Sumac Street

Sumac Street runs southeast from Pond Street to Richards Street in the Central Park neighborhood in the eastern part of town, about 1,800 feet. It was laid out as Elm Street on the "Plan of Central Park, Billerica Mass," surveyed between November 1913 and March 1914 by John N. McClintock and Robert B. Bellamy, engineers, of Dorchester, for James E. Burke, owner, and recorded on April 27, 1914 (Plan Book 31, Plan 49). Elm Street was on the plan's third sheet, headed "Middlesex Canal Property, John A. Richardson, Owner," where Canal, Oak, Elm, Maple and Beech Streets ran side by side from Pond Street to Richardson Street across Broad Street, all lined with 25-foot lots. The directories of 1949 to 1957 list it as Elm Street, "From Pond to Richardson."

By 1969 the M & T Construction Corp. owned much of this section. A special town meeting on October 21, 1969 was asked to take its lots on Beech Street and Maple and Elm Streets for a municipal sanitary landfill, but the articles were not voted. Instead the company had the land replanned on a "Definitive Subdivision of a Portion of Central Park," dated September 16, 1969 and drawn by Robert P. Morris and Associates of Tewksbury for the M & T Construction Corp., approved by the Planning Board on May 12, 1970 and recorded on June 2, 1970 (Plan Book 110, Plan 120). The plan renamed Oak, Elm, Maple, Beech and Willow Streets as Tamarak, Sumac, Sourgum, Ironwood and Plum Streets, continuing the tree names given to the neighboring streets in 1966; the reason for the particular choices is not recorded. Most of the houses on Sumac Street were built from 1972 to 1977. In 1972, before the street was surfaced, the developer relaid the water main on part of it deeper to keep it from freezing.

The town accepted the street in two pieces. A 1974 article for "Sumac Street (station 12+30 to 18+00)" was referred with the other streets of its list to a new Permanent Street Acceptance Committee on April 27, 1974. On April 24, 1975 the annual town meeting accepted the laying out of Sumac Street "from a point 1,230 feet from Pond Street to Richard Street," a way 50 feet wide and about 560 feet long, as shown on a plan and profile dated January 8, 1973 by Amherst Survey Associates, and on May 13, 1976 it accepted the rest, from Pond Street a distance of 1,230 feet. An article to spend $4,500 to complete the sidewalk was lost on May 20, 1976. In 2019 an eight-inch water main was laid along the easement between Sumac Street and the dead end of Tomahawk Drive, and the street was repaved in fiscal 2021.

References

1. Annual Report 1969: Oct. 21, 1969 special town meeting warrant, Arts. 4-5, landfill on M & T land in Central Park
2. Annual Report 1969: Oct. 21, 1969 action, Arts. 4 and 5 (landfill) not voted
3. Annual Report 1972: Water Committee, main on Sumac Street relaid deeper by the developer
4. Annual Report 1974: April 27, 1974, Art. 14 street list incl. Sumac St deferred to a Street Acceptance Committee
5. Annual Report 1975: April 24, 1975, Sumac Street accepted from 1,230 ft from Pond Street to Richards Street
6. Annual Report 1976: May 13, 1976, Sumac Street accepted from Pond Street, 1,230 ft
7. Annual Report 1976: May 20, 1976, Art. 60, sidewalk on Sumac Street, motion lost
8. Annual Report 2019: water main on the easement between Sumac St. and Tomahawk Dr.