On Tuesday, the Lowell City Council voted to demolish the Smith Baker Center, a former church and community center that sits across Merrimack Street from City Hall. The outcome of the vote was predictable, since for nearly a year a majority of councilors have publicly expressed a preference for demolition over preservation. Voting for demolition on Tuesday were Councilors Corey Belanger, John Descoteaux, Erik Gitschier, Wayne Jenness, Vesna Nuon and Mayor Dan Rourke. Councilor Paul Ratha Yem abstained from voting because he is an officer in a non-profit seeking to purchase the building, and Councilors Sokhary Chau and Kim Scott were absent from the meeting.

The issue arose with a response on the evening’s agenda to a motion from early 2024 by Councilor Yem asking the city to obtain a report from a structural engineer on the condition of the building. Earlier this month, Councilor John Descoteaux filed a motion asking for an update on that report. The motion response included a detailed report from a company called Gale Associates. The full report is available on the city’s website.

Here’s what councilors had to say when this matter arose on Tuesday:

Speaking first, Paul Ratha Yem said the report shows the extent of damage from water, but the foundation seems to be safe. He sees Smith Baker as being part of a complex consisting of City Hall and the Pollard Memorial Library that has the potential to anchor the revitalization of upper Merrimack Street. He said the city doesn’t have to pay for or finance the renovations since there is a nonprofit, the Smith Baker Preservation Corporation, that wishes to buy and renovate the building, so he urged his fellow councilors to save the building and to give a developer thechance to do something with it.

John Descoteaux said there were no surprises in the report. It’s pretty much what he thought it would be. He said the estimated cost of stabilization per the report is $4 million which does not include additional amounts for hazardous waste. He says he continuously hears that the city needs more housing, and this is a perfect opportunity to do that. He commends the people interested in saving it but says it’s time for the building to go and makes a motion that the city begin demolition of the Smith Baker Center. (Councilor Gitschier seconds the motion.)

Corey Belanger says the report shows serious deficiencies and that the cost of renovating a historical building always goes up. He disputes the assertion that the report says the building maintains its structural integrity, saying that much of the structural portions of the building were inaccessible and unable to be assessed. He then casts doubt on the ability of the proponents to renovate the building. He adds (inaccurately, as discussed below) that a nonprofit previously had control of the building for two or three years and was unable to get financing. He says given the state of the building, putting it out to another RFP would be futile.  Consequently, he will support the motion to tear it down.

Rita Mercier reminds everyone of St. Peter’s Church, another victim of demolition by neglect that was taken down in 1997. Referring to the current report, she asks where it says the structure is sound. She quotes the report as saying based on what they were able to see, the structural condition is in “fair to poor” condition. She also says, based on prior estimates for repairs, that the $4 million estimated in this report is very low. She also cites the potential liability of the city to HUD for the fair market value of the building should it not be used for the benefit of low-income residents. Mercier adds her preference would be to send it out to bid one more time.

Corey Robinson suggests that the city put together a 60-day RFP with this report and a statement of any assistance programs like TIFFs that the city might offer. If no one responds to the RFP, then tear the building down. He says redoing an RFP now with the benefit of this report and other up to date information would allow a bidder to make a reasonable bid, but to do this on the condition that if there were no bids received, then it would go right to demolition.

Erik Gitschier says, “I’m waiting for Toto to come out of Fantasy Island.” He says, “There’s no one in here who is an engineer other than me.” He says the report says it’s structurally unsound. He then asks the City Solicitor if a Councilor who is involved in the nonprofit seeking to purchase the building, shouldn’t that councilor recuse themselves? The city solicitor agrees. (Councilor Yem is the Vice President of the Smith Baker Corporation.) Gitschier than says he is a civil and environmental engineer, and he promises everyone that the building is falling down. He says that the council should not push off the inevitable decision to demolish it, saying he “100% agrees with the decision to demolish.”

Wayne Jenness asks when the city last put out an RFP. (Likely in 2018 is the answer). He says the $4 million only gets the building to a state of not falling apart further but not to a reusable state. He asks, if we do demolish the building, are we liable for the payment to HUD? The Mayor answers, only if it’s not replaced by affordable housing. Jenness says “I would love to save this building . . . but realistically, the money that would take, I don’t see how that works.” He adds that he’s intrigued by doing one last RFP but adds that such a request should include a mandatory $4 million commitment to ensure ownership doesn’t transfer and the building just sit in its current condition due to lack of immediate financing.

Vesna Nuon asks if back when the Coalition for a Better Acre submitted its proposal long ago, did the city have a report such as this one at that time. (Not really.) He recalls that in 2018, the estimate to fully restore the building was $18 million. Now, with the passage of time, continued deterioration, and the increase in construction costs, he believes the cost would be far greater than that. He also says that given its precarious condition it creates a safety hazard which is the council’s responsibility, and he sees it as risky to take even more time for an RFP that is unlikely to get a response that would just delay the inevitable.

With that, the roll was called and the motion to demolish the Smith Baker Center passed by a 6 to 2 vote with Belanger, Descoteaux, Gitschier, Jenness, Nuon and Rourke voting YES; Mercier and Robinson voting NO; Yem abstaining; and Chau and Scott absent.

The Smith Baker Center was constructed in 1885 as the First Congregational Church. A smaller church by the same name was built on the same site in 1827, but it had only 300 seats and proved too small for all who wished to attend services, so in 1874 when a storm toppled the steeple of the original church, the congregation decided to replace the earlier church with an entirely new structure that would be much larger with seating for 1300.

Designed by the architectural firm Merrill & Cutler (which would a decade later design the current Lowell City Hall), the new church had a unique layout due to the configuration of the lot which was more square than rectangular. Instead of row upon row of pews running from the altar to the rear of a rectangular building, the square dimensions of this site caused the architects to use “stadium seating” more common in a theater than in a church.

The unique design was embraced by worshipers and the church thrived into the 1960s when demographic changes caused the population of many Lowell parishes to shrink. In 1969, the First Congregational Church merged with All Souls Church and the Highland Congregational Church with the new parish called Christ Church United and occupying the newer All Souls Church at the corner of East Merrimack and High Street (where it still operates as an active house of worship).

After moving, the First Congregational leadership leased the vacant church to the Acre Model Neighborhood Organization (AMNO) to use as a community center. AMNO held its grand opening on December 14, 1969, and renamed the building the Smith Baker Community Center in honor of the longtime and much-loved pastor of the church, the Reverend Smith Baker.

In 1975, the Lowell City Council voted to purchase the building from the First Congregational Church which had maintained legal ownership of the structure. The money for the $85,000 purchase price came from federal funds granted to the city under the Community Development Block Grant (CBDG) program. (This is relevant to today’s debate since the federal government has retained a “string” on those funds and if the city now utilizes the building or the site for anything other than affordable housing, it must pay back to the federal government not the $85,000 used in 1975, but the current fair market value of the parcel which was last assessed at $475,000.)

Under city ownership, the Smith Baker Center became home to the city’s Council on Aging which remained there until 2003 when it moved to the current Senior Center at Broadway and Fletcher. The upper floor of Smith Baker was also used as a performance space with many notable singers, writers, and poets performing there.

However, when the senior center moved out, the city’s interest in the building waned and so did maintenance and upkeep. Thus began the slow and steady process of demolition by neglect which reached its predictable result last Tuesday.

The city did make a couple of efforts to find a new use for the building, conducting a feasibility study in 2003 that sought a private developer to make it a community arts center. Requests for proposals were also issued by the city in 2011 and 2015.

The last best hope to save the building came in 2015 when the Coalition for a Better Acre submitted a credible proposal to the city. CBA’s proposal would utilize the first floor of the Smith Baker Center for offices that would advance the CBA mission of helping people become self-sufficient. These might include classrooms for vocational and language training; specialists to assist in obtaining housing, heating and food assistance; and even medical services. The large second floor auditorium would remain a performance space that could also be used for community meetings, movie screenings and similar events. CBA also coordinated the plan with the Jack Kerouac Estate, exploring the possibility of branding the new entity the Jack Kerouac Community Center to give the people of Lowell something to celebrate but also to enhance national and international fund-raising possibilities tied to Kerouac’s immense popularity. Perhaps most importantly, CBA had preliminary commitments from major national lenders to finance the project.

All seemed ready to go but then everything stalled, and the deal fell apart. I’ve heard various explanations for why that happened, but my sense is that a cohort of city councilors sabotaged the proposal by insisting that any deed from the city to CBA contain a reversionary clause that said if the building was subsequently sold by CBA to a non-profit entity, ownership would automatically revert to the city. (Although CBA is a nonprofit, the subsidiary entity that would own the building would not be, and would thus pay property taxes.) Not surprisingly, no rational lender would grant a mortgage on a property burdened by such an encumbrance, so the financing – and the entire proposal – fell apart.

What motivated councilors to do that? The rapid expansion of UMass Lowell under the Chancellorships of Marty Meehan and Jacquie Moloney generated an irrationally negative reaction within Lowell political circles since UMass Lowell did not pay property taxes on its real estate. I call it irrational because a vibrant world class research university brings tangible and intangible benefits to the city that grossly outweigh any lost property tax revenue, but an anti-University sentiment became strong and bled over into a general animosity towards non-profit ownership of property. That feeling manifested itself in the demand for the fatal reversionary clause in any deed to CBA.

Getting back to the present, while I commend those who made a gallant, last ditch effort to save Smith Baker, their campaign came ten years too late because the building’s fate was sealed back in 2015 when the CBA’s proposal was torpedoed.

But there’s a bigger fight to be made. It has been said that in Lowell, the Great Depression came early and stayed late. In 1976, for instance, Lowell had the highest unemployment rate in the entire country for a city its size. Then everything changed and the city’s fortunes were transformed. Part of that was due to the presence of computer-maker Wang Labs and that era’s technology revolution, but a bigger part of the story was Lowell’s embrace of historic preservation. From the rubble of the Urban Renewal wrecking ball emerged a philosophy that “Lowell’s future is its past” which gave the city a governmental and economic development strategy that lasted for nearly a half century.

However, in the past decade or two, that commitment to historic preservation has faded. If preservation results in grants or tax breaks for developers, then proposals pass muster at City Hall. But the moment preservation inconveniences a developer it gets shunted aside and any who raise the issue are marginalized or worse.

Unfortunately, what many in Lowell fail to understand today is that historic preservation was an economic development strategy. It’s the thing that separated Lowell from all the other struggling mid-sized cities in Post Industrial America and it provided a coherent narrative for the city to promote. Circumstances do change, so if city leaders want to adopt some other economic development strategy, that’s fine, but that has not happened. Paving more streets to permit cars to drive faster and then installing more speed humps to force cars to drive slower might give us nicer roads, but it’s not an economic development strategy.

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This week on richardhowe.com Charlie Gargiulo has an essay about Ted Williams; Emilie-Noelle Provost writes about life’s wheel of fortune in this month’s Living Madly column; Jacquelyn Malone shared two new poems about Lowell; and Louise Peloquin reports on L’Etoile’s coverage of the 1925 inauguration of President Calvin Coolidge, the former governor of Massachusetts.