​The Town of Stoneham spent 2014 working with a consulting team from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and an advisory committee of local stakeholders to develop a five-year Strategic Action Plan for Stoneham Square, the town center of Stoneham.

One of the 40 recommendations of the plan was to form a neighborhood group to represent resident interests. An informal initial meeting was convened in the winter of 2015 to discuss the possibility of a neighborhood group. This small group continued to meet over the spring and summer and then, in August 2015, held a kick off meeting of an ad hoc group called the Stoneham Square Neighborhood Group. (SSNG) which met monthly. 

A second recommendation of the plan was to focus on public transportation improvements. Beginning in May 2015, a group of stakeholders from the private and public sectors began meeting together as the Stoneham Transportation Advisory Committee (STAC). STAC created “The Short List,” a package of our top priorities for MBTA service changes and worked with State Representative Michael Day to expand operating hours of the 132 bus, Stoneham’s only bus. Since then, STAC has supported a number of other transportation improvements to increase mobility choices. 

​A third recommendation was to organize local merchants in the Stoneham Square district. In response, the Stoneham Chamber of Commerce formed the Stoneham Square Merchant Group, a group that has met regularly since 2015 to improve conditions for business operators.

Finally, a fourth group, the Stoneham Square Advisory Committee, has also met periodically since 2015. SSAC created a matrix that puts all 40 recommendations on one page. When SSAC met, they monitored progress on those recommendations.

Over time, as these four groups continued to meet on an ad hoc basis, the possibility of forming a nonprofit organization to increase our financial and legal capacity began to make sense. In early 2015, we wanted to see if there was a committed group of volunteers in the community who would stay engaged. Once we knew this to be true, it was time to move forward with formation of the Stoneham Community Developent Corporation (Stoneham CDC) in 2017. Since 2017, the Stoneham CDC, run by a group of volunteer board members made up of local residents, has organized numerous town events, sponsored small scale capital projects and supported the launch of two active resident initiatives, Stoneham Reads (in 2020) and Keep Stoneham Beautiful (in 2022). In January 2025, the Stoneham CDC officially changed its name to Stoneham Community Action Network (Stoneham CAN) and introduced a new brand that aligns more closely with the organization’s growing mission and values.