A Bangor board that oversees the preservation of historic buildings agreed to approve a local homeowner’s new roof that was installed months ago, putting an end to a lengthy dispute between the resident and city officials.
Steven Farren, who owns a home on Broadway that was built between 1850 and 1864, asked Bangor’s Historic Preservation Commission on Thursday for retroactive approval for his new asphalt roof, which mimics the appearance of slate shingles.
The board unanimously approved the roof, deciding that requiring Farren to replace his roof with new slate would be cost-prohibitive and unreasonably burdensome.
“I’m relieved and glad this is finally over,” said Farren, who is also running for Bangor City Council alongside eight other candidates. “This shed light on something that has been an issue for a long time and I think now there’s going to be real change.”
The approval resolved a stalemate that began last year and highlighted how expensive and arduous it can be to maintain a historic home in Bangor. It also raised questions about whether the city’s rules are too restrictive and should be updated to make it affordable for homeowners to take care of their aging properties.
Edmund Chernesky, chair of the Bangor Historic Preservation Commission, said the group agrees, “slate roofs are something to be treasured, valued and preserved.” However, replacing them when necessary may be the best decision to preserve the rest of the historically significant home.
“If we wish those buildings to stay with us, we have to make decisions with our head rather than our heart,” Chernesky said.
The commission also voted unanimously, after a lengthy debate, that member Anne Marie Quin had a conflict of interest on the application and should be recused.
The group made its ruling based on photos of Farren’s old slate shingles on the ground that someone sent to Quin and she didn’t share with city staff or other board members.
Quin also conducted research in multiple libraries on other cases in which a municipality considers a request to complete work that has already been done without penalizing the applicant for bucking a board’s previous ruling, as Farren did. Quin said her research, gathered with the help of librarians, showed the situation is “unprecedented.”
“I don’t think I should be penalized for doing research,” Quin said. “How can it be wrong to gather all the information you can possibly muster to make the best decision possible?”
While the commissioners agreed that Quin’s research wasn’t done with malicious intent, the details she provided show “an appearance of bias” when the group must make a decision based only on the material in the application.
The vote in Farren’s favor came 11 months after he made the exact same request in November 2024, before the roof was replaced. The group denied him then and explained that city rules require him to either have the original slate roof repaired, or replace it entirely with new slate to preserve the historic appearance and integrity of the home.
At the time, Farren said his aging slate roof — likely installed after the Great Fire of 1911 — was leaking in multiple places and causing damage to the home. He wanted to replace the roof with asphalt because it’s significantly more affordable and more contractors can perform the work, meaning he wouldn’t have to wait for months or years.
This time, Farren included two letters as evidence for why he needed the fake slate, which he didn’t have when he first asked for the new roof last year. That evidence, Historic Preservation Commission members said, made the difference, as it required them to approach the more robust application as an entirely new request.
One letter was from his insurance company warning him that his homeowners insurance would not be renewed if he didn’t replace his roof by June 3, 2025, due to its poor condition.
The second letter outlines an inspection of Farren’s roof that Massachusetts-based New England Infrastructure Inc. performed on Jan. 17, 2025. The contractor concluded that the roof needed to be entirely replaced rather than repaired due to its poor condition.
Hugh Derry, a principal at New England Infrastructure Inc. who wrote the letter, warned that a new slate roof would cost between $220,000 and $260,000. Farren would also likely need to wait until next year to have the work done, due to the limited number of contractors who work with slate, Derry said.
Farren bought the home for $395,000 in 2017 and the property is now valued at nearly $472,000, according to city records.
Because Farren’s home is in one of the city’s nine historic districts, he needs approval before making any home improvements that could change the appearance of the building.
After the first rejection, Farren took the issue to the city’s Board of Appeals in January, but the board upheld the commission’s ruling.
A few months later, Farren replaced his roof with the fake slate anyway, which cost roughly $60,000, bucking the city’s repeated denials.
City officials promptly issued him a violation notice, which ordered him to “fix the violation” within 30 days. Instead, Farren appealed the notice, but the city’s Board of Appeals ruled in May that the city was right to issue it.
Farren attempted to ask the commission for retroactive approval twice in July, but those meetings were postponed because only four voting members were present each time. This would have required Farren to receive a unanimous vote in his favor, the chances of which, he believed, were slim.
Throughout this conflict, Farren has pointed to the numerous other historic homes that at some point had their slate roofs replaced with asphalt, seemingly without permission or repercussions.
In previous years, commissioners have also allowed other historic properties throughout Bangor to have their slate roofs replaced with another material, said Rick Violette, who also lives in the Broadway Historic District and assisted Farren with his presentation.