Stan Stone, W4HIX writes:
Tonight in a public hearing at the Gloucester City Council, the application for historic restoration of 6 Stanwood Street by reshingling and repairing and painting the trim of the remainder of the build was unanimously approved. The value of the grant is $26,174, which is the combination of the quotes from Zac Smith (who did the front wall) for the shingling and trim repair and his brother-in-law Peter O’Neil for the painting. The council members spoke glowingly of CAARA’s contribution to Gloucester and Cape Ann.
This process took about a year between preparing a report and presenting it to the Gloucester Historical Commission to get the building deemed historically significant in order to qualify for the CPA grant (copies of the 6 Stanwood Street Historical Background of are now filed at the Cape Ann Museum and the Gloucester City Archives and will be placed on the CAARA website), preparation of the grant application (50 pages), plus a presentation at the Budget and Finance committee and tonight’s City Council meeting. Also involved was getting multiple quotes for the work. These efforts were shared by myself and Hank McCarl. Hank’s position on the Community Preservation Committee was enormously helpful and though he could not vote, he shepherded our proposal through the process. Also Hank’s contacts within the GHC and the City Council were enormously helpful.
I will be turning over the quotes to the house committee and contact information to Stefan our treasurer to schedule and monitor the work and handle the payments.
I sincerely believe that this resolves one of the biggest projects facing CAARA and its maintenance of 6 Stanwood St. Hopefully the board can come up with longer range planning of projects and acquire the funding to implement those projects to preserve and maintain one of the most important physical assets that CAARA possesses.