SWAMPSCOTT — The Select Board rejected a last-minute proposal to allocate $150,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds toward the relocation and preservation of town founder Samuel Pitman’s home at 35 Pitman Road.
The historic house faces imminent demolition to make room for the Elm Place Affordable Housing development planned at its current location, which prompted the Historical Commission and Affordable Housing Trust to consider moving the house to another location for use as affordable housing.
At a special Zoning Board of Appeals meeting two weeks ago, AHT Chair Kimberly Martin-Epstein and her attorney Sam Vitali withdrew their petition for a zoning variance allowing the house to sit on a 7 Hillside Ave. lot after the board concluded that it could not legally grant the trust a frontage variance.
Presenting a proposal to fund the historic house’s move to a storage facility, Select Board member Doug Thompson reminded the board that the funding would be a last-chance effort to save a piece of Swampscott’s history before the house’s destruction in the next few weeks.
“The status of things is not super satisfactory, even to me, but this is literally the midnight on this issue, because I think everybody’s well aware that if we don’t move the house in the next week, it won’t be there,” Thompson said at the board’s Wednesday night meeting.
At an earlier AHT Wednesday meeting, the trust did not vote to commit any more funding to the Pitman House relocation project.
For those who opposed funding the project — Select Board Chair David Grishman, Vice Chair Katie Phelan, and member Peter Spellios — the lack of land for the house’s relocation and the absence of committed funding from the AHT rendered the project too great of a financial risk.
Spellios suggested that although the timing was not right for this particular project, the Select Board should establish a list of historic properties in the town and create a system for recognizing and protecting them. He said that if the town knew about the Pitman House’s history prior to the 40B zoning project at the site, it likely would have been protected.
“If it was identified as a historical structure during the 40B process or at any time in the 25 billion years before that, that actually would have been addressed,” Spellios said. “It’s not as if the town knew about this and now is purposely turning a blind eye… I wish and I hope the lesson that we’re all hearing is making sure that we are going out identifying every single property that is worth saving.”
While Phelan and Grishman echoed Spellios’ remarks, Board member MaryEllen Fletcher said she supported the proposed funding and believed the risk was worth taking in order to preserve a piece of Swampscott’s history.
“If we finance this move, we save a historic house, one of the very few (historic) houses left in Swampscott, according to the Historic Commission, and we set it up for affordable housing for units according to Habitat for Humanity,” Fletcher said. “It seems to me that this is all doable and I do hate to see us losing a historic house where we can make this happen. I do think that there’s risk, I don’t think that there’s a ton of risk. I think we can do this.”
Wrapping up discussions on the Pitman House, Grishman said that while the timing and financial risk dissuaded him from voting to finance the project, he would like to see the town, perhaps using Community Preservation Act state-matched funding, find ways to put aside money for future historic-preservation projects.
“It’s a difficult decision for me, but I don’t think I can support a $150,000 request for funds given the great uncertainty with how the project moves forward and takes its next steps after relocation,” Grishman said. “If you take the energy and the vigor that you worked on the Pitman House with and apply that to the CPA, there could be the opportunity to save three future houses or to create many more than just four units of affordable housing.”
