It's All a Facade

..it's all a facade...

Welcome all to the first proclamation of my blog here at Swampscott Patch. By way of introduction, I have been a resident here for 5.5 years. For most of my childhood in West Roxbury, MA my family spent time traveling RT 1A to visit my maternal grandparents who lived on Beacon St. in Salem, MA. Much of the time, we took the Lynn Shore Dr. ‘detour’ to drive by the Kings Beach and cut back onto 1A via 129, (Eastern Ave). I always loved this area, and when the opportunity came to purchase a condo here, I was quite delighted. 

This year for the first time, I attended the Swampscott Town Meeting held at the Swampscott High School May 2 from 7:15PM onward. (It is time to stop calling it the ‘new’ HS, IMHO.) The auditorium was almost completely filled once all the Town Meeting members and ‘observers’ were seated. Since I had asked to speak to one issue, Warrant 10, I sought out Mr. Markarian, the Town Moderator. He politely explained that the matter was to be tabled indefinitely. (More on that in a later blog posting.) 

The gurgling sound of voices from throughout the auditorium came to a stop when the meeting was called to order. A friend, who is a Town Meeting member, sat next to me and gave me a running commentary on the complexities and machinations which are part of this peculiar New England manner of self-government. 

One has to be disabused of the notion that this is anything more than a residual rump of the full town meeting of colonial days. This meeting was run quite professionally with little of what could possibly be defined as ‘spontaneous’ occurring. Far away are we from a situation when a whole town would gather, elect a moderator and argue hard and long on such issues as new taxes and who was responsible to clean the Town Commons after the cows had done their worst. 

The only issue that came close to altering Mr. Markarian’s cool was the matter of the facade at the ‘old’ middle school. (The current new middle school is in the old high school.) The entire lot including the building thereupon are up for sale for further development. From what was reported by various department representatives, because the currant sale guidelines require the oldest section of the school building not to be demolished, bids were very few and low and some potential bidders didn’t bid because there was additional ‘liability’ undertaken by requiring the old structure to be left on the lot. 

Dealing with the potential problems of old construction is definitely problematic. For one thing, it limits the use of the rest of the lot for more modern construction, since it would be expected that the new construction match somewhat the old for aesthetic reasons. Another issue is that the old construction can have very expensive maintenance concerns meeting the codes for modern day construction. Retrofitting can be expensive. 

Yet. the lovely and dynamic Angela Ippolito, vice chair of the Swampscott Historical Commission. tried an impassioned plea to keep a remnant of the 116-year-old structure in place. This section would be the facade of the main entrance from ‘door to door’ and up to the present height of the wall.

Being somewhat of a historical building enthusiast I was a sympathetic ear until the picture of the facade was revealed. Once seeing it, aside from its age, it doesn’t present any particular architectural style or design. There are some fancy brickwork decorative elements, but of itself it looks most like one would have preferred it not seem like: an old warehouse. 

For many reasons, including the fact that any restriction on the use of the property would continue the same problems attracting bidders which is occurring under the present guidelines, the Town Meeting members eventually voted down Ms. Ippolito’s amendment and approved the original language would allows for destruction of all the building by the new owners. Clearly some people will be unhappy about this since the structure has been part of the community for those many years. 

Such is how progress can take form in what is indeed is a small but highly populated town. The money from the sale of this and two other town properties is needed to offset the expenditures the town will be making by contributing $600,000.00 from the Stabilization Fund to the building of the new police station. They are hoping that the development of the ‘old’ middle school property will generate $50,000 annually in property tax revenues. Given the town’s shrinking tax base, this will be a needed increase to assure we have the funds each year to pay off the loan for the police station.   

Steve Iannaccone