Wellesley NRC Unanimously Accepts Land Conservation Plan After Multi-Year Effort

WELLESLEY -- June 24, 2026, Wellesley's Natural Resources Commission unanimously accepted a completed land conservation plan Wednesday and debated a controversial design shift at the Morses Pond Beach and Bathhouse project. The 4-0 vote, with Member Tom Hammond absent, formally closes out a multi-year consulting effort that found roughly two and a half acres of natural land in Wellesley were converted to development annually between 2014 and 2024. Former member Michael DiOrtenzio, attending by invitation, called the document "a great outcome" and urged the board to circulate it to town meeting members and consider a fall special town meeting article to set aside approximately $50,000 for on-demand parcel analysis, benchmarked against prior work on Wight Pond. Member Bea Bezmalinovic, who will draft language with Director Brandon Schmitt, argued the plan must be embedded in the NRC's formal land acquisition policy or risk being "buried in difficult-to-find consultant reports." On Morses Pond, a majority of commissioners pushed back on an architect-proposed switch to a nearly 24-foot gable roof, expressing preference for the original shed-roof design and flagging the loss of a covered shade area as a greater programmatic concern than the roof-access safety issue that prompted the change. The commission also directed Schmitt to remove a proposed food-truck electrical hookup from the project design, citing ambivalence about food trucks at the site and the absence of any NRC food-truck policy.