For months, many Cambridge residents and local officials have criticized a state decision to end a pandemic-era policy that expanded hours of a popular greenspace on the weekends.
Now, following several protests at Riverbend Park and a public disapproval of the state’s decision by the City Council, Cambridge and state officials plan to meet in the coming weeks to find a resolution.
Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Brian Arrigo will meet with several Cambridge city councilors, the city manager, and the Cambridge delegation to the state house, according to a DCR spokesperson.
“DCR got some things wrong, and some things got lost in translation between our community and Beacon Hill,” said Representative Mike Connolly, who represents parts of Cambridge and Somerville. “My hope is that if everyone gets a clear sense of the facts on the ground and the law... we will have the ability to bring back Riverbend Park.”
In April, DCR ended the policy that extended the hours of Riverbend Park, a mile-long stretch of Memorial Drive that parallels the Charles River between Western Avenue and Gerry’s Landing Road, that becomes an oasis for walkers, runners, and cyclists when closed to cars.
Though Riverbend Park has been open on spring, summer, and fall Sundays for decades, the 2020 policy expanded its hours to include Saturdays.
In a letter announcing its decision, former DCR commissioner Douglas Rice wrote that the department lacked the legal jurisdiction to authorize Saturday road closures now that the state’s public health emergency had expired, and cited increased traffic in the adjacent Riverside neighborhood.
But documents released last month through a public records request, first reported on by Cambridge Day and later obtained by the Globe, show the state’s internal legal counsel told DCR it had authority to keep the park open based on a decades-old statute.
“Nothing in the Act limits or restricts DCR from expanding the hours or days of Riverbend Park,” DCR legal counsel Thomas LaRosa, wrote in a 2020 email that was later forwarded to Rice, according to internal records.
The documents also show the agency’s decision may have been based on misinformation.
An email from Rebecca Tepper, Governor Maura Healey’s secretary of the executive office of energy and environmental affairs, stated that the Cambridge City Council had reneged on its support for the Saturday extension. But the council has consistently supported the measure; a motion to reverse support last May was tabled without discussion. The city asked for the extension in March and publicly denounced DCR’s decision in April.
“So much misinformation and misrepresentation was involved in this decision-making process,” said city councilor Quinton Zondervan, who introduced a policy order last week requiring the city manager to meet with state officials about the issue. “Now that the record has been set straight, I hope that the people involved will reconsider and make the right decision.”
In an emailed statement to the Globe Saturday, DCR spokesperson Chloe Gotsis said the initial decision was “based on uncertainty surrounding DCR’s legal authority to close the road for extended periods of time.”
City councilors say DCR’s decision went against the will of the majority of Cambridge residents, for whom Riverside Park is a valuable, large greenspace in the densely populated city.
“I was very surprised given the overwhelming support [for the Saturday hours],” City Councilor Patricia Nolan said. “It does not seem that it was a decision made based on democratic input.”
At multiple community meetings, and through emailed comments, a vast majority of residents said they are in favor of the Saturday closures, councilors say.
Residents have pushed back against DCR’s decision by holding protests, circulating petitions — one of which gained more than 5,000 signatures — and going on “resistance rides,” where dozens of cyclists “reclaim” Memorial Drive on Saturdays.
“This program is overwhelmingly popular and you can see it in any metric you take,” City Councilor Burhan Azeem.
Opponents of the Saturday extension — mostly residents of the Riverside neighborhood, who say the additional road closure causes gridlock — say that any future discussion should involve a more rigorous community engagement process.
“These are folks who are aging in place, and minor levels of inconvenience for them are meaningful,” said Kenneth Reeves, president of the NAACP’s Cambridge branch, which has advocated on behalf of the group of residents. “You expect to close the roads in somebody else’s neighborhood because it pleases you?”
Representative Marjorie Decker, who represents the Riverside neighborhood, said people there “do not believe that they were ever engaged in any meaningful way” when the state approved the park’s Saturday hours at the city’s request last year.
“I would encourage the state and the city to actually begin in an authentic, meaningful conversation so that everyone’s voices can be heard,” Decker said.
But city officials say abutters are in the minority. According to a survey the city conducted last year, only 10 percent of respondents from the Riverside neighborhood said they had experienced bad traffic delays due to the road closures. Reeves expressed doubt about whether the survey captured the extent of the opposition.
The city is also processing data it collected this spring and summer on traffic impacts in the area, which it will use to inform potential traffic mitigation measures, like changing signaling patterns on the weekends, according to Brooke McKenna, the city’s transportation commissioner.
Azeem, the city councilor, said he hopes forthcoming discussions will convince the state to bring back the Saturday hours as soon as this fall.
“I’m hoping that throughout future conversations, we can get back to a process where we can hear the community,” Azeem said. “And I think what we will find is that [Riverbend Park] is very popular, and then through that process, find a way to reopen it.”
Maliya Ellis can be reached at maliya.ellis@globe.com. Follow her @EllisMaliya.