In April, the Town of Holliston released a “Community Profile Video” that will be “included in a national campaign to attract businesses and people relocating to the area to choose Holliston,” according to the town website. 

“We hope that this video will help people learn more about Holliston and decide to live, visit or do business in Town,” Town Administrator Travis  Ahern says on the site. “This  professional production also allows us to  share the footage, which includes fantastic drone shots of the Town, with  local businesses that are featured or that would like to use scenic images of Holliston in their own promotional materials.”

The six-minute video highlights several aspects of the town including its history, schools, recreation plus agricultural and business opportunities. It also features several quotes from Mary Greendale, a writer and host of “Just Thinking,” a production of Holliston Cable Access Television; and Robert Weidknecht, Chair of the Holliston Trails Committee. 

“We’ve managed to kind of hold onto that historic fabric,” Greendale says over drone footage of the downtown. Other historic aspects mentioned include the Mudville area where the Irish lived in the 1840s when building the railroad, numerous area homes that date back to the 1700s, the Phipps Hill Tunnel, the Eight Arch Bridge, and historic buildings that are being saved and repurposed.  

The video highlights the Holliston Public Schools (including the French immersion program), town recreation programs, and mentions “age-friendly [Council on Aging] programming.”

“Holliston is a family-centric community that values education and invests in education, and pushes sports for their kids. I mean, the kids are the center of this town, really,” Greendale says at the top of the video. 

Holliston has over 25 percent open space throughout town, and also features the Upper Charles Rail Trail corridor (along which are interpretive exhibits), making the town a great place to live, work and visit. 

“We have a booming agricultural economy in a tiny little town like this, it blows my mind. We have a booming agricultural community because we are a market that’s just sitting here, ready and ripe,” says Greendale. 

The town has four commercial zones plus seven industrial zones including industrial parks and cannabis cultivation and manufacturing areas. 

Greendale says the town’s greatest gift is that it is a “real community.” 

“New people move in and they move in because it has a feeling of being a community…Somehow it just feels like it is a community and then we live it, we really do live it. It’s a good town. It’s good people,” says Greendale, as an image of an old screen door passes by.

Weidknecht says, “Now we have the regional draw to be able to get people from all over the country, to be able to use and enjoy the trail. Getting people out, off their phones and off their computers, and getting on the rail trails and in our open spaces.”

The video is part of a VIEWPOINT series produced by Pioneer Production Services,  LLC. For more information or to view the video, visit https://bit.ly/3KY7Oxq  

According to the town website, the project is a “revitalizing initiative which qualified for use of the Town’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.” The town has rights to all footage.