SWAMPSCOTT — The Hawthorne Re-Use Advisory Committee is narrowing down its sights on potential uses for the former Hawthorne-by-the-Sea restaurant.
Committee Chair Brian Watson previously gave a report detailing the committee’s efforts during the latest Select Board meeting on June 18.
“We went into a ‘research phase,’ and investigated the site as a group… We talked about the history of Humphrey Street, the history of the site… We also talked briefly about the conservation issues that any development would have to respect,” Watson said. “We also generated a list of factors and considerations, as well as goals and criteria.”
Watson said that some of the factors the group considered were the financial viability of any plan, the environmental pros and cons of any plan, the amount of green space and park space, the amount of building construction, and the number of potential parking spaces that would be available.
He explained that the committee has currently drawn up 18 concept plans, which vary in the range of how much green space would be incorporated into the area.
“We’ve drawn them deliberately, ranging from the maximum green space, up to mostly building construction… Through the plans, you can see an increasing amount of building on the site,” Watson said. “You could call it ‘less to more development.’”
However, he added that the plans “are by no means etched in stone,” as he explained the committee is still in the process of narrowing down possible plans.
Select Board member Danielle Leonard asked what the committee’s process of narrowing down ideas looked like.
Watson said that the ideas, aside from coming from the previous Re-Use Advisory Committee several years prior, were also generated from residents.
“When we diverted from the past process to this process, one of two things that we echoed to the committee was that it be a transparent and public process,” Select Board Chair Katie Phelan said. “Because people felt like the process that we originally had was neither.”
Watson spoke with The Item on Monday afternoon to discuss the next steps for the committee.
He noted that discussion and input from residents have helped whittle down concepts.
“Some of them were one hundred percent green space or a park. The committee could very easily see there would be no revenue generation for those plans — and it decided that there should be some amount of revenue generation,” Watson said. “They would actually cost the town quite a bit just to build and maintain the parks.”
Watson said that the committee is “trying to find some balance between revenue generation and costs.” He also said it’s looking into integrating some amount of parking as well.
“The committee’s thinking the necessary ‘ingredients’ would be parkland, revenue generation and some amount of parking,” Watson said. “The committee just hasn’t decided the portions of each element of the plans.”
The committee aims to talk about the timing of the next public input meetings, in order to get more communal input on what residents would like to see the site developed into. “It is very much on our radar that we would like to get public thoughts on where we are in our plan process,” he said.
