BANGOR, Maine — A commission charged with preserving Bangor’s historic landmarks has rejected a request to tear down a 124-year-old house that has been deteriorating for half a century.
During a meeting last month, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission denied an application from Shaw House, an agency that works with homeless and at-risk youth, to tear down the engineer’s house on its property. That site, along the Penobscot River, was home to Bangor’s historic waterworks facilities, which Shaw House converted into low-income apartments in 2007 after years of legal wrangling.
Largely ignored during the $6.8 million renovation and reuse effort was the on-site engineer’s house. It has fallen into such disrepair after more than 40 years of vacancy that a structural engineer, during a recent walk-through of the building, fell through the floor and had to abandon his inspection.
Shaw House says it’s stuck with a building it doesn’t want and can’t afford to do anything with. The commission says the group made a promise a decade ago to give the decrepit building new life and hasn’t put in enough effort to protect or preserve it.
In the wake of that contentious meeting, and in spite of a 4-3 vote by the commission to deny the bid to tear it down, the future of the house remains in limbo.
This old house
When Bangor built its waterworks and dam in the mid-1870s, the engineer responsible for controlling the dam gate and maintaining the machinery lived in a small apartment above the water wheel.
It was noisy, damp, cold and “almost uninhabitable,” according to Deb Thompson, who wrote a book on Bangor’s architectural history that includes a few pages about the waterworks property.
In 1892, architect Wilfred E. Mansur sat down and drafted a design for a home on the property. Mansur was, arguably, the preeminent local architect of his time, responsible for dozens of homes, government buildings and downtown offices.
The cost of design and construction for the gambrel-roofed, wooden house was $2,764, according to Thompson.
That house, known by some as the gatekeeper’s or superintendent’s house, served the city’s water department until the late 1950s, when Bangor and five surrounding towns formed a water district and built a new water system, leaving the old waterworks facility vacant.
The waterworks facility and house both fell into disrepair in the decades that followed, the victim of frequent vandalism, squatting and inattention. The engineer’s house was repurposed by the city for General Assistance housing until the mid-1970s when the family living there was forced to move because the “building was no longer safe,” according to Dan Wellington, who led the city’s code enforcement division for 17 years.
The engineer’s house was boarded up, and it has been vacant ever since.
Restoration
Wellington said the city’s code office, starting in the 1990s, saw 25 to 30 different proposals from groups that wanted to do something with the waterworks site before it was too far gone. Concepts varied from installing a new dam to building a hotel to relocating the office of the University of Maine System chancellor.
Some groups were just “kicking the tires,” while others couldn’t find the funding, Wellington added.
Finally, one came to fruition, but only after years of uncertainty and legal battles.
In 2003, Shaw House decided to set up a development corporation to push toward the repurposing of the waterworks and took over ownership of the property and the buildings on it. After a $6.8 million investment, Waterworks Apartments’ 35 affordable efficiencies, geared toward young adults at risk of homelessness, opened in 2007.
The engineer’s house largely was left alone during the transformation. Contractor Nickerson & O’Day of Brewer picked up the house and moved it about 100 feet to make room for a circular driveway and parking area. When it did that, it placed it on top of a badly needed new foundation, worth about $70,000. It also tarped the roof to stop leaks that already badly damaged the interior over the years. The roof was later replaced, at a cost of about $9,000.
At the time, Shaw House officials told the city and media they hoped to fix up the engineer’s house and convert it into some sort of office space. The 30-year lease includes a clause that states that the “tenant intends to improve, occupy and use the [engineer’s] building,” stipulating it must be used as office space unless the landlord provides prior consent for another use.
It never happened.
Unwanted
Today, there’s new leadership at Shaw House, and they don’t see the same future for the house.
Their request to tear down the historic building hinges on a city ordinance that states a historic property can only be demolished if it’s incompatible with the historic district it’s located in or if the owner can demonstrate it is incapable of earning an economic return on its value.
Shaw House’s attorney, Gene Sullivan of Bangor, argued that the renovation and upkeep of the building were no longer financially viable options, so the commission should allow the demolition.
Under the ordinance, if a demolition of a historic property is approved, it must be posted for sale for 180 days before it can be torn down, giving another buyer a chance to come forward, purchase the building and prevent its destruction.
“There is no one left at Shaw House that was involved in the waterworks development,” Sally Tardiff, executive director of the organization, told the Historic Preservation Commission during the Dec. 10, 2015, meeting. “This is a sad situation of being saddled with property that we can’t maintain and that was not maintained prior.”
Tardiff, who runs Shaw House alongside her husband, Rick Tardiff, went on to tell the commission about the mission of their organization and that whatever benefits would be seen by rehabilitating the building wouldn’t justify the expense.
“Every penny that we get at Shaw House provides those services and programs,” she said. “We don’t have the money to maintain the engineer’s house.”
Commission Chairwoman Sonia Mallar cut Tardiff off, sharply criticizing the plan and questioning why Shaw House has enough money to demolish the historic site but not enough to maintain it. The full meeting video is available on the city’s website at bangormaine.viebit.com.
Mallar said she was upset at what she saw as Shaw House’s failure to protect the property. The commission later voted down the request, recommending that Shaw House look into federal or state grants that may help it fund the maintenance or revival of the building.
In a finding of facts document the commission adopted this week, the commission explains its decision from last month.
The four commissioners who sided against the demolition believed that Shaw House hadn’t done enough homework to determine what grants or other funding opportunities might be available to rehab the building. They also argued Shaw House failed to prove it would be unable to earn an economic return on the property.
“Four members of the commission concluded that the applicant has demonstrated little or no effort in maintaining and preserving the engineer’s house. The hardship in this case was therefore created by the property owner,” the report states.
Too far gone?
About a week after the commission’s decision, at the Tardiffs’ request, Brian Ames, a local engineer, did a walk-through of the building with plans to provide an assessment of its structural integrity.
After taking a few steps around the interior, he fell through the first floor, catching himself with his elbows before he plunged all the way through to the basement.
“Once I fell through the floor, I honestly didn’t feel like continuing the inspection,” Ames said during an interview Wednesday. Plus, he said, his notebook and flashlight had fallen into the basement, and there was no way down to retrieve them.
He declined to give Shaw House a full report, and he didn’t charge it for his services. He just told Shaw House the floor gave way under him and that he wasn’t injured.
“If you fall through a floor, you pretty much have an idea of the building,” Ames said.
Shaw House expects to hire a structural engineer from Portland to do a full evaluation of the building, provided the engineer feels he or she can safely go inside.
Before the December meeting, Shaw House presented the commission with more than 200 pages of documents, including independent property valuations and cost estimates for what it would take to put the house back into use.
The documents include property appraisals from The Sherwood Group, a Bangor-based real estate adviser, which conducted an examination of the property last summer.
The appraisal says the building is uninhabitable and “in such poor condition it has no economic value and has no contributory value to its leased site.” The Sherwood Group said that any project to renovate the house for occupancy would be “cost prohibitive.”
The city’s assessment of the Waterworks Apartment parcel lumps the apartments and the engineer’s house together. The assessed value of the buildings is just over $1 million.
Philip Drew, city assessor, said that most if not all that value comes from the converted apartments and that the engineer’s house likely doesn’t have any “contributing value” to the site.
An evaluation in 2009, exploring whether the building may be converted to house a law office, concluded the conversion would cost $308,000. Wellington estimated the cost of restoring the house to the point where it could serve as housing again would cost $250,000, or about $250 per square foot.
Last May, Wellington visited the building for an evaluation, again at the request of Shaw House. In his report to Tardiff, he said it was “structurally unsafe, unstable, unsanitary, a fire hazard, and a hazard to health or safety.”
“I find, as others did in 2009, that the building has a negative value and is a liability for the owner,” Wellington said in his report.
Shaw House plans on bringing its demolition proposal back to the commission with more information about the condition of the building, according to its attorney.
Shaw House officials say they would consider selling the building if an offer was presented, and they would be required by statute to post it for sale even if the demolition is approved in the future.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.