Kevin Allen: The DCR historic curatorship program is a public-private partnership that's meant to preserve some of the commonwealth's significant but endangered historic resources by partnering with outside individuals and groups who are willing to invest their own time and energy and effort in return for a long-term lease on these properties.
Katherine Huck: The curatorship to us is an opportunity for a public-private partnership to give an entity that has an enterprising vision the chance to bring an old building back to life and share with their community.
Kevin: It's an open and competitive process. The kind of people that should apply to the historic curatorship program are folks who have a passion for historic buildings and for history that have the resources to be able to put towards the rehabilitation, the maintenance, and the management of these properties, and also the skills and ability to know that a preservation project is different than a renovation of a normal house and stay passionate about what they're invested in.
Kara Anderson: We're all in on the speedway, we really, we're responding to the community desire to save this property. Touchstone of the community for a long time and it was also disinvested for a long time and falling into disrepair, so I think it struck a chord to a lot of people's hearts and decided it was mission critical for us to get involved.
Larry Seaboyer: The DCR curatorship program to me is an opportunity to be able to save a historic building to save the history of this building for the town and an opportunity for me to do what I love to do.
Darrold Endres: My wife and I are part of the curatorship program and the program is a visionary one. It's a partnership in which both people come away with immense benefit.
My daughter Julia's bean tower. She's 24 now but when she was a tiny little girl, this was her chair.
Janet Fritz: Well I like to tell it that the house found us. So we we lived in the town next door. We you know came and walked in the park and this house was just sitting empty so Darrold and I kind of would peep in the windows and kind of fell in love with the property. So one day we were sitting on our front porch at our house...
Darrold: ...in the Boston Globe, there appeared the house of the week, and it was this house, and my wife sat up and said...
Janet: ...we had to apply. So that's how it kind of like started. But really the house found us.
Katherine Huck: So DCR has been an incredible partner in their commitment to seeing us thrive beyond just the renovation.
Kevin Allen: In order for their proposal to work as a commercial entity they were going to need parking, and so in their proposal they made that clear, so when we take that burden off of them so they could focus on preserving the building and getting the business started.
Katherine: They want to see our business continue to thrive, they want to see people enjoying the property they're providing us signage, history of the house that we can share with our community is really important and they were the major source of that. It's easy when you're in the dreaming phase to think up all the great ideas of why you should be doing it, but then understanding how you're going to finance it and what the long term goals are is a super important thing to put down on paper certainly, but then to be able to share with other people to get them on board.
Kara Anderson: This project was a combination of federal and state historic tax credits, New Market's tax credits, we also received some funding from the city of Boston. The remaining sources were a combination of conventional debt and AHF equity.
Katherine: Part of the challenge is that the state owns the property and so as far as securing assets it's not going to be the easiest thing to do. However, we managed to find funding for the curatorship program by partnering with a local community lender.
Darrold Endres: You're responsible for restoring and maintaining the property, and these properties--ours was, and we couldn't get an occupancy permit. It was completely decrepit and falling apart.
Larry Seaboyer: It's a 24/7 deal. Live in it, work in it, scrape the ceilings--all the metal ceilings down.
Janet Fritz: Things are always in process, you know the kitchen walls being taken down, or the floors are being sanded.
Darrold: We haul all these stones out by hand and then we pour the concrete floor.
Kara Anderson: When I took my then five-year-old to see the property, and he just looked around and said, "Mom, this place is haunted. What are we even doing here?" When he comes back, it'll be a really poignant moment for him to see the power of preservation and the power of the people's will to do something for his generation and and forward.
Larry Seaboyer: I've been a carpenter for 50-something years this is what I do. This is what I love to do. I feel it's really important that this building is saved.
Kevin Allen: Historic preservation is really hard work, and it really takes more than dollars and cents to make it work, it takes passion and every one of our curators comes to the table with that.
Larry Seaboyer: I'm going to be here for 25 years and that's--I'm satisfied with that. It's a great payoff on it because I love being here.
Janet Fritz: We're here for a certain period of time and then it passes and it passes on to somebody else. We're in partnership with the house, you know, we give to it and it gives back to us. It's really important to leave the world better than you entered it.
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