With July 4 landing on a Wednesday, this week promises to be busy on both ends. If you've arrived for the summer or are just visiting, there's plenty to do over the next several days. Beginning, of course, with Independence Day parades in both Chatham and Orleans. Chatham's parade kicks off at 9:30 a.m. while Orleans starts at 10 a.m. (see below for Orleans event details). More than 100 entries are expected...

CHATHAM – “We're losing homes at a significant rate.” Historical Commission Chairman Frank Messina was speaking at a hearing for yet another demolition of a home on Stage Harbor Road, but was talking more generally about why the town adopted and the commission often enforces a delay on the razing of buildings determined to be historically significant. “We want to make owners stop and think about it,” he sai...

CHATHAM — A regional coalition of bike experts is peddling the possibility of a new bike path that would link Orleans with Chatham using a right-of-way under Eversource high-tension wires. Currently, pedestrians or cyclists traveling between the two towns either have to travel west all the way to the junction of the Cape Cod Rail Trail and Old Colony Rail Trail in Harwich Center – a detour of almost 18 miles...

CHATHAM – The St. Martin's Masonic Lodge, which has sold balloons at the July 4 parade and Friday night Chatham band concerts for the past seven years, won't be continuing balloon sales this summer. The decision comes after town meeting voted in May to ban the sale of balloons inflated with lighter-than-air gas. Even though the ban does not go into effect until Sept. 15, the Lodge won't be selling balloons at ...

CHATHAM – Downtown Chatham will come alive each week with music, activities and special events in a new festival debuting Monday, July 2. “Mondays on Main” will feature live bands performing outdoors at various locations along the downtown business district from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Each of the eight Monday nights through Aug. 20 will feature a different theme, and businesses are being encouraged to hold special eve...

Cars are at a standstill on Route 28 from the traffic light at Crowell Road all the way to West Chatham. No parking spaces are available on Main Street. Oversized tour buses hog the narrow roads. Day-trippers have no manners. These are some of the complaints about tourist-season Chatham heard Saturday during a forum called “Chatham in the 21 st Century: How Does the Town Cope with the ‘Unintended Con...

CHATHAM – The all-you-can-eat July 4 Pancake Festival, run for 50 years by the Kiwanis Club of Central Cape Cod, ended in 2014. With its membership dwindling, the club no longer had the numbers to pull off the event; it had to bring in folks from other Kiwanis Clubs to help in that final griddle marathon. But next Wednesday, the holiday Pancake Festival will be back again, this time sponsored by the Rotary Clu...

As many of us start the grocery shopping lists for Fourth of July cookouts, lots of other local families are left wondering where they’ll find their next meal. It’s a harsh reality that a large number of people on the Lower Cape – even in affluent neighborhoods in Chatham, Orleans and Harwich – suffer from “food insecurity,” or not knowing where their next meal will come from. But in the summertime, when secon...

CHATHAM – More than 100 floats, bands and groups of marchers are expected to fill Main Street during the town's Independence Day parade next Wednesday. The parade begins at 9:30 a.m. on July 4 at the corner of Main Street and Shore Road and concludes at Tip Cart Drive. Thousands of spectators are expected to line the parade route to cheer on entries based on this year's parade theme, “Hooked On Chatham.” “W...

CHATHAM — Residents who use town water to keep their lawns green will soon be giving up more green to do so. Selectmen, acting as water and sewer commissioners, voted Monday to adopt new controls on irrigation systems connected to the town water system, outlawing new connections in 2021 and requiring already-connected systems to be placed on separate water meters. Town officials say the demand that irriga...

CHATHAM — The obvious take-away from a consultant’s report last week is that Chatham could face more than $37 million in capital projects in the next five years. But the more subtle message is that the town should think about big-ticket purchases as a yearly expense, rather than items on a finite to-do list. Selectmen last Monday received an interim report from Monica Lamboy of the Edward J. Collins Center f...

The Chatham Merchants Association's Sharks in the Park exhibit debuted on the front lawn of the Eldredge Public Library last Friday for what organizers say will be its final year. The 60 painted, sculpted and creatively decorated sharks, sponsored by local organizations, will remain on display through Aug. 17. Increased security is one reason the display is spending all summer at the library. Previously it beg...