, lunch is already parked there.

The office park also has the Wells Ave Loop. The organizer of this month's Miles for Minds 5K said four laps make a 5K, so one lap is a bit under eight-tenths of a mile. The Kids Against Cancer club at Newton South High School scheduled that run and walk for Sunday, October 4, to raise money for the National Brain Tumor Society.

Head west on Nahanton Street and the next stop is Newton Community Farm at 303 Nahanton St. Past the farm, Nahanton Park opens onto the Charles River. The Newton Tree Conservancy keeps its sapling nursery at the park's Winchester Street side, 525 Winchester St, and scheduled its free giveaway there for Saturday, October 24, with time slots by registration. Friends of Nahanton Park runs bird walks with local naturalists, including one listed for Sunday, October 11. In season, canoe and kayak rentals at the park are booked through Boating in Boston. The city lists the rental season as April through October.

That is four different operators across one road. It also explains why the farm's next few months matter beyond the farm itself.

The farm director stepping down at year's end

Greg Maslowe started at Newton Community Farm in 2006, according to a June 2026 Fig City News profile marking the farm's 20 years. The same piece says Andrea Egan took over his farm manager role about a year earlier. Maslowe now plans to step down as Farm Director at the end of 2026. The farm held a Gratitude for Farmer Greg open house on Sunday, October 25, free with no RSVP. The farm's team page still lists him as Farm Director and Egan as Farm Manager.

The farm's calendar continues past the farewell. On Tuesday, November 10, from 7 to 8 p.m., it hosts a talk called "Putting the 'Community' in Community Farms." The talk is free, and the farm asks people to register. A leadership change at a farm that has run for two decades is something the neighborhood will notice. Even so, the handoff has been planned in the open, with a manager already in place and a public send-off.

The city's projects a few hundred yards away have moved more slowly.

What the city has on paper in Oak Hill

The sidewalk has the longest paper trail. In March 2025, Patch reported that the city had put together a $500,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and a $487,000 grant from Opus Newton. The money would pay for a sidewalk on the north side of Nahanton Street, plus high-visibility crosswalks where Nahanton meets Wells Avenue, Winchester Street and Dedham Street. At the time, completion was expected in 2026.

Opus Newton is the six-story senior community on Winchester Street. Its first residents moved in in September 2025. By its first anniversary it had filled all 172 apartments and had a reported waitlist of 300, Fig City News reported. A new neighbor covering just under half the cost of a public sidewalk is unusual. It fits the rest of the corridor, where neighborhood institutions supply much of what the street offers.

Part of the sidewalk route runs through the Charles River's riverfront area, so it needed a wetlands permit. After continuing the hearing from March 19, the Conservation Commission voted unanimously on April 16, 2026, to close the hearing and issue an Order of Conditions. The plan is about 4,900 feet of five-foot-wide walkway. A grass strip roughly two and a half feet wide separates it from the curb so the existing street trees can stay. Slightly sunken planted strips and hooded catch basins handle runoff. During the discussion, the chair called tree replacement critical, and commissioners described much of the planned route as "denuded and compacted."

That approval is the latest public step. The DPW weekly construction schedule for the week of October 19 does not list Nahanton Street. It does list two other roads Oak Hill drivers use, both marked "Paused" for 2026. One is Needham Street from the Charles River bridge to Winchester Street. The other is Winchester Street from Needham Street to Boylston Street. The same schedule plans fall crack and fog sealing on Dedham Street and Saw Mill Brook Parkway, without exact dates.

The dog area is at an earlier point. The city held a listening session on October 29, 2025, and posted the presentation on its parks and open space projects page. The Parks & Recreation Commission agenda for Tuesday, September 29, 2026, lists "Oak Hill Park Off-Leash Area" as a public hearing. No decision has been posted since then.

Memorial Playground has been through several rounds of community meetings, the most recent on final court options on June 26, 2025. The city's April 2026 supplemental capital plan includes a $350,000 FY2027 request to replace the play structure and update the accessible surfacing. Any build date will depend on that request being funded.

Where the river fits back in

The dog area hearing matters partly because of how the nearby parks are already set up. The Newton Conservators' current guidance allows dogs in Newton parks on leash, with off-leash use limited to designated areas. Nahanton Park is in the on-leash group. Right now an off-leash area at Oak Hill Park is a proposal, not an option.

Nahanton Park itself is ready for the season. It covers 57 acres and was once known as Infirmary Land Park. It has a Nature Center with a restroom, Florrie's Path along the river, a fishing dock, a canoe launch, a butterfly garden, and the city's only community gardens, which are at the Winchester Street entrance. The Newton Conservators list walking, birding, fishing and, in winter, cross-country skiing and sledding among its uses. Its longest walk is about a mile. The summer's cyanobacteria advisory for the stretch of the Charles beside Nahanton Park was lifted on August 25, 2026. By October the Conservators reported no advisories in effect anywhere on the Charles.

Close to the park, the Conservators' Blue Heron Trail page describes a branch that runs along the edge of the Wells Avenue Office Park. The page is marked as under construction, so the route may still change.

If the sidewalk gets built, it will run past the same places the neighborhood already uses, from the Y at one end to the farm and the park near the other, with crosswalks at Wells, Winchester and Dedham. Until then, the next dates on the Nahanton Street calendar come from the neighbors: Monster Smash at the Y on October 30, the farm's talk on November 10, and Greg Maslowe's departure as Farm Director at the end of the year.

If you own a home near Nahanton Street and want to know how the corridor and the projects at its edges might matter when you sell, Dan Demeo and the Demeo Team can walk through it with you, house by house. Get a Free Home Valuation and start with a clear picture of your home today.