[MassHistPres] Time to move a historic structure

[Roughan, Michael]

Amy,

This is a perfect scenario to justify an  extended demo delay timeframe, and with your permission, one that I would like to share at town meeting? Would you have photos of the house that you could share?

….Mike

Michael Roughan, AIA, EDAC, LEED AP, ACHA

D +1.617.357.7725 M +1.617.784.6463


From: Amy D. Finstein [mailto:adf9u at virginia.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2019 2:25 PM
To: Roughan, Michael <Michael.Roughan at hdrinc.com>
Cc: MHC list <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu>
Subject: Re: [MassHistPres] Time to move a historic structure

Dear Michael,

Framingham recently had a situation that is relevant to your question re: the timeline for a demolition delay. We had an 18th century historic house, not in a historic district, that was slated for demolition. Our Historical Commission implemented a 1-year demolition delay, and the Historic District Commission started to pursue the creation of a single-building historic district to protect the house. The owner was not in support -- he wanted to tear it down, subdivide the lot, and build new houses. After approaching City Council with our proposed new district (which we had to do to get the process started), we opted for a collaborative negotiation between the City, the city's legal counsel, the historic district commission, and the owner, whereby we worked out a legally binding agreement that extended the demolition delay while the owner worked to try to sell the historic house parcel separately... affording him his end goal of a financial return on his investment in the property; and our goal of saving the house and finding an owner who would maintain the house and who would support its eventual inclusion in an historic district. I am pleased to say that this indeed came to pass, and the house recently passed into new hands; the previous owner is now free to build on the remaining portion of the lot that he kept; and the house will be in a new historic district once that motion comes before City Council in the coming weeks.

This was a very complicated situation, and one in which the "threat" of an historic district was our only possible way of changing the Demolition Delay timeline. (This is not something that we particularly wanted to do in such a reactive way... but again, it was our only avenue here) Since Framingham is now a city with a City Council, we were fortunate with the timeframe of City Council meetings where they could take action on this fairly quickly -- this had not been the case with town meeting, which met infrequently and likely would not have been able to act on this quickly enough.

Hope that this is helpful fodder for the mill.
Very best,
Amy Finstein
Historic District Commission
Framingham, MA


On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 10:33 AM Roughan, Michael <Michael.Roughan at hdrinc.com<mailto:Michael.Roughan at hdrinc.com>> wrote:
First, let me thank all of the respondents to my request for info on streetscape. I received a wealth of information.

Hopkinton is attempting to extend our demo delay from 6 months to 18 months. One rationale is to have time to get a single structure historic district enabled but the second rationale is to relocate the historic structure to a different lot. We had this specific issue with a great Italianate 2 story structure that was in the way of our library expansion. We actually had a developer who was interested in buying the house ($1) and relocating it to a vacant no-conforming lot but could not get the appropriate permits in line before the delay timed out.

Does anyone have a timeline for a successful relocation of an historic structure they could share?

….Mike

Michael Roughan, AIA, EDAC, LEED AP, ACHA
Chairman - Hopkinton Historical Commission

Town of Hopkinton
18 Main Street
Hopkinton, MA 01748

D 617.357.7725 M 617.784.6463

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