Millville to tackle future of shuttered town hall
MILLVILLE — The selectmen say it’s time for the town to have some serious discussions about the future of the shuttered Longfellow Municipal Center on Main Street, which was boarded up and closed nearly three years.
Selectmen Chairwoman Jennifer Dean-Wing says a decision on the building needs to be made this year and is proposing that the conversation begin at the board’s next scheduled meeting.
“I think we need to start thinking about what we’re going to do with that building as it sits,” Dean-Wing said at a board meeting Tuesday. “This is going to be a multi-layered challenge and there’s a lot to think about.”
Voters last year authorized the selectmen to negotiate the future of the ailing 103-year-old building, which was the center of municipal operations for years. Specifically, residents agreed to convey jurisdiction of the building
r over to the selectmen, who are taking the lead in trying to find a new use for the builda ing by either leasing, selling r or rehabilitating.
The American Legion Hall at 290 Main St. was retrofitted last year and is serving as Millville’s temporary town hall for at least the next 10 years. In the meantime, the town needs to decide what it will do with the Longfellow building, which was permanently closed in 2016 because of serious structural issues.
The future of the building was forced onto the back burner last year due to significant financial issues that were facing the town and the departure of former Town Administrator Jennifer Callahan. But Dean-Wing says the shuttered building needs to be placed back on the town’s priority list after a new administrator is hired in late spring.
“We need to discuss how we’re going to approach this,” she said.
The municipal center was built in 1850 as the original Longfellow School and is just under 10,000 square feet.
It was later re-purposed to serve as the Town Hall.
The building is three stories tall and includes a partially occupied basement, first floor, second floor, and unoccupied attic. A new elevator tower was added to the building in the early 2000s.
The building, however, is in decline and continues to suffer from heating problems, electrical issues and serious moisture and mold concerns, in addition to the structural problems, which were highlighted in a report drafted by Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, the engineering firm hired by the town to conduct a structural analysis of the building.
Before she left to take a job in Douglas, Callahan had suggested that the town request technical assistance from the Massachusetts Office of Business Development, which had agreed to send an urban land technical assistance panel to town to provide technical assistance on how the town should proceed to redevelop and re-purpose both the Municipal Center and former Mug Pub property on Central Street.
The panel members’ expertise includes developers and owners, investors, designers, engineers, and executives from some of Boston’s largest banks and commercial real estate firms.
Dean-Wing says there are significant challenges when it comes to deciding the future of the Municipal Center. For one, the building shares the same lot as the police station and the historic Udor Tower, which was used as a private water reservoir.
The stone structure has a wooden cistern at the top and early 1888 birds-eye view map drawing of the village shows that it had a roof and was connected to an elaborate house built and owned at the time by Charles Fletcher.
It is believed the tower dates to the early or mid 19th century and thought that it collected rain water which was gravity fed on demand to the house. The Millville Central Street District is on the National Register of Historic Places and the tower is a listed artifact.
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