Maine Preservation announced last Friday the addition of the eight-acre Standish Corner Historic District to their endangered list, marking yet another stage in the battle between a citizen initiative to preserve the historic character of the town and advocates of property rights and economic development.
“It’s important to the historical community that the entire district was added to the list,” said Roxanne Eflin, executive director of Maine Preservation, a private nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving historic structures in Maine.
Eflin said the historic district in Standish is what defines the town’s character, and that residents need to be wary of commercial development that “impacts the community and status of the National Register District.”
“Towns need to pay more attention to the landscape… most communities are not willing to do that, and it’s to their own detriment,” she said.
The Standish Corner Historic District, consisting of eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, will join a sizeable list of historic places the organization has deemed to be in danger of becoming erased from Maine’s landscape and its citizens’ memory.
Adding the district to the list, however, does not ensure the preservation of any of its buildings, especially the Higgins home, an early 1800s federal style house located at the corner of routes 25 and 35, which is slated to be moved 200 yards away, refurbished, and replaced by a retail business.
During a December Standish Town Council meeting, the town granted the home’s owner, Robert Higgins, permission to move his home on the condition that the building replacing it must reflect the architectural style and character of the surrounding buildings.
“It was a win-win situation,” said Burns Cameron, chairman of the Standish Historic Preservation Commission. “Higgins gets what he wants and the town still has an historic landmark.”
Ideally, Cameron said, the Higgins home should stay where it is, but since he has decided to sell it, at least the building would be moved nearby and the retail store replacing it would resemble the surrounding historic landmarks.
The decision to permit the move aroused much contention, resulting in a lawsuit filed by planning board member Eleanor Dudek and resident George McNeil against the town.
Dudek and McNeil charge that the Historic Preservation Commission did not properly notify residents of the meeting during which the move was approved.
“We never had a real public hearing on the moving of the Higgins House,” said Dudek, who contends that any new building cannot be built to fit in with the historic community.
Councilor Larry Simpson, an opponent of the lawsuit, was quoted in this newspaper as saying the lawsuit cost the town valuable business by deterring a promising retail business that could have employed 115 people.
“If I had my way, I’d do away with the commission and the district. You can’t run a town on a residential tax base,” he said.
In a letter to Town Manager Gordon Billington earlier this year, Carl Nold, president and CEO of Historic New England, wrote:
“Moving the Dennett (Higgins) House to a location that is not under the jurisdiction of the historic district ordinance does nothing to ensure its future preservation and greatly threatens it. Additionally, moving a contributing resource in a National Register district without prior approval automatically removes the resource from the listing and jeopardizes the status of the entire district.”
Maine Preservation’s decision to add the historic district to the list has given Dudek mixed feelings.
“It’s a great thing for the village when a well respected organization like Maine Preservation recognizes the significance of the town’s history. But it’s also a citizen’s initiative,” she said, adding that more people need to “step forward” and help in the fight to make the decision of the move a public one.
Dana Edgecomb, curator of the Standish Historical Society and member of the Historic Preservation Commission, said that although adding the district to a private organization’s list does not ensure its preservation, it can “sway public opinion.”
Last week, a statewide organization dedicated to preserving Maine’s historic structures added the Higgins House in Standish to its endangered properties list.Send questions/comments to the editors.
