Select Board Defends Bear Cove Park Site as HCAL Legislation Advances at State House

HINGHAM — October 21, 2025 — Hingham Select Board defends Bear Cove Park as the site for the Center for Active Living as state review clears a key legal hurdle. Special real estate counsel Susan Murphy told the board Tuesday that the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs has determined that replacement land near Plymouth River School meets or exceeds the natural resource, land-area, and monetary-value requirements under the Article 97 petition statute — satisfying all three conditions needed to advance House Bill 4314. Murphy also presented GIS analysis showing the alternative Union Street parcel contains more than four acres of floodplain, more than two acres of wetlands, and four acres of aquatic core habitat, with a cleared area of only 3.4 acres against the project's four-and-a-half- to five-acre minimum. The Hitchcock Shoe building on Bee Street, assessed at roughly $4.5 million, was ruled out on procurement, cost, and structural grounds. Murphy reaffirmed that the 1985 town meeting vote never met its own conditions and that no land in Hingham has ever been legally designated a wildlife sanctuary. The bill now requires a two-thirds roll-call vote in both chambers of the Legislature.