ROYALSTON – Keen Independent Research, the company hired by the town to do a feasibility study for the marketing of Whitney Hall, will host several meetings to get resident feedback.
The first public meeting will be Monday, June 12, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Town Hall. It’s a drop-in event, allowing residents to come and go at their convenience to ask questions and provide input. For those unable to attend Monday’s meeting, a statement from Keen said future opportunities for discussion will be scheduled at a later date. In addition to Monday’s public meeting, Keen has scheduled several focus group discussions next Monday and Tuesday.
Services of the Denver-based company are being paid for with a $40,000 grant from the state’s Rural and Small Towns Development Fund. Whitney Hall was constructed in 1905.
Meanwhile, members of the Royalston South Village Revitalization Committee met Tuesday night with the Selectboard to discuss a ‘go-slow’ approach regarding the future of Whitney Hall. The former school currently houses a number of municipal offices, but town officials anticipate an eventual move. Initial plans called for relocating the offices to the former Raymond School on The Common, but a lack of funding to pay for renovations has put that on hold.
Committee member Linda Alger told the board, “Now that Pete & Henry’s has burned down and the store is closed, there’s no reason to come to the South Village. The thought of moving the offices…really, we want the offices to stay there because it is about people coming in and out. It’s the only time we might see people from other parts of town.
“(Royalston Center) is pretty busy. People come in for selectmen’s meetings or whatever, but down there, with no restaurant and no store, other than the few activities that are planned at the gazebo – we don’t want it to become desolate.”
The popular Pete & Henry’s restaurant was destroyed by fire in 2018 and the Royalston Country Store closed its doors about two months ago.
“My fear is if there was a tenant who moved into Whitney Hall and we didn’t have the town offices there, if the tenant left, that would leave the building vacant,” said committee member Ruth Suyenaga. “It’s an important part of the town, Whitney Hall, and it’s really important to the history of the town.”
Alger disputed an estimate that it would cost somewhere in the ballpark of $3 million to renovate the building.
“I think there’s a difference between repair and restoration,” she said. “If you’re restoring it to its historic value, which would be everyone’s preference, but it’s not tenable. This town is not going to come up with $3 million to do that. So, let’s make it a workable building.”
Committee member Mark Should spoke to the disappearance of the village center, with the closure of the post office, King Street Bridge and a school building. With those gone, he said, the only people coming into town are for the municipal offices.
“Community is all about relationships,” said Should. “Those relationships often start casually. You run into someone somewhere, you start to talk, you meet a couple more times and discover you’ve got similar interests, the relationships deepen, then you’ve got a community.”
Selectboard Member Rick Martin pointed out that one problem stems from the fact that there is no master plan for the South Village.
“To me, there’s no plan; there’s no goal from anybody – from us or from you all,” he told the committee. “What’s the master plan for the South Village? Where do you want to go? It seems to me if we don’t know where we want to go, we can’t figure out how to get there.”
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.