ORLEANS — The Academy Playhouse is staging its greatest production yet – a $4 million fund-raising campaign to upgrade and expand its theater and school. The historic features of the grand old building at the top of the hill off Main Street, built by shipwrights to serve as town hall, will be preserved while modern touches such an elevator, an adequate number of restrooms, and a full basement will be added. ...

ORLEANS — It's not often that the selectmen are asked to impose the death penalty. “Humane euthanization” was among the statutory alternatives for the board to consider Dec. 20 at a dog complaint hearing requested by Robert Swanson of 25 Lowell Dr. On Aug. 27, he was walking on that street when he saw Katherine Gulotta, of 16 Lowell Dr., walking a dog on a retractable leash. To avoid the dog, which he sai...

ORLEANS -- On his last day of work at Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, David Willard feasted on the chocolate doughnut named in his honor at the Hole-In-One in Orleans (available in Eastham, too). Recalling that Willard always brought doughnuts to the many non-profit board meetings he attended as the bank's director of community relations, Richard Brothers, the retired president and CEO of Cape and Islands Un...

ORLEANS — In 2017, the town started delivering on some promises it made to itself while preparing to make more. A new police station rose quickly at the corner of Eldredge Park Way and Route 28 while a consolidated DPW/natural resources headquarters began construction at the transfer station. Voters kept funds flowing to water quality projects and approved construction of the core of the downtown sewer colle...

ORLEANS — Selectmen will invite the finance committee and the Orleans Water Quality Advisory Panel (OWQAP) to their Jan. 10 meeting for the unveiling of a revised financial model for paying the capital costs of a downtown sewer system. That decision came at the end of a discussion Dec. 13 on whether the consensus-building OWQAP process, which brought eight community organizations together as stakeholders for...

ORLEANS — As storm after storm battered the Caribbean this year, a sense of hopelessness was part of the reaction to the horrific destruction. But hope, as Emily Dickinson knew, is “the thing with feathers,” and hope took wing on the islands and in the classrooms of Orleans Elementary School. Eager to help, especially after two children from the storm-ravaged British Virgin Islands started attending OES, stu...

ORLEANS — Selectmen are ready to work with the affordable housing committee on a request to town meeting to help address the community housing needs spotlighted in a recent report. “I don't want to see us take our foot off the gas for funding,” Selectman David Currier said at the Dec. 6 board meeting. George Meservey, director of planning and community development, and Tom Johnson, chair of the affordable...

ORLEANS — Local organizations are seeking a combined total of more than $1 million in Community Preservation funds for historic preservation, community housing and recreation initiatives. Over the next months, the community preservation committee will interview applicants and make recommendations. Town meeting will have the final say in May. Topping the wish list is a $500,000 request from the Academy of Per...

You could do a whole December’s worth of shopping with one stop at the Orleans Farmers Market in the cafeteria of Nauset Regional Middle School on a Saturday morning. And everything you’d carry out is locally sourced and perhaps even benefits a charity. If December shopping isn’t for you, this market will continue every Saturday through the end of April. Then it returns to its outdoor venue at Depot Square. ...

ORLEANS — What services are as basic to residents as the sea breezes they inhale just by living here? Which are the ones they should pay for each time they use them? Selectmen spent an evening Nov. 28 delving into the old question of which town services should be supported by all taxpayers and which by user fees, searching for a combination that would take the pressure off an annual operating budget that can...

ORLEANS — You'd hardly have known from the selectmen's discussion last week on raising revenues that a revenue committee created by town meeting spent many months looking at that very question. The committee had its differences with the board, and even with town meeting, which approved some of its initiatives and passed by others. John Laurino, chair of the now-defunct committee, watched the Nov. 28 selectme...

ORLEANS — A piece of the town's history – albeit one that was born next door in Eastham – goes on the auction block next week. The former Academy Ocean Grille at 2 Academy Place will be auctioned by the Daniel P. McLaughlin Co. of Boston Dec. 8 at 1 p.m. in Orleans. A $25,000 deposit is required at the sale for the 4,000-square-foot building on a 37,026-square-foot parcel. The Academy Ocean Grille's closu...