Appeal Questions Historic Status Of Standish Road Property

ORLEANS – Uncertainty around the historic status of a property on Standish Road has prompted an appeal of the historical commission’s decision to invoke a demolition delay on the property.

 The select board on Dec. 11 heard an appeal from the owners of 21 and 23 Standish Rd. In November the commission voted to impose a one-year demolition delay on 23 Standish Rd. The appeal was continued to Jan. 22.

The commission argues that the property qualifies as historically significant, thus triggering the town’s demolition delay bylaw. But Sarah Turano-Flores, the attorney representing the property owners, told the select board that it does not qualify.

 “The legal grounds are basically very straight forward,” she said. “This structure does not qualify as a significant building under the terms of the bylaw.”

 The appeal is the first brought before the select board challenging the commission’s decision to invoke the bylaw, officials said Dec. 11. The board is charged with either upholding or overturning the commission’s finding.

 “Ultimately I’ve never been in this position, so I want to make sure we stick exactly to the black and white,” said Kevin Galligan of the select board.

 Turano-Flores said that the property owners are seeking to demolish the existing structures at 21 and 23 Standish Rd. and build new homes, one on each parcel. The owners went before the conservation commission and zoning board of appeals for review and were approved. They also got approval from the historical commission to demolish 21 Standish Rd., which is listed on the town’s survey of historic properties.

 But 23 Standish Rd. was not listed on the town survey, so that property was not subject to historical commission review in 2017, Turano-Flores said.

 But family matters, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, put a delay on demolition and construction, she said. As a result, the owners had to go back before the three boards for approvals earlier this year. In a reversal of the historical commission’s finding from 2017, the commission identified the property at 23 Standish as historically significant, leading to the November vote to impose the demolition delay.

The town recognizes any and all properties in town built in or before 1920 as being historic and subject to demolition delay. Turano-Flores said that according to a deed on the property and the Massachusetts Historical Commission’s description of the Nauset Heights neighborhood where the Standish Road properties are located, 23 Standish was not developed until “the mid-1920s,” most likely 1928.

Another criteria for historic significance is a property’s individual listing on the town’s historic survey. Turano-Flores said based on the lack of historical commission review in 2017, it can be “assumed” that 23 Standish is not locally listed. She added that the MHC also does not have an individual listing for the property.

 The owners are free to begin demolition and construction on 21 Standish, but uncertainty around the historic status of 23 Standish is delaying the project further, Turano-Flores said.

“Obviously if this demolition delay is imposed, it’s going to be a real financial hardship if we can’t do the construction in tandem [with 21] as has been designed and planned for many years,” she said.

Matt Cole, the developer hired to work on the Standish properties, said he believes that confusion over the status of 23 Standish may reach back to the 1970s, when the property’s assessors card was “truncated” to remove a “plus/minus” indicator that once was included along with the year of construction.

“Probably the result of software that has four digits,” he said. “You can only put in 1-9-2-0. You can’t put in the plus or minus when we moved from handwritten cards to computerized cards.” That change, Cole said, is “penalizing” the property owner.

“I think the deeds that we’ve provided very clearly show that the cottage, or the existing structure, wasn’t built until sometime after (1928),” he said.

But Ron Petersen, who chairs the historical commission, said that uncertainty as to whether the buildings at 23 Standish were built before or after 1920 are “irrelevant.”

“There is no requirement in the bylaw, there is no MHC requirement that a building needs to be built before 1920 in order to be subject to the bylaw.”

Instead, Petersen pointed to town records that identify 23 Standish as a historic property. He cited a “Form A,” a survey identifying historic areas in town, that makes “significant reference” to both a cottage and garage on the property. The Form A is on file with the Massachusetts Historical Commission, he said, and can qualify a property as historically significant as much as a Form B, which individually identifies specific properties.

“It’s our opinion, and it’s been the practice that the commission has followed, that listing on a Form A or a Form B constitutes listing on the Orleans historic property survey,” he said.

But what changed from 2017 to 2024 to lead the commission to identify the property as historic? Joan Nix, the commission’s vice chair, said it’s possible that the Form A had not been prepared at the time of the initial 2017 hearing. She said the form was received by the state Historical Commission in July 2018.

“That’s very possibly the explanation,” Petersen said.

There was also the question as to what officially constitutes the town’s survey of historic properties. Turano-Flores described it as a book that at one point was kept on file in the building department. But Petersen called it “a living, breathing document that can be available through many different means.”

“The historic property survey is not a static document that can be put on a shelf in a binder,” he said.

“It might make sense for the commission…to look into what is the historical survey of the town,” Town Counsel Michael Ford said.

Select Board Chair Mark Mathison said he was “willing to concede” that there were no buildings on the 23 Standish property in 1920, but said more research and evidence are needed to bring clarity to the property’s historic status. 

“I think in fairness to all the parties, and in fairness to the select board who’s sitting here as the historic commission for the first time in our lives, we don’t have the knowledge and background information that our regular commissioners have,” he said.