SJC Rules White Stadium Site Is Not Article 97 Parkland, Clearing Path for Pro Soccer in Franklin Park
In its decision last week in Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Inc. v. City of Boston (pdf), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held that the 14-acre site of White Stadium in Boston’s Franklin Park is not protected by Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution (pdf) and the City of Boston (City) therefore didn’t need a two-thirds vote of the Legislature before demolishing the aging stadium and replacing it with a new one that will host a professional soccer team. The SJC further held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to enforce the charitable trust that owns the site.
In 1883, the City took the land that became Franklin Park by eminent domain “as, and for, a public park,” and hired Frederick Law Olmsted to design it. Olmsted’s plan included the Playstead, an area at the park’s north end for athletic recreation and large gatherings. In 1922, soap magnate George Robert White left the residue of his estate to the City in trust, with income to be used for “creating works of public utility and beauty.” In 1947, the Legislature authorized the City to transfer “any land, including park land” to the White Fund at fair cash value for the purposes of White’s will, and the City promptly conveyed 14 acres of the Playstead to the fund for a stadium. White Stadium opened in 1949 under the control of the City’s school department, not its parks department. In 1950, the Legislature ratified that arrangement, deeming the stadium “together with the estate upon which it stands” to be “a school building and yard.”
By 2023, White Stadium was crumbling, and the City went looking for a private partner to rebuild it. The sole respondent was Boston Unity Soccer Partners LLC (Unity Soccer), an affiliate of Boston Legacy FC, an expansion team of the National Women’s Soccer League. In December 2024, the parties signed a lease and stadium usage agreement giving Unity Soccer a ten-year term (with up to two renewals), and exclusive use of the stadium for 20 home games a year plus team events. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy and 20 neighbors sued to stop the project. They lost a preliminary injunction (after which the City demolished the stadium), lost some of their claims for lack of standing, and lost the rest of the case after a bench trial. The SJC took the plaintiffs’ appeal on its own initiative, drawing 10 amicus briefs from individuals and organizations ranging from Amherst College to the Olmsted Network to the New England Revolution.
On the plaintiff’s trust claims, the SJC held that only the Attorney General or a trustee may sue to enforce a public charitable trust, unless the plaintiff has a personal interest distinct from the general public’s. The court ruled that neither the Conservancy’s mission nor its members’ use of the park qualifies as such an interest, and rejected the plaintiffs’ request to relax the rule where, as here, the Attorney General declines to act. The Attorney General, far from declining quietly, filed an amicus brief on the City’s side. The court saw no reason to expose charities to “attack from all sides,” and that was that. No one disputed that the 1883 taking dedicated the stadium site as parkland, or that Article 97 reaches land dedicated as parkland at any point in its history, as the SJC held in Smith v. City of Westfield (our coverage here). The fight was over whether the Legislature had “undedicated” the site before 1972, when Article 97 was adopted. A diversion that predates Article 97 is tested under the common-law prior public use doctrine, which requires “plain and explicit” legislation identifying the land, stating the new use, and showing awareness of the old one, but which a bare legislative majority can satisfy. The SJC last applied the doctrine in 2024 in Carroll v. Select Board of Norwell (covered here).
The 1947 statute authorizing the transfer of land to the White Fund showed that the Legislature knew it was parting with parkland, though it identified no particular land. The 1950 statute deeming the site a “school building and yard” identified the land precisely but never mentioned parkland. Reading the two statutes together as a single “legislative unit,” the court held they extinguished the site’s park status no later than 1950. The 1937 and 1941 statutes that let the fund build on other parkland, then returned that land to the park department, confirmed the contrast, as did the City’s federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) grants for Franklin Park, which never covered the stadium site.
Though the SJC recited the prior public use doctrine’s demand for plain and explicit authorization – which applies with special stringency to parks – what satisfied that demand here was a showing assembled from two statutes enacted three years apart, neither sufficient on its own. The willingness to surrender parkland appeared in the first statute, and the new use in the second, and the court read them as one. The upshot is that Article 97 status can turn on session laws no one has read in decades, so an eminent domain taking is the beginning of the inquiry, not the end.
Municipalities should also note the court’s reminder that accepting LWCF money itself establishes Article 97 protection. Boston prevailed in part because its grant maps happened to exclude the stadium site. A map drawn for a 1978 grant application helped decide a constitutional question in 2026.
For all that the City won, the SJC’s decision gives no comfort to municipalities whose land actually is subject to Article 97. The City prevailed on history, not on any holding that a long-term lease to a private operator is compatible with Article 97, and nothing in the court’s opinion suggests that a project like the White Stadium redevelopment could proceed on protected parkland without the Legislature’s blessing.
The plaintiffs’ appeal outlived the stadium itself, which came down while the case was pending. And the new White Stadium will rise on a parcel that stopped being protected parkland in 1950.