The Medford Historical District Commission reviewed insurance considerations for properties in historic districts, received an update on the Medford Square rezoning effort, and approved its previous meeting minutes.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Hi. Hey, everybody. Call this meeting to order. So the agenda for tonight is a continued discussion on the Medford Square rezoning from February. The presentation from the local insurance professional on the challenges facing the historic districts, property owners. We're going to have to continue that to next month. I got a text message from Josh Goldstein about an hour and a half ago, and he was saying that it was either his father or his father-in-law just had surgery this morning. He said he could make it to the meeting, but he requested to come to next month's meeting instead because he'd be rushed. Um, so obviously with a family emergency, we continue that we said next month would be fine. Um, and then we'll do the meeting minutes from February and then that's it. So it'd be kind of a short meeting.
[Theresa Dupont]: Um, Joe, I had one quick question on the presentation. Do you think it's worthwhile for any, any of us, um, to put together some questions that he needs people to answer?
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yes. In fact, we can discuss questions that we would have.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: That's a great idea.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. Just maybe to help him. I'm sure he's a professional, so I'm sure he'll be fine, but it might help get some answers to some questions that we all may have. And that's something that maybe we can gather in the meantime. And if Charlotte, James, if you have any questions that might be good for this insurance professional.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, in fact, can we switch the positions and talk about insurance first? Yeah, let's go for it. Okay. Is that all right with everybody? Yeah. Okay. So Josh Goldstein works for a company. I believe he's a part owner of the company Seltzer Goldstein, and they're a public insurance adjuster. So when you have a loss, you hire his firm to represent you to the insurance company, and he gets paid a percentage of the final sum that gets paid.
As a side note, I had a loss at my house and I hired him and he's exceptionally knowledgeable about the process. So when we had been speaking about the potential of the commercial properties in Method Square becoming a historic district, it came to out is a problem because historic districts are becoming, especially with commercial properties, are becoming difficult to insure because the insurance companies, they don't want to insure them because of the added expense of more expensive windows.
Yeah, I guess that's the easiest way. The replacement cost is exceptional and it's unknown because It's not, insurance companies look at like and similar things for the, you know, for when they're replacing it, as opposed to, you know, replacing it exactly the way it is. It makes it difficult for them to insure. He's going to be able to explain this much better. I actually spoke then to the, to the insurance company that I purchased my insurance from. And they're like, they, they were telling me about horror stories that they had, um, that they, you had to use like the, this, I don't have my notes in front of me, unfortunately, but the, the state it's like mass insurance or something like that. And they only, they will only ensure 80% of the property value. Um, it's a, so this is a very, tricky thing that we need to, um, we need to talk to this guy about going forward, making these, making this district, um, and what the insurance ramifications are going to be, because if we have a, you know, a beautiful building, I mean, everywhere we look out this window, this beautiful old buildings, you know, if we make them a historic district and then the insurance becomes an issue on them, and then there's a, a catastrophic loss, like a fire or, whatever other catastrophic loss that could be. And then the building's only insured to a certain amount. And then the historic components aren't insured. We may have just killed the patient with the cure, to put it in a terrible way.
So this is something that we need to kind of see going forward. There was another insurance issue that I wanted to speak with him or a different insurance professional about, and it's, so when you have a, when you have a loss on a building, the insurance companies have set it, have set up that they can, that when you are putting the building back together, you don't have to meet like the stretch code. You don't have to meet like the, you know, like if you, if you got the whole building, you don't have to, you know, do a water, mitigation system like this. I forget what that's called, but you don't have to meet all those criteria. So like the house that I had, I had a two family house that had a fire and the water destroyed the whole house and the entire house had to get gutted.
I didn't have to, you know, I didn't have to bring a new sewer line in. I didn't have to bring a new water line in. I didn't have to do a water mitigation plan because I was, My grandfather. No, I was I was exempted because it was an insurance. It was an insurance restoration project. In fact, it's a it's a box that's right on the the form that you fill out for the pulling the permit in the building inspector said, make sure you put all over the form, you know, insurance restoration. And it just goes right through. It doesn't have to go to the one department. It doesn't have to go to all the different departments. It was actually very smooth sailing. So seeing that this is something that's coming up, I'm sure that there's other, I'm sure that there's other towns that have figured out how to, you know, do this effectively. And I'd like to speak, I've been trying to like get in touch with different insurance providers to see how they've like gone around this. Like, is there something that we can put in the, um, Is there something as a historic district commission that we can put in our rules or a policy or something like that, that can make this smooth so that it makes our, you know, we would lessen the insurance burden on the people that own these historic homes in these historic, potentially historic commercial buildings, you know, with something as simple as like, you know, If a window's, you know, if a window's destroyed in a fire, it can be replaced like this, so that there's a plan, so that way an actionary from the insurance company can go, okay, that makes sense. And, you know, then it's fully insured instead of 80% insured. You know, I'm trying to think, you know, someone must have figured this out, and I'd like to talk to that someone so that we can have it figured out.
[Theresa Dupont]: What do y'all think about that? I think it's good to be educated on all of these things, especially if we move forward with a district, we're going to have feedback and it would be good to know the entire scenario.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and so what he's going to do is he's going to come in and speak to us about the process of a loss. So when you have a loss, they come in and they look at you know, what the, so what they can see regarding the building. So forget about all the personal property, just talking about the building. So they come in after the loss and they look at it and go, okay, so many feet of, you know, finished wall surface, so many feet of finished trim, you know, on the exterior, you know, scorched siding, you know, whatever it is. Right. And then when they remove them, that gets a price and that gets negotiated. So then when all that gets stripped off, then they have what's called code, which is the code upgrade of like electrical and plumbing. And then also like the framing code that has to be brought up. And what he was saying is that the framing code And he's going to speak to this himself. So I'm just telling you secondhand. So please forget what I've said and listen to him next month. But my understanding of it is that in historic districts, in that insurance that's available for them, the code is not covered at all. And that's the biggest cost in the insurance claim.
I'm sorry, what's that?
[Theresa Dupont]: I think we just had some background. Oh, OK. Yeah. So the code's not covered at all.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. So the code's not covered at all, or it's only covered a small percentage of it. And then the historic items weren't covered. So we should be prepared to ask him some questions on that. But he's going to go over how the claims process works. And it's actually pretty scary. After having just gone through it, And then finding out that after I just went through it, I mean, I've, I've come out unscathed. Well, I haven't got my check yet, but it looks like knock on wood. It looks like I'm going to come out unscathed, which is great. I mean, that's, that would be devastating. I mean, even if you thought to yourself, like your own house, if you had a catastrophic loss and then you were only going to get 80% of it, that's going to force sale or whatever, you know, terrible thing, you know?
[Peter Miller]: If a property, if it was one of the businesses or a home or whatever, if that property, like say one of the buildings in Medford Center right now, if that property was not in a historic district, would they get what we would consider to be 100% insurance coverage? Is it only because it's in a historic district And guess somehow historic that that's what you almost get penalized by that. So it could be the exact same building, exact same fire. And if it had no designation, the insurance company would have no problem covering a hundred percent, whatever that represents.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: We're going to ask him that question. Okay. But my understanding is yes. And it's because of the historic district itself. It's causing that. Yeah. Because there are regulations. Yeah. Okay. So that's why I'm, that's why I want to see like, and if you think about it, it makes sense. Like, so like the, like, so Medved, when you do a two family over, like you bring in a new sewer line, new water line, that makes sense because it's a huge, you know, project that, you know, it should be factored in and that should be handled by the developer. I mean, that makes sense. It makes sense though, for the insurance company to not have to, cover that because it was functioning prior to, you know, the fire. You know, the fire had nothing to do with, you know, and it also didn't damage the sewer line and the added cost on the community. Because we all are in an insurance pool, you know, like, unfortunately, all of you paid for my problem. You're welcome. You know, unfortunately, you paid for my problem. I feel terrible about that, by the way. But the That's how it works. Yeah, so I mean, why should, why should the community pay more money to do a sewer and it wasn't necessary like I should only receive the bare minimum to put my house back together, but I want to be back at 100%. So I mean is, is there something that we can do as a historic district. to, you know, to be to make it so that it's insurable, so that we get the building back so that the 100 percent of the insurance is it. So we're covered at 100 percent, you know, so the building comes back instead of 80 percent. And then, you know, it sits with like plywood board up service for, you know, five years until they finally realize that they're selling it. You know, it's you know what? I don't want to see that happen to anybody.
[Peter Miller]: I would definitely be curious to find out. from the insurance representative why, if you had a historic building and it was not in a historic district and had a fire, why they would pay out, and if I'm hearing this right, they will pay out to restore it 100% back to the way it was. So in other words, if you had a beautiful copper roof or something like that, they would pay you to have that replicated and put back up on the building. But if it's in a historic district, they're like, no, you can put asphalt shingles up there. We're not paying for the copper. That just seemed, I'm curious if that's the case or if, yeah, we'll pay 100%, but because you're not in a historic district, you can then do whatever you want. You can do the minimum if we give you the minimum. I'm just, I'd want that clarified because it seems to me that we're not asking, I can understand not being able to ask someone to upgrade the sewer line because the sewer line wasn't responsible for the fire and that's an existing condition and we didn't do anything to that. But if all the woodwork inside of an old building is burned or the plaster work is all destroyed or something like that, they'll pay for it. They will pay to restore that if it's not in a district, but as soon as you put it in a district, now they won't pay for
[Theresa Dupont]: I think that's a good thing to clarify.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know if he's going to be able to tell you what happens. I don't know if he's going to be able to tell you the why. So he's because he's the person that just does this is what's happening, you know, because he's the one negotiating in your pad. I mean, I bet you it's. You know, I probably shouldn't speculate, but what what happened with my situation is, is they select the heating. So I had a steam heating system that got condemned because, so you've got two steam heating systems that got condemned because the water literally flowed down and dumped on top of them. So the electronics were, Yeah, they would toast it. So I mean, so they don't, you know, putting so and then all the because the house had to sit for a few months, all the, you know, all the weight of the water soaked drywall and water soaked, you know, insulation caused my floor joists to set. So I said, Well, you know, I'm gonna have to redo all the steam piping because, you know, this is all going to clack and bang because, you know, It's all going to be, you know, it's the pitch is wrong. And he's like, that's not how it works. He's like, what they're going to do is say, OK, so you've got to you've got to keep that space. You should be able to keep that space for thirty five thousand dollars, you know, whatever that is per floor. That's what they're going to give you. You know what I'm saying? It's not they weren't they weren't going to rebuild the steam system for me. So I ended up doing forced hot air, obviously, to come in within budget.
[Theresa Dupont]: So they didn't look at like pre-existing. This is what we pay for heating systems today.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: That's what we're gonna pay to redo a heating system in that place. We're not gonna, because also like the other issue that I ran into was the chimney. So it was a chimney going through the house and the framing was up tight against the chimney. I didn't have a two inch gap. You know, he has space. So, you know, so when I did my estimate, I was like, all right, well, I have to move a floor joist. And then, you know, we have to sleeve the chimney. And he's like, no, it doesn't happen like that. He's like, you get this amount of money for the heat, you know, you just go with a high efficiency and your chimney's gone. Interesting.
[Theresa Dupont]: I wrote down your question, James, just so you know. I got your question.
[Peter Miller]: So it almost, and not to chew up all our time with this, I guess it almost sounds as though whether your house is historic or otherwise, certainly if it's not designated as historic, they're probably not going to give you the money to replace everything. They're going to look at your roof, and like you said, and say, okay, a roof of that square footage, yeah, we'll give you $10,000 to do it. it might actually need $25,000 to replace the roof, especially if it was copper, whatever it is. So ultimately you're not really getting all the money. So that's in the district or otherwise.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: So that's exactly, okay, so excellent. So the heating system wouldn't be a good explanation for this, but like, So the roof was because I went over budget on the roofing because all the roofing had to be stripped because it got so hot that the, something happened to the roof shingles, I forget what it was. And I had a letter from CertainTeed saying that if it exceeded a certain temperature, it all had to come out. So then all I had to do was show the, so I showed the bill for the roof, which exceeded the amount of money that they had allocated. And then they gave me the balance. And that was a different thing that they, I, I'm sorry that I'm the, I'm the worst to remember, but it was like supplement. It was some, there was some terminology that Josh used and that's what you have to come with the bill afterwards for that. And that's probably where they have the problem with the historic district because you don't feel like, okay, well, How do you determine the price of this copper roof if you have to do some type of special process that they're not familiar with and they didn't charge accordingly to insure it?
[Theresa Dupont]: I'm looking forward to this conversation. I'll try to think of some questions that I may have. I'll ask my people. I mentioned this, I told this to Joe earlier, but I mentioned that we were going to have an insurance person come and speak on this and in my office. People are like, that's interesting. I want to learn more. So looking forward to this, but I'll ask them if they have any questions to and and see to Charlotte James, you have any questions that pop up. know Saturday when you're walking your dog or whatever feel free to ship them over to me i'll collect them and then we can share them with josh in advance so that.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: And there was so that so that's for the so that was one so that's what josh is josh is going to handle the mechanics of a of a loss and how that works and the difficulties in a historic district that that he would run into he's. I'm trying to get someone who sells insurance to do what we were talking about, to find a town or city, even if it's in a different state, how they're handling it to make this better. That's the second tier one that I'm trying to do. And then thirdly, when you get so If a developer, so like let's say one of these buildings sells or they wanna develop it or whatever and they need to get a construction loan. When I've gotten a construction loan in the past, I have to get a bond and I've heard from, so I go through Johnson & Johnson for the bonding. So I called them up and asked them what the difficulties, and they said they weren't, they asked the question like, well, where's the project? I'm like, it's hypothetical. and they're like, you know, we're not interested in doing it, we don't do that. So that's a, this, the first, so talking to Josh and then the insurance provider for a loss, those are the two things I wanna handle. But I also wanna talk about bonding for the construction loans and see if that is, if it's just an issue, because I use obviously the cheapest bonding company I can find. You know, if there's other ones out there that are better and they're not worried about it, You know, I want to see if that's an issue. I haven't really dove into that as much yet.
[Theresa Dupont]: So an insurance adjuster, essentially, and then insurance salesperson and then a bonding agent. Those are the three rocks that we're trying to, okay.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[Theresa Dupont]: That makes sense to me.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: I think, does anyone else think of any insurance issues that would have for a commercial district, excuse me, any insurance companies that wouldn't be involved with historic districts that are commercial buildings. I guess the only other one that I could think of would be on the, you know, if someone had a triple net lease, even if they didn't have a triple net lease, the insurance that for a tenant, like are they impacted at all? You know, that's another thing that we should look into.
[Theresa Dupont]: Because most of these commercial historic buildings in Bedford Square, a couple of them are owner-occupied, but a lot of them are also their tenants. So that would affect, I can't think of any businesses off the top of my head, but there's dental offices in one of those buildings down there. And the owner of that building is in Nebraska or something. So we want to make sure that whatever happens with this districtification is not a word, but I'm making it up. How would we also be able to best educate the tenants?
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because there's different ways that the leases happen with tenants. If they lease in the space and then they're doing remodeling work and fitting up work, does that impact them? Yeah. It makes sense that it probably would. Yeah. you know, as opposed to someone who's just using the building the way it is just for like liability insurance. I mean, I can't picture that being that involved with it, but that's probably something we should know as well.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. Well, I'll try to pull together some potential contacts in my head. I'm thinking that there are insurance agents that own commercial historic buildings in Medford square. So approaching them may be very interesting because we'll get their perspective as a potentially as somebody who would be impacted by the district, as well as just their professional knowledge as well. We can chat about that.
[Peter Miller]: Yeah. Absolutely. If you would like between now and next month, I have here in the office, there's one of my partners. He's very big into historic restoration. quite serious into it. And he handles most of those projects here in the office. And also there's a number of organizations that we're part of or that we sponsor that have to do with historic preservation and everything from, you know, everything from state level to local level that we deal with. What I could do is I could ask him what his experience with that is. If he Not that he gets really involved in the insurance, but if he knows what people have had to go through in order to do that, and if there are specific companies that he knows which tend to lean more towards the historic, you know, providing the insurance, I could try to get some names. I could try to get some information on that if we think that would be helpful too.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great. And then also, like, the experience that he has more recent than, like, because I believe the everything's changed in the past few years to my understanding. Okay. Great. Yeah, that would be excellent.
[Peter Miller]: Okay. Let me see what I can find. I'll throw out some general questions concerning that and see if I can start tapping into different organizations that we work with.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. Excellent. Thanks, James. All right. Some more to come. Perfect. I can give it just a brief update as to where we're at with the Medford Square rezoning. Excellent. Yeah. It seems to be that the idea of a blanket commercial districts, I presented to them, I think, at the February 25th meeting. I think you were there, Joe, just to kind of give an overview of what it's like to actually put a district in place. And I think that was really eye opening for the council as well as the community development board that this would be something that we could not rush through in the three month timeline that they talked about.
So the idea of putting in a commercial historic district isn't as a high of a priority right now. There is interest in pursuing what we're kind of labeling as the institutional buildings as a district and institutional will be the churches, St. Joe's Church, Unitarian, Grace Episcopal, the Isaac Hall House, basically these buildings that have received public funds to do historic preservation and restoration work. So the idea of a blanket one, which kind of worried us all a little bit there for a while. That's kind of being pushed to the wayside right now. I don't think anybody really agrees that that's a great idea for us to do right now. But there is a desire to pursue this institutional district, which I don't think that there would be as much resistance to that. I think it would be a little bit more acceptable because these are folks that are stewards of buildings that they want to be exactly the same in 150 years as it was 150 years ago. So I don't think that, I think there'll be a path of least resistance to protect some of those anchor buildings in Medford Square.
They are still discussing Medford Square rezoning, but just as an update, we're not being asked to pursue that right now as a solution to how do we preserve these buildings from redevelopment.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: So we should probably for that, we should probably have a, we should wait to Roberta. There's going to be a new, I don't know if it was said that there's going to be a new member coming in. We should probably, so she'll be probably at the next meeting. Yes. So then at the following meeting, which would be major. So like the June meeting, we should probably start discussions of how we would approach, um, you know, do setting up one of these institutional historic districts, you know, the process that we want to do, like, because we can go over. Was it Richard Skelty? What was his name? Chris Skelly. Yeah, Skelly.
He gave us a really nice slide, like a PowerPoint slideshow that we can we can go through that and see how it went about it before because it was successful. We'll follow that path. Well, we'll talk about how to do it, but his path worked very well the last time. Maybe you might want to think of using it again. We should probably plan on talking about that in June.
[Theresa Dupont]: And just as a note on that, my day job for the city, the full-time path that I wear, I am actually, I managed that grant program that has funded all of those buildings. So I'm happy in, again, my full-time role to also support this just from that position. So I'm happy to start engaging with all of these folks, really explaining the situation and then bringing them to the table. So again, I don't think this will be, I don't think we'll have much in the way of pushback on this. Did all of those churches I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with what's going on with St. Joseph's. It looks like they might be putting the school and potentially the church up for sale. They are closing the school at the end of this academic year, so that's a big property to sit empty. More to come, we don't really know exactly. I don't think it's on the market right now, but Unitarian, Grace Episcopal, The Isaac Hall House, even the library, we could put into it, even though it's a brand new building, we could still technically put it in the district to put that protection on it. I feel like I'm forgetting another one, but yeah, they've all received it. It's a Community Preservation Act or CPA funds. So in the armory building is another one.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: In in that receiving the funds. Is there an agreement that they have to historical preservation.
[Theresa Dupont]: And some of them, it was a more recent funding condition that we put on that they would pursue some sort of local historic district or or there is another vehicle. It's a deed restriction, which is just turning out to actually be way more complicated than putting a district on a property so Some of the more recent projects, they were given funding, conditioned on them being open to the idea of talking about this. So again, that's why I don't think it's going to be as contentious as perhaps South Street was, with a couple of people voicing their opinions. So more to come on that. We'll definitely talk about that at the June meeting. But I did want to give everybody a little bit of an update as to where we're at with Medford Square, because that was kind of a, oh, OK, we've got to focus on it now. It's kind of calmed down again.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: That wasn't going to happen in full.
[Theresa Dupont]: No, it wasn't. And I'm glad everybody agrees. There was just some education that needed to be done, and it was done. You did an excellent presentation at that. I appreciate that. Thank you. That meeting, by the way. Appreciate that. So yeah, so that's where we're at with Medford Square. If anybody has any questions, I can try to answer them. I'm not as deeply involved in that. conversation, but my roommate, my office roommate is, and I can always pick her brain, if anybody has any specific questions. So let me know.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: I think that's... Well, we have to... Sorry. Can we take a look at the meeting minutes, and then we can accept them?
[Theresa Dupont]: So they were in the meeting packet in the drop-off, if I'm happy to put them up on the screen, too, if we want to do that. Just let me know what would be easiest for you.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Did people get a chance to read it, or should we put it up on the screen?
[Theresa Dupont]: Would you be able to put it up on the screen, please? Sure. One second. Thank you for your patience. This is basically like I have two monitors, except one monitor is a laptop and the other one is a 65 inch TV. So it's always kind of fun figuring this out. All right, let me hit share. And here we are. Everybody should be seeing the minutes here. So for those who weren't able to attend, this is one where we had a community development board chair, Doug Carr, come and kind of speak a little bit about the Medford Square rezoning. So I'll stop talking and just slowly scroll.
[Peter Miller]: I had one potential correction. Sure. On the fourth page, Uh, it says, uh, it says member Mackey shared his appreciation that the final treatment would be historically accurate, et cetera, et cetera. At the end of that, the last sentence, I think the, he confirmed that the certificate of appropriateness would be forthcoming. Um, and also the one with schedule. I think that should possibly have been, um, Mr. Hayward.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. OK, yeah. I will make that up. I can make that correction that we can vote on these at the next meeting or I can make a correction on the fly. Um?
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Let's see if we can just do the correction right now.
[Peter Miller]: And OK, yeah, yeah, it's the two sentences. The the timeline and the certificate of appropriateness.
[Theresa Dupont]: Good call. Those darn pronouns got me. All right. I promise it's there. There we go.
[Peter Miller]: There you go. Let me do it.
[Theresa Dupont]: So yeah, so the second half of the meeting was we had, it wasn't an official review. It was just like a courtesy update for 16 Whitman Road, which is a carriage house that will be converted to an ADU. So the architect was Brian Hayward there. So I apologize, James. I tried lying. But thank you for catching that. Oh, yeah. No worries. Any other? You can zoom us back in again if we want to.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: We should. After everyone's done reviewing this, we should make a motion to accept these, or if that's okay, and then vote to do it. And then I just wanted to have one quick minute to talk about the institutional historic district.
[Theresa Dupont]: And then this, yeah. That was an old note from the previous minutes there, so I'll strike that as well. So if I scroll up, there we go. So I guess, Joe, you're looking for a motion to accept the minutes? Yes, that'd be great if someone could make that motion.
[Peter Miller]: Motion to accept the meeting minutes as amended.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Could someone second that?
[Peter Miller]: I confirm.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: OK, so let's vote on that. James?
[Peter Miller]: Yes.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Charlotte?
[Peter Miller]: Yes.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Hasida?
[Peter Miller]: Yes.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: And I vote yes as well, so it's accepted. So that's great. So one thing that we should be thinking, because this institutional historic district, would be involving religious buildings. So those religious buildings were purpose-built for a particular religion, or maybe they were purpose-built for a religion and then maybe changed religions. But they would include, like, ornamentation might be the correct word for a specific religion. Then, you know, that that religion may not, you know, so we might, we might lock the building into a historic district, you know, and then it's preserved the way it is. So, you know, carrying forward, you know, if, if the church is no longer used for that religion or, or the religion, you sort of even as a church, really, right. I mean, you know like does that like how does that affect the religious symbols that are on the building like it you know is how is that protected and is that right for us to protect that or not um you know an example of that would be and i hope this doesn't come across wrong so like right on mass ave there's a there's a church there's a roman catholic church and the roman catholic church used at one point used the symbol of the swastika. And the church had the swastika on the front of it. Now, obviously it was done way before the swastika was used by someone else that used it. You know, and that had been there for years through the 90s. I think as of like, you know, 10 years ago, they altered the side of it or something. No, they changed the swastika. They ground it off and they made a cross out of it.
you know, how we need to see how we're going to address. If we're going to do that, we have to see how we're going to address that. You know, those aspects of the building and, you know, not interfere with the religious rights of the occupants to change or do whatever they need to do to practice their religion in those structures. That's going to be an important thing going forward with that.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, that's a good point to make. And luckily, I know that there's quite a few religious institutions, churches, temples that are in historic districts in other cities. So we can do what local government does best and just borrow from our neighbors and friends who have already established some sort of language about that. So I can do some research into, you know, I know in Stoneham, their whole historic downtown area, that's all our commercial historic district. And I believe it includes Is that a Unitarian church that's right on the other side of the green in Stoneham? So all I'm getting at is we could probably find some other language and borrow from our neighbors about how to address that. I'm sure somebody else has thought of that.
But that's a good thing to flag.
[Peter Miller]: Because that would be pretty far reaching. I mean, even statuary, stained glass windows, it gets to the point where I understand the idea of, okay, if say a church gets purchased by a group that wants to use it as a mosque, well, they will not use the same, in fact, they won't have any of the same iconography and like that, that say a Catholic church would have, just as an example. So, yeah. how much of the fabric of the building do you allow to be removed before whether you didn't really protect it?
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Correct. That's what my concern is. It's an interesting question. Looking into that to see what's protected and what's not, while not interfering with the religious rights of the churches that are there.
[Theresa Dupont]: I've also heard of some churches being sold off. and then being converted into housing or some other non-religious use. And if that were to happen, knock on wood, it wouldn't. I would imagine a housing development might love the look of the Unitarian Church. It has that beautiful facade, the grace of Episcopal. It has that nice stonework to it. But would they want to have a cross on the steeple? Also, if they're selling that, too.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: I know that the Catholic Church, when they sell a church, they try to sell it to another religious order that's similar. And I believe if they were selling the church, they would remove those things themselves because they wouldn't want that to proceed forward with someone else that could potentially disgrace it or whatever, because it actually has meaning to them. Right. You know, so I mean, yeah, that's going to.
[Theresa Dupont]: Well, we'll hire on a consultant to help us with this, too. So maybe we can go back to our friend Chris Kelly and say, hey, what do you think? Yeah. But those are good things to raise as we're as we're talking and thinking about institutional district. All right, so next month we'll have Mr. Goldstein here. Is it Goldstein or Stein? I wrote down. Stein. Stein. Here to talk about insurance adjustment and the process of a loss. We may have an application, a certificate of appropriateness. I spoke with a property owner in the Marston Men's District. So if he's prepared, we'll have a certificate of appropriateness to review.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Is it a large project?
[Theresa Dupont]: He's looking at windows, window replacements.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so it's a relatively quick one, okay.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, yeah. I can't for the life of me remember the address, but it's a very prominent, lovely house. It's that yellow house right in the Marmoset District at the, Charlotte, what's the name of that street that's right there on High Street that everybody turns down? That's Woburn Street. Is that Woburn Street? Yeah, so he's right on the corner of High and Woburn. That's a beautiful house. It is a beautiful, everybody knows that house. It's a gorgeous house, so I think it's sold, last year or the year before. And the windows are horrendously drafty. So he's looking at his options there. Great. Yeah. And then we'll have meeting minutes from this meeting. So we'll have a good, strong May 12th is the date, if I'm not mistaken, meeting.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Excellent. All right. All right, well, does anyone else have anything they want to discuss or bring up or? No. All right, well.
[Peter Miller]: I'm sorry, I was going to say concerning the concerning the question with the churches that we were just talking about, that's another thing that I'll I'll I'll ask my partner about and see if he has any insights, because he does. He actually does quite a few churches. And I'm sure there are churches that have passed between different denominations and faiths and things like that. So I'll see if he has any insight on that as well. That's awesome. Thank you, James.
[Theresa Dupont]: Appreciate that. I guess, are you entertain a motion to adjourn, my friend?
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Can someone make a motion to adjourn?
[Peter Miller]: I make a motion to adjourn.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: Can someone second that?
[Peter Miller]: I second it.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: OK, let's have a vote. Charlotte?
[Peter Miller]: Yes.
[MCM00001828_SPEAKER_03]: James. Yes. Hasida. Yes. And I vote yes as well. So this meeting is adjourned. We'll see you next month.
[Theresa Dupont]: Awesome. Thank you everyone.