Representatives of American Legion Post 31 in Penacook are exploring alternatives to demolition for the historic Beede House.
The Legion applied to the city of Concord for a demolition permit in February, hoping to raze the 1860s-era home and build a long-awaited new post. Many neighbors, however, favored historic preservation and balked at that plan.
Jim Place, a local contractor and chairman of the building committee at the American Legion, said the Legion does have a contractor ready to take the building down, and could pull its permit as soon as next week. But instead, they plan to meet with city officials to talk about other options.
“We’ve got some ideas we’re going to shoot out with them,” Place said. “We haven’t made any decisions as of yet. We’re looking at the possibility of saving the brick building if it works into our plans.”
Place wouldn’t elaborate on what those ideas are, though he cautioned they might be too expensive to pursue. While the Legion isn’t up against an immediate deadline, he said, the group eventually does need a new post.
“Eventually, it’s either going to come down to the brick building coming down and the new building going up, or utilizing the brick section,” Place said. “We’ve talked about the concerns of the community, and we’re not trying to be bad guys. But it’s something that, we bought this building with this in mind years ago. So we’ll see if we can have a little of each to make everybody happy.”
Chairman Fred Richards said his Demolition Review Committee has been “very impressed” with the Legion’s openness to other ideas.
“They actually are very sensitive to the community concerns that have been expressed recently,” Richards said. “They want to do the right thing. . . . In that spirit, they have decided that even though they will be granted the demolition permit after April 7, we essentially have a gentleman’s agreement that the building will not be torn down for the foreseeable future.”
In the meantime, Richards said the Legion planned to connect with the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance for advice.
Place said the Legion had also been originally scheduled to meet in late March with Matt Walsh, the city’s director of redevelopment, special projects and downtown services. But Walsh called and cancelled that meeting because the future of the Beede House has become “a political hotbed,” Place said.
Walsh said he was aware of the ongoing discussions about the Penacook house, but he had no further comment Thursday.
“We were pretty disappointed. . . . We’re not looking for problems, we’re looking for solutions,” Place said.
Instead, Place has a meeting scheduled for next week with members of the city’s development team, he said, including Zoning Administrator Craig Walker. Walker was out of the office Thursday and not available for comment.
Place said he has met with that team before, when the Legion considered the former Beede Electrical Instruments building for this same project. Because of environmental cleanup needed at that site, the Legion decided that site was too expensive to pursue. Next week’s meeting would be a place to “kick around ideas” for the Beede House, he said.
“They usually have a lot of good ideas,” Place said.
The house in question – often called the Beede House – is located at 12-14 Washington St. in Penacook. Althea Barton, a village resident and board member at the Penacook Historical Society, has said it was built in 1869 as a two-family home by a father and son-in-law named John Foss and John Goldsmith. Eventually, the Beede family – prominent local business owners – came to live there. (Barton started a personal website about the history of the house at beedehouse.wordpress.com.)
In 2008, the American Legion bought the duplex for $300,000. The home backs up to the nonprofit’s current post at 11 Charles St., which is aging and not handicapped accessible. The hope was originally to renovate the Beede House into a new facility to host more functions, including funeral receptions for the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen. But bringing the old house into compliance with city fire codes and the Americans with Disabilities Act proved too costly.
So the Legion decided to demolish the Beede House and build new. Eventually, the plan is to take down the existing post on Charles Street to make way for parking.
But when the Legion filed for its demolition permit, the Heritage Commission stepped in. Under the city’s code of ordinances, the commission and its Demolition Review Committee can require a public hearing and impose a 49-day waiting period on the demolition of a historic building.
At the hearing, Penacook residents like Barton argued passionately in favor of keeping the Beede House. At another neighborhood meeting shortly after, Ward One Councilor Brent Todd said many residents repeated those comments.
“Everyone that spoke seemed to be saying that they were looking for solutions other than demolition,” Todd said later.
The city cannot, however, force the owner not to tear down his or her property.
“Everybody, depending on what they’re doing, has a budget, and they need to stick with it,” Richards said. “But we might be able to come up with something that meets their budget,and it would just be a great textbook example of how historic preservation and the future of community development could go hand in hand.”
(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321, mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle.)