After getting pushback from historic preservationists, the National Park Service has softened its stance on the future of a historic home it owns in Calais on the shore of the St. Croix River.
In an environmental assessment it issued last year on the McGlashan-Nickerson House, located next to the St. Croix Island International Historic Site, the park service indicated it was considering two options for the dilapidated building: having someone haul it away or demolishing it.
But in a revised assessment it issued in May, the park service now indicates it will consider a third option — leasing the historic home for up to 60 years on the condition that whoever rents it performs needed repairs and adequately preserves the building.
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The park service’s stance on the 5,400 square-foot home — which was built in 1883 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places — is that it is irrelevant to the service’s mission at the site, which is to preserve and provide interpretation of St. Croix Island.
The island, located in the river between Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick, was the site of an unsuccessful attempt by French immigrants in 1604-1605 to establish a colony in North America. Direct access to the island is not allowed, but the park service has an interpretive center and trail next to Route 1 that leads to an overlook where the island can be viewed from the river’s shore.
The park service used the house as an administrative building for a decade, until it opened a smaller, more modern visitor’s center in 2014, but since then has had no use for the building. It says it has spent $100,000 on the building’s upkeep and has predicted it would cost more than $1 million in “stabilization and rehabilitation work” to adequately preserve the structure.
In a statement released Wednesday, the park service said the revised assessment “takes into account feedback received during the previous comment period” from advocates who have argued the house should be preserved.
“The revised document presents a new alternative negotiated with the consulting
parties to lease the house with an option for demolition if the lease is unsuccessful,” park officials said.
Kirk Mohney, director of the state’s Historic Preservation Commission, said Friday in an email that the commission is “pleased” the park service has reconsidered its position leaving the building where it is. If the revision is adopted in the final plan for the property, it would give applicants up to two years to submit lease proposals to the federal agency.
“Hopefully, an acceptable third party can be identified in the time frame set forth in the revised environmental assessment,” Mohney said.
[The National Park Service might demolish a Calais house on the historic register]
Greg Paxton, executive director of Maine Preservation, said Friday the group last year listed the Italianate house on its most endangered properties list for 2018. He said it and the abutting Joshua Pettegrove House, which is privately owned and also listed on the national historic register, are among the remnants of a village in the city’s Red Beach neighborhood, which at one time was home to several granite quarrying companies.
“We’re very pleased with this change,” Paxton said. “We feel the house is very significant.”
Paxton added the group thinks the park service’s estimate that it would take more than $1 million to adequately preserve the house is significantly overinflated. He said Maine Preservation projects the needed repairs would cost in the neighborhood of $250,000, not including a fresh coat of exterior paint.
“It will need substantial improvements,” he said, but if the park leases the building for a reasonable amount — no one has said what that might be — the essential cost for occupying the building over several decades would be repairing and maintaining the structure, not paying rent.
“In essence, [the tenant] becomes the long-term steward,” he said.
Paxton added that if a business such as an inn or a bed and breakfast leased the McGlashan-Nickerson House, it would be entitled to long-term tax credits that would help make such a use financially viable. He added that the group would like to help facilitate finding a suitable tenant for the building.
Christie Anastasia, spokeswoman for Acadia National Park, which oversees operations of the site, said Friday that so far no promising candidates have come forward to offer to lease and preserve the historic home.
The park service will accept public comments, which can be submitted online, until the end of the day Friday, June 28.
