SWAMPSCOTT — At the recommendation of the Select Board and the Finance Committee, the town will allocate $190,000 to repair the former police station at 86 Burrill Street.
The building has sat largely vacant since 2013, when the police station moved to its current location on Humphrey Street. While an ambulance company has operated out of the back of the building, much of the space has been unoccupied.
“The worst thing that you can do to a building is to let it sit and to let nature have its way with it,” said Facilities Director Max Casper. “We’re on the verge of losing it. It’s time to do something. It’s been sitting for too long.”
The funds, voted upon earlier this month at a special Town Meeting, would be used to weatherize the building and address some safety issues inside, including replacing a roof, addressing fire safety and electrical issues and making minor accessibility upgrades, with the goal of bringing it to a point that the front side of the building could be legally occupied by a tenant.
Select Board member Dan Grishman clarified that the town would not lease the property for any purpose other than community use, for the primary purpose of serving education, recreation, government and health needs of the community.
The funds for the building will be bonded and paid for over a number of years to minimize the impact on taxpayers.
“I’m excited for the town to breathe new life into this 80-plus-year-old building,” said Grishman.
This focus on community use was echoed in another proposal passed at the meeting — the creation of a new committee to determine the future use of the Hadley School site.
An important aspect of this proposal was that the Hadley building, like the former police station, would be redeveloped with a focus on community use rather than market-rate housing.
The warrant, which required a two-thirds majority, was passed by a vote of 201-29 despite some community opposition.
The discussion of the proposal was colored by the fact that another plan, which would have allocated funding towards school repairs, had been indefinitely postponed by the committee earlier in the meeting.
Some residents questioned the decision to fund repairs to the building when they felt like their schools required similar improvements.
Tasia Vasiliou offered an amendment to the warrant to repair the middle school roof in addition to the police station, which was denied for procedural reasons.
“It’s incredibly discouraging to see the town prioritizing a building that has minimal use as opposed to our school buildings that have hundreds of students in them and have similar problems,” said Vasiliou. “I encourage everyone to think about where our priorities are and that while there could be some good to come from repairing this small building, there is a lot of disrepair in the buildings our children are being schooled in.”
The applicants for redevelopment of this building, which include Anchor Food Pantry, Big Blue Bargains, Cataldo Ambulance and the Swampscott Historical Commission, will be reviewed at a future Select Board meeting.
