Holy cow!
Remember the Kimball House, the old house at 575 North East Street we thought we had “saved” last fall? Well, maybe not.
Last November, a Special Town Meeting approved an article with a complicated plan to save the house. Town Meeting appropriated $50,000 to acquire an Historic Preservation Restriction on the Kimball house and the immediately adjoining lands. The funds came from Community Preservation Act funds, which are available only for certain specified purposes, including conservation and historic preservation.
The fields surrounding the house have been protected for years by the Agricultural Preservation Act. Under that act, farmers could receive payment from the state for the “development rights” of their land, both receiving an immediate cash payment and reduction in their property taxes, in return for a permanent restriction on development of that land.
That permanent prohibition against development is the problem. The new owners of the property want to build a new house on some land that was officially prohibited from building. The state agricultural department is understandably very reluctant to allow anyone to buy property and change the “permanent” restriction against development to a temporary one. So to convert the property to developable, the Department of Agriculture (DAR) is requiring a payment to their fund that reflects the current value of the property. In this case that means a payment equal to $178,000!
$178,000.
The DAR is willing to have the money paid in installments, so it’s possible to work out an arrangement to pay the money over six years but make a promise that the town will pay it, so the owners of the property can go ahead and build their new house behind the old one, while keeping the treasure for some future purpose, such as remodeling it for a B&B.
In other words, for $178,000 of public money, we can save the outside of the house, with the associated old sugar maple trees, while the owners build their own house – McMansion? - and remodel the old house as suits them, use it as suits them, for all I know sell it … for $178,000 we get very little.
The problem is: if we don’t pay it (that is, if Town Meeting doesn’t vote the deal), do the owners have the house torn down? If we don’t have the deal, we (the town of Amherst) have no say about what happens.
What a terrible dilemma. I don’t know what we should do. The Historical Commission will be grappling with that, in the form of a recommendation to Town Meeting. I don’t envy them.
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Before I learned about the additional costs of saving the Kimball House, I was working on a column about the National Park Service study of the possibility of making the Metacomet and Monadnock Trail (now called the Metacomet-Monadnock-Mattabesett, or MMM Trail) a National Scenic Trail. Comments are due to the Park Service by October 16.
Once again, I don’t know what to say. I wish the study had never been done, because much of the MMM crosses private land, and the owner of the largest section of privately-owned land, Cinda Jones of W. D. Cowls, has made it perfectly clear for years that she opposes any federal involvement with trails on her land. But the study has been done, and the previous arrangement cannot be continued. The most likely plan will create a new section of the MMM that goes east in Belchertown from the Mt Holyoke Range, then uses Quabbin watershed lands to go north to the New Salem – Wendell area and then goes back west to join the old route in Wendell State Forest.
While people may look at the large publicly-owned area around the Quabbin as a recreational opportunity, it is in fact for watershed protection. While walking on the old town roads is allowed, bicycling, cross-country skiing, hiking or camping at night, or walking with your dog is not – unlike most of the rest of the MMM Trail. Also, walking for miles through the woods on the dirt roads is not very interesting, compared to the up-and-down and views from ledges on the MMM elsewhere (the original route was chosen to maximize ridge walking). The interesting walks in Quabbin go near the water – which the MMM isn’t supposed to do.
I recognize that the people who supported doing the study, and are proposing a new route, have excellent motives: they are trying to protect a long distance trail as a trail in a time and place of increasing development. The Appalachian Mountain Club, whose Berkshire Chapter maintains the trail in this area, has frequently had to re-route parts because of changes in land use or owners no longer wanting the trail on their property. It’s another example of a loss of our heritage, and it’s a shame.