[MassHistPres] Information requested from communities that have 18 month demo delays

[James Hadley]

Our delay is 12 months and will likely remain there. Nothing works if an owner wants to demolish. Cynical, yes, but true. The recent problem we ran into was a commercial property owner filing for demolition and then waiting out the 12 months, then pocketing his right to demolish for future uses or buyers of the property. Demo permits MUST have a limited life - we instituted 12 months for that.
James Hadley
Chair, Orleans Historical Commission

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 21, 2013, at 10:21 AM, Dennis De Witt <djd184 at verizon.net> wrote:

> Daniel
> 
> Brookline did it for NR properties only. We had long had 12 months for everything else -- there is no list of eligible buildings and no cut off date, all demo permit's are subject to a preliminary staff & Chair determination of significance followed by a confirming vote (or not) by the commission.  The NR 18 month limit was added as part of a general upgrade of the DD law that included many changes including adding historic interiors open to the public (meeting a restrictive set of guidelines) and partial demolitions based on a % removal and stripping all detail to do aluminum siding, etc.
> 
> The whole thing went through relatively smoothly with zero opposition in town meeting.  One R.E. Atty. selectman, who claimed to have had negative expedience dealing with Newton's DD law which had a very low trigger threshold for partial demos, was the most serious opposition that I recall.
> 
> At one time there was a suggestion that Chris would maintain an archive of old postings.  I'm not sure if that ever happened.  If it did, there is a very lengthy posting re this on 11/16/2006.
> 
> Dennis De Witt
> Brookline
> 
> 
> On Feb 20, 2013, at 9:19 AM, Daniel Bibel <dbibel at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> The Medfield Historical Commission will present a proposal at Town Meeting to extend our current 12 month demolition delay to 18 months.  We would be very interested in hearing from the other Massachusetts communities that have done this - what arguments did you use to convince voters; what presentations (if any) did you prepare for the meeting; what sort of pre-meeting publicity was put out.
>> 
>> Thanks in advance for any and all help!
>> 
>> Daniel Bibel
>> co-chair
>> Medfield Historical Commission
>> 
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