Ride the Minuteman Bikeway east from the Lexington Depot toward Bow Street and for years you'd have passed the same unremarkable stretch: a chain link fence, a loading area, a blank stretch of siding behind a wine shop you might not have known was there. The businesses along Massachusetts Avenue in East Lexington were built to face the street. The bikeway runs behind them. For thousands of daily walkers, runners, and cyclists, that meant passing directly behind Berman's Wine and Spirits and Busa Wine and Spirits without ever knowing either store existed.
This year, three of those blank walls got paint. The addresses are specific: 55 Massachusetts Avenue, the back trailer of Berman's Wine and Spirits; 131 Massachusetts Avenue, the rear of Busa Wine and Spirits; and 135-145 Massachusetts Avenue, the Shops at that address. Artists Melissa Pandina and Gabriela Sepulveda Ortiz completed all three hand-painted murals this year, and the town has confirmed the work is done. This was never framed as decoration for its own sake. It was framed as a fix for a problem the town had already diagnosed in writing.
The Blind Spot Behind Berman's and Busa
The rationale for the project traces back to two planning documents, the town's Center Retail Strategy Report and its 2021 Rapid Recovery Report, both of which flagged the same disconnect: people using the Minuteman Bikeway often have no idea the businesses along its edge are there, because those businesses present their fronts to Massachusetts Avenue and their backs to the trail. A beautification budget wasn't the goal. Visibility was.
That distinction matters if you're picturing what these murals actually do. They aren't storefront signage facing traffic on Mass Ave, competing with awnings and window displays that already work. They're placed exactly where the bikeway's foot and bike traffic already flows, on walls that previously gave that traffic no reason to stop, look, or wonder what was on the other side. The project is formally part of the East Lexington Rapid Recovery Plan, a town initiative aimed at renovating and reactivating this specific commercial stretch, and it follows a phase of wayfinding signage installed along the same corridor in 2024. The murals are phase two of a plan that started by telling people where they were and has moved on to giving them a reason to stop.
Why the Town Decided to Paint the Back Wall
Select Board member Joe Pato, who described himself as a longtime East Lexington resident, put the goal plainly when the project was announced, saying the town has "many gems that deserve to be recognized." That's a fair description of a stretch where two long-running wine and spirits shops sit close enough to the bikeway to be a five-minute detour for anyone riding through, yet remained invisible to that same traffic for years simply because of which direction their buildings face.
Town Manager Steve Bartha and Senior Economic Development Coordinator Jay Abdella both tied the project to a broader goal of drawing new visitors and business to East Lexington specifically, framing the murals as an investment in an area they see as underused relative to its potential. Berman's Wine and Spirits, one of the three host businesses, backed the idea from the start, with the shop's ownership noting the appeal of sitting directly on a bike path that already brings a captive audience past the door, whether that audience knows it or not.
The town's own public art program puts a number on the commitment: the Mural and Site Activation program represents an investment of approximately $100,000 across two mural locations and multiple sites along the length of the Minuteman Bike Path in Lexington's business districts, funded through American Rescue Plan Act dollars. That figure covers both the East Lexington murals and a second project near Lexington Center, discussed below. It's a modest number by municipal standards, but it's aimed at a narrow, specific target: converting bikeway foot traffic into store traffic on a corridor where the two never used to intersect.
Two Muralists, One House-Paint Palette
The artists behind the work bring different backgrounds to the same three walls. Melissa Pandina holds a BFA from MassArt and works primarily in portraiture, translating traditional oil painting technique into exterior house paint for mural-scale pieces. Her work has appeared at the Berkshire Museum of Art, the Fitchburg Art Museum, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, and she has completed large-scale murals as far afield as Dansville, New York, and the Southwick Zoo. Gabriela Sepulveda Ortiz, an artist originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, brings a style the town describes as blending diverse cultural narratives into a single visual language. Both artists were selected after a call for submissions that drew responses from 27 artists, reviewed by a panel that included town staff, business owners, and members of relevant town boards.
The murals were designed with community involvement built into the process rather than delivered as a finished product overnight. That approach is visible in how the project unfolded in stages, with each of the three sites completed at a different point through the year rather than all at once, giving East Lexington a rolling reveal rather than a single ribbon cutting.
The Cleanup Nobody Sees From the Road
The murals didn't arrive alone. The town paired the painting work with an effort to clear invasive plants and refresh the ground-level plantings around each site, a companion project meant to make the murals themselves visible from the trail. One of the three sites, the mural at 55 Massachusetts Avenue behind Berman's, was specifically noted as only becoming visible from the bikeway once overgrown vegetation near the site was cleared. Without that second, less photogenic half of the project, the murals risk becoming exactly the kind of hidden asset they were designed to eliminate.
A Second Mural Waiting Near the Center
The East Lexington project isn't the only piece of this program. A separate mural, commissioned from artist Kit Collins, is planned for the Lexington History Museums closer to Lexington Center, using the same Mural and Site Activation funding. It's a signal that the town is treating the Minuteman Bikeway as a single corridor worth activating end to end, not just patching one commercial stretch in isolation. For anyone who rides the full length of the trail through town, that means East Lexington's new murals are likely to be the first of more public art to appear along the route rather than a one-time project.
Ride It Before the Market Closes for the Season
If you're planning a ride out to see the murals this fall, it's worth timing it around the Lexington Farmers' Market, which returned to Fletcher Park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Fletcher Avenue for its 2026 season. The market runs Tuesdays from 2 to 6:30 p.m. through October 27, when it shifts to a 6 p.m. close for the shorter days, before wrapping the outdoor season with a Thanksgiving FEASTival at the same location on November 24 from noon to 4 p.m. The market accepts SNAP and doubles SNAP dollars up to $20 per market day, and several of its regular vendors, including Busa Farm, participate in the state's Healthy Incentives Program.
That gives East Lexington a genuine fall loop: a bike ride past three new murals, a stop at a wine shop that spent years facing the wrong direction, and a Tuesday afternoon at a farmers market with five Tuesdays left before it closes for the year. None of it required new construction. It required the town noticing that a ten-mile trail was running past businesses nobody on it could see, and deciding that the fix was as simple as a coat of paint on the right wall.
If a quiet evening ride past new murals and a Tuesday afternoon at Fletcher Park sounds like the version of Lexington you'd want to come home to, The David Green Group can talk through what life actually looks like along this stretch of the Minuteman Bikeway, mural season and all. Contact us to start the conversation.
