People are telling the voters of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley that we must allow 246 apartments in Vicksburg Square on Devens to “save” the beautiful buildings, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I served on Ayer’s Historical Commission for over 20 years, most of that time as chair. Our commission was the first in the state to have care, custody, and control of a municipality’s historic asset, our Pleasant Street School.
We learned that the purpose of historic preservation is to take a legacy from the past and ensure it will be an asset for the present and future. Nostalgia and beauty alone are no reason for saddling ourselves and our posterity with a white elephant that will be a burden. Think about it: If we build something beautiful to serve our purpose today, wouldn’t we think our grandchildren were nuts if they kept it when it could be only a liability for them? Would we want that to be our legacy?
National Register criteria acknowledge that. As a current Ayer historical commissioner says, “Registration is recognition, not preservation.” National Register listing makes a property eligible to compete for certain monetary inducements for preservation, nothing more.
It is clear to me that a city block of urban-style housing at Vicksburg Square, completely away from a city, can become only a liability to our towns. That would dishonor our Army’s legacy and that of those who served there. If MassDevelopment has negligently let Vicksburg Square deteriorate after moving themselves and several other reuse plan-compliant tenants out, while paying over a half-million dollars rent for the building they’re in now, does that obligate us to accept housing, instead of the innovation and technology center prescribed in our Reuse Plan?
The decline of Vicksburg Square is not our doing. If MassDevelopment has let it go to the point that it can no longer become an asset, then the only sensible thing is to raze it to make way for something that can. Its designers and builders would agree.
Frank Frederick Maxant
Selectman, Ayer
