With confusion and unhappiness about how a change in law by the City Council has affected its work, the Cambridge Historical Commission voted Thursday to initiate a landmark study for the former Democracy Center building at 45 Mount Auburn St.
This is no guarantee the structure dating to 1846, also called the Stickney-Winn House, or a 1926 addition will landmarked at the end of a yearlong study period, and commission staff clarified that work to ready renovations can go forward in that time.
Between yes and no votes and abstentions, a first motion toward landmarking failed to get a majority. A second motion to deny a landmarking study had a similar result.
After discussion, a third motion was introduced that passed and put a landmarking study in place. (While the first motion was misstated as being about landmarking itself, the third was corrected to clarify that it was for only a study.)
A recent change in Cambridge city policy removed much of the Historical Commission’s jurisdiction over buildings in neighborhood conservation districts – 45 Mount Auburn St. is in Harvard Square’s district – without a landmarking. Before, the commission could assess a district project’s change for appropriateness of size and shape. Now, as alternate member Gavin Kleespies put it, “if there was a proposal of taking down the 1920s addition and building a historically appropriate addition there that was four stories high, we wouldn’t be able to comment on the fact it was four stories high.”
Landmarking a building allows the commission to have more control over it, said Dan Totten, urging passage as a lead signer of the landmarking petition being considered.
Commissioners agreed, but that benefit drew conversation.
A possible “slippery slope”
“The City Council has put us in a tough position where now effectively the only way for us to regulate size and volume is to landmark,” said Kyle Sheffield, an alternate commission member who voted against a study. He worried this could lead to “a slippery slope” of “effectively landmarking every single building in Cambridge.”
Other members agreed their work had been muddled by the council decision, one of several recently aimed at simplifying housing construction and making room for more people in Cambrdge at more reasonable prices.
Chair Bruce Irving, though, refocused commissioners on the vote at hand.
“Maybe that’s what starts to happen, Kyle, but right now, we’ve got this one in front of us,” Irving said. “I’m not going to let it slip out just because of a prediction of slippery slopeness, which I don’t buy.”
The owners of the building say they want to renovate one of the few remaining wood frame structures in what was once called Harvard’s “Gold Coast,” where wealthy undergraduates lived in private dormitories. The preservation of the area’s wood-frame buildings has been an interest of the commission since the conservation district was created in 2000, and its establishing report identified the 45 Mount Auburn St. building as significant.
Until this summer it housed the Democracy Center, providing office and meeting and event spaces for nonprofits. The closing led to conflict with the owners of the building since 2002, the Foundation for Civic Leadership.
Bought with flaws
Ian Simmons, president of the foundation, reiterated what he and other representatives of the FCL have said in previous meetings: It was necessary to close the building because of its poor condition. That includes having asbestos and lead that needs removal.
“We bought it in as-is condition, and it had a lot of issues at the time. We’ve kept it together with Band-Aids and duct tape as best we can,” while the hope was always to be able to expand the space, Simmons said. The foundation has not proposed specifics.
Jim Rafferty, the attorney for the foundation, thinks criticism around the closing was unfair. “Mr. Simmons finds himself in the position of no good deed goes unpunished. He creates this foundation, acquires this property, allows it to be used for its stated purpose and when he announces with ample notice that it’s necessary to suspend operations, there’s a strong, strong reaction.” Democracy Center tenants were given three months notice that they had to move.
“It’s not a museum district,” Simmons said. He doesn’t think the building is particularly historically important, and notes that for much of the its existence has a use that was less than inspiring – as a Harvard drinking club and site of a notorious sexual assault case. “It’s not like this was a presidential birthplace,” he said.
Won’t slow work
Requiring the foundation to participate in the landmark process will cost money it does not have, creating an unfair burden especially when the goal is to “do some exciting project that combines a 19th century structure with a new addition that would have oversight from the commission,” Simmons said.
It will also slow down the foundation’s ability to reopen the space, Simmons said.
Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Historical Commission, said that wasn’t true. “There’s nothing about the landmark designation process that is intended to slow down an owner. The commission routinely receives applications during a designation process, and in fact, encourages the owner to develop their schemes so that the owner’s intention can be incorporated into a future landmark designation,” he said.
“Shouldn’t be in this position”
Sheffield, an architect who was on the study committee for the second round of the renewal of the Conservation District, said the foundation’s building is part of an area identified as being able to take more density.
The commission had extensive debate and several clarifying questions of Sullivan. Sheffield hoped residents would take concerns about the process now complicating the work of the commission back to the City Council.
“I totally agree with Kyle that it’s not fair that we are in this position, that a regulatory structure that we’ve understood essentially got swept away from us,” Kleespies said. “We shouldn’t be in this position, but we are.”
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It’s incredible to me that a multimillionaire has the nerve to describe being faced with some oversight as costing his foundation “money it doesn’t have.” Citation needed.
I recognize that Ian Simmons/Foundation for Civic Leadership’s mishandling of the Democracy Center shutdown is outside of the scope of the Historical Committee and its decision, but it’s still pretty wild to hear Simmons describe facing a little oversight from the city as an “unfair burden.” If he wants to talk about unfair burdens, maybe he can start with the burden placed on the dozens of grassroots community groups and artists who were kicked out of the Democracy Center with less than 3 months notice. (Wow, such a generous amount of time for all of us without millions of dollars to find new places our groups can afford in this city). If he’s not going to be accountable about the *use* of the space to the pro-democracy organizing he claims to care about, I’m glad he’s at least getting a little accountability from the city as regarding the architecture of the space.