Walk the Lake Waban path clockwise from the Wellesley College boathouse on any weekday afternoon and you will eventually hit a locked gate near Pond Road. There is no sign explaining why. There is just a chain-link fence, a turnaround, and a walk back the way you came. Most people who live here have made this same loop that isn't a loop dozens of times and never quite learned the reason. It has nothing to do with the college. It is a private family's decision about their own shoreline, and it has been in effect since December 2021.
That gate, and the 45 acres of forest a mile away that Wellesley's own Select Board is now suing the Commonwealth over, are two separate stories that most residents lump together into one vague sense that "the walks are changing." They are not the same fight, and understanding the difference tells you something real about what is actually at stake in this town's outdoor space right now.
The Path That Used to Go All the Way Around
Lake Waban sits between the Wellesley College campus and the Hunnewell Estates, a National Register historic district that has belonged to the same family since the 1700s. For generations, the Hunnewells allowed members of the college community to walk the private shoreline path around their side of the lake, taking in the rhododendron grove and the topiary gardens along the way. That informal arrangement ended in March 2020, when the path closed with the rest of the campus during the pandemic.
The college reopened its own portion of the path later that year. The Hunnewell side did not follow. Instead, in December 2021, the family had chain-link fencing installed on both ends of their stretch of shoreline, permanently blocking foot traffic across the rhododendron grove and past the topiary gardens. Wellesley College's own visitor guidance now tells people plainly that part of the lake's southeast side is private property closed to the public and that a full loop is not possible. Student journalists at the Wellesley News revisited the closure four years later and came away with the same answer nearly everyone else has gotten: no real explanation, and no indication it is changing.
There is a legal argument some residents raise, that Lake Waban is technically a Great Pond under Massachusetts law and therefore subject to public access rights. To date, no one has taken formal action on that theory, and the gate stays locked.
What Filled the Vacuum
Close off a well-used shoreline and something moves in to fill it. In this case, it was geese. With the southern loop gone and leash requirements strictly enforced on the college side, Canada geese have taken over stretches of the accessible path in numbers residents did not have to deal with before 2020. Local coverage has been blunt about the mess this creates underfoot, and anyone who has walked the open section in early fall already knows to watch where they step.
None of this makes the remaining walk unpleasant. The boardwalk sections and the view across the water are still what earned Lake Waban its reputation as one of the town's best walks. It just means the version of the walk that exists today is a shorter, muddier, out-and-back experience rather than the full circuit older residents remember.
The Fight That Is Actually Deciding Something
While the lake path debate has stayed essentially frozen for five years, a much bigger dispute has been moving fast just off Oakland Street, on land most residents assumed was simply part of Centennial Reservation.
It is not. The 40 acres of forest that abuts the town's protected reservation is actually owned by Massachusetts Bay Community College, and in 2025 the state designated a 45-acre parcel there, including MassBay's 5-acre parking lot, as surplus property under the Affordable Homes Act. The stated purpose was housing. The Commonwealth's own project page describes the parcel as an opportunity to create 180 units amid a statewide housing shortage, with proceeds helping MassBay fund new campus space, including a health and wellness center and a cybersecurity program building.
Here is where the story gets more complicated than "town versus more housing." In February 2026, Housing Secretary Ed Augustus told the Boston Globe that the Commonwealth was willing to place the 40 wooded acres under a long-term conservation restriction and concentrate housing on the 5-acre parking lot alone. That is a very different footprint than a minimum of 180 units spread across the full 45 acres at the density the Affordable Homes Act allows by right, roughly 4 units per acre. The Select Board's own May 13, 2026 response letter to state housing officials asked for exactly that guarantee in writing, a binding conservation restriction on the forested remainder, free of charge and without conditions. As of that letter, the town did not have one.
That gap between what was said publicly and what was actually guaranteed on paper is why, on June 9, 2026, the Town of Wellesley filed a formal complaint in Norfolk Superior Court against the Commonwealth's Executive Office for Administration and Finance, the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, and MassBay Community College. The complaint challenges the surplus designation itself and the density authorized for the site. Town Meeting had voted weeks earlier, on May 11, 2026, to let the Select Board keep negotiating rather than litigate immediately, but talks stalled and the Board proceeded to court anyway. As of this writing, the case remains pending, and the state's promised Request for Proposals for developers, originally expected in summer 2026, has not been issued.
Meanwhile, the citizen group Friends of Brookside has collected more than 3,300 signatures asking the state to remove the land from its surplus inventory entirely, arguing the parcel functions as core conservation land used daily by hundreds of walkers and sits within a water supply protection district that includes six of the town's ten drinking water wellheads.
The numbers, side by side:
| Detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total parcel under dispute | 45 acres (40 wooded, 5 parking lot) |
| Minimum units authorized under current surplus designation | 180 |
| Petition signatures against the surplus designation | 3,300+ |
| Town's Superior Court complaint filed | June 9, 2026 |
| State's promised RFP to developers | Originally summer 2026, not yet issued |
Why This Matters More Than the Gate
It is tempting to treat the Lake Waban closure and the MassBay Forest fight as the same category of loss, two beautiful walks under threat. But they are not equivalent. The lake path closure is a private property decision by one family that is unlikely to reverse regardless of public sentiment. The MassBay Forest question is a live legal and political fight, working through an actual courtroom right now, over land that is genuinely still in play. One is a memory residents are adjusting to. The other is a decision that has not been made yet, and the shape of that decision, whether housing stays confined to five acres or spreads across the full forest, will be visible on the ground within the next few years.
If you walk in this part of town, that distinction is worth holding onto. The gate at Pond Road is not going anywhere. What happens on the other side of Oakland Street still is.
Four Walks That Still Go All the Way Around
For residents recalibrating their routes, the town has more options than the Lake Waban shoreline alone:
- Fuller Brook Path runs 2.2 miles on ADA-accessible stone dust through 35 acres of protected land, established in 1899, with easy access from downtown along Route 16.
- Charles River Path covers 3.6 miles, accessible from the River Street parking lot in Lower Falls or off Boulevard Road, with several observation decks over the water.
- Centennial Reservation offers trails through the town-owned 40 acres that sit directly beside the disputed MassBay Forest, giving walkers a firsthand look at the land now under litigation.
- The Wellesley Grand Tour, the town's own stitched-together route linking five trails, runs 10.8 miles for anyone looking for a full loop that actually closes.
Elm Bank Reservation remains an option too, though its gardens now require paid admission, part of a broader pattern of formerly free green space in this corner of Wellesley becoming more restricted over the past several years.
None of these replace what the full Lake Waban loop once was. But they are proof that Wellesley's walking network is bigger than any single closed gate, and that the more consequential decision about this town's open space is still being written, not in a fence line, but in a Norfolk County courtroom.
If you are weighing what a home near this part of town is really worth, factors like this, access, land use disputes, and the pace of local development, shape long-term value as much as square footage does. Jennifer Fish has spent years reading Wellesley's neighborhoods this closely. Book an appointment to talk through what's actually happening on the ground before you make your next move.
