Framingham Councilors King/Cannon Aim a Wrecking Ball at the Athenaeum

On Tuesday, April 16, 2024, the City Council Finance Subcommittee considered a set of recommendations from the city Community Preservation Committee (CPC) for spending $3,023,250 on 13 projects in 3 categories:

• Community Housing
• Open Space/Outdoor Recreation
• Historic Preservation

The 9th recommendation was to spend $500,000 on Athenaeum Preservation/Reuse in the Historic Preservation category.

The Athenaeum building is located at 15 Watson Place in the center of Saxonville and was built in 1847. It was originally called the Saxonville Town Hall. It has also served as a school, meeting hall, jail, hospital, polling place, newspaper press room for The Saxonville Mirror, and as a hall for wedding receptions, religious services, veterans' meetings, plays, lectures, sporting events, and dances.

The project is described as follows:

"Funding will be used to preserve the exterior of Athenaeum Hall, including repair of the roof, purchase and installation of windows and doors, repair of architectural details, refurbishment of structural elements and insulation. The project also includes repair, recladding, and repainting of the exterior building walls. The Athenaeum Hall is listed in the State MACRIS database and is a historically and architecturally significant building in the Saxonville National Register District."

The full project application may be found at: https://webapps.framinghamma.g... and a summary provided with the meeting materials may be found at: https://legistarweb-production...

The project alignment with the Community Preservation Plan and its measures of success are described as follows:

"This project preserves a key historic landmark in Saxonville as civic center, community hall and performance venue. It will help return a historically significant building that is abandoned, unused and damaged back to public use. The Athenaeum is specifically identified in the Community Preservation Plan as a target for historic preservation.

Success will be measured by completion of the scope of this project to preserve the exterior of the Athenaeum Hall, including refurbishment of structural elements, in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards."

The project is well defined, well argued, and well supported by the city administration, and the local Saxonville community which is very active in promoting improvement of the Saxonville district.

It is also an example of a project where, although the final use of the building may have a wide range of options, preservation of the exterior shell matches exactly state historical preservation goals and is essential to protect the building from further deterioration.

No matter what the future holds for this building, the exterior has to conform to historical restoration standards. If it ends up being a meeting hall and performance center, the exterior shell must respect history and protect the building. The same is true if it ends up being residential housing.

This is the perfect set piece project to move forward at full speed. A new slate roof, new siding, new windows, all conforming to historical design, will ensure this building remains as a treasured Saxonville center piece.

The complete exterior renovation cost is $1.5 million, of which $1 million had already been obtained from other sources prior to the CPC application. The CPC recommended $500,000 completes the funding to align with the most recent exterior renovation estimate done a few months ago.

So, the final funding piece is in place. All systems go!

But not for Councilors King and Cannon.

They ignored the confluence of CPA goals, community support and the need to act now to prevent further decay to the building. They claimed that the lack of a complete plan for the entire building, inside and out, meant that there was too much uncertainty for them to get onboard with the project.

They completely failed to realize that the renovation of the exterior shell is well defined and independent of future detailed plans for whatever happens inside.

They seemed to show no appreciation for the fact that in building management, making sure the roof, siding, and windows are sound sits at the top of the priority list for any building.

They have no history of building asset management in the private sector. But they do have a history of building asset management in the public sector, and that includes a parlous neglect of Framingham Public Schools buildings.

I well recall that when I began serving on the Framingham School Committee at the start of 2018, all school roofs had reached the end of their warranties. I expected that the city would immediately launch a program of school roof replacements to address that.

Instead, for 5 years not a single roof was replaced, as the City Council, under the financial leadership of George King, with enthusiastic support from Mike Cannon, forced a zero tax levy increase program on the city and starved it of tax revenue to fuel vital capital projects.

There was no concern about roofs, or the fact that the school district capital projects budget was underfunded by a factor of 2 or 3. The entire focus was on throttling back tax increases and drawing down reserves.

When it comes to sound investment in city infrastructure Councilors King and Cannon are sorely out of touch.

Even here, where there is no investment of local property tax dollars, King and Cannon seem to grasp at any excuse to block a local project of great value to the city and to the Saxonville community. It is as if their financial DNA prevents them from spending dollars on capital projects.

However, all is not lost.

The City Council Finance Subcommittee vote on whether to fund the project was 2-2, with Councilors King and Cannon against, and Councilors Alexander and Mallach for. Councilor Steiner was absent due to the schools spring vacation, but if he had been present he would have voted for, producing a 3-2 approval. Unusually, in 7 years serving on the City Council Finance Subcommittee, this was the first time that Councilor King scheduled a Finance Subcommittee meeting during April school vacation week. Go figure.

The City Council will take up the matter at its meeting on April 30, 2024, with the Finance Subcommittee 2-2 vote as part of the record. A fitting outcome would be for the full City Council to recognize the importance of this project, note that a tied 2-2 vote amounts to neither a positive nor negative recommendation, and vote 9-2 to approve this project.

Preserving historic buildings is in everyone’s interest and when Framingham residents voted to join the CPA effort a number of years ago, they meant for their money to be invested in worthwhile projects.

The Athenaeum is just such a project, and the City Council should have the good judgement to ensure it is properly funded.