Gift of Land - 1610 Main Street

Local resident and Chatham business owner Bill Marsh has re-committed to donating property in West Chatham to the Town for the purpose of constructing a new senior center facility. Marsh first agreed to donate the property at 1610/0 Main Street in January 2020.

“My family and I appreciate the opportunity to give something back to the Town that we love and that has given so much to us.  We embrace the idea of a new Council on Aging facility in this location with the hopes that it will provide an anchor for the West Chatham Village Center for decades to come,” said Marsh.

The original donation agreement between Marsh and the Town expired when Article 15 at the 2021 Annual Town Meeting seeking funding for design and construction of the facility fell 98 votes short of the required two-thirds majority.

Select Board Chair Jeff Dykens said “We are thrilled that Bill has renewed his offer to donate the property to the Town. The Select Board voted unanimously in 2020 to support the construction of the facility there and has always felt that 1610 Main was the gold standard property for a new Center for Active Living. We were perhaps remiss in not being more proactive in 2021 to get the funding article passed. A new building at 1610 Main Street will provide our seniors the facility they deserve and have been waiting for so patiently.”

Town Manager Jill Goldsmith agrees that locating the new Center for Active Living in West Chatham will benefit older adults for decades to come and notes its positive economic impact to the area. “Bill’s generous gift will advance the vision of a vibrant neighborhood center that the Planning Board has been working towards.”

The Town has been actively pursuing the construction of a new facility since 2016 when it was determined that the condition of the existing building at 193 Stony Hill Road and limitations of the site made it operationally obsolete. A review of Town-owned properties followed, after which several sites were advanced for closer study. A 2019 Annual Town Meeting Article proposed a facility on Middle Road which failed to reach the required two-thirds majority vote. Properties on Stepping Stones Road, the Marconi Campus on Crowell Road, and the Community Center have been discussed but none achieved favorable consensus.

Dykens said “None of the other properties we looked at were as suitable for a new Center for Active Living as 1610 Main Street. In addition to its prime location in a neighborhood center, it is a previously disturbed site, so the environmental impact of its redevelopment is minimal and there is no conflict of use as there would be at the Community Center or at Marconi.”

Community Services Director Leah LaCross said “The Community Services Department is overwhelmed with gratitude for Mr. Marsh’s generosity in his offer to donate the parcel at 1610 Main Street for a new Center for Active Living. The Chatham Council on Aging is now proudly providing programs and services to adult Chatham residents aged 60 to over 100. I look forward to the day when the newly built Center for Active Living is a reality, and an integral and impactful part of the Chatham community.”

The renewed gift of land will be presented to the Select Board at its meeting on Tuesday, January 31, 2023.

Save The Date 

The Town of Chatham, along with Consultants Barrett Planning Group and Landscape Architects, Dodson & Flinker, have scheduled the second of three community engagement meetings to look at possible affordable and attainable housing development scenarios on the recently purchased properties on Main Street (the former Buckley Property) and Meetinghouse Road (the former Diocese of Fall River property). This hybrid meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 15th, at 5:00 pm, in the Town Offices Annex at 261 George Ryder Road, Large Meeting Room.

This meeting will continue an inclusive community visioning process launched on December 14,  2022 to guide the direction future development on each Town-owned property.  During the meeting, Barrett Planning Group will provide project background information, including an overview of the longer-term timeline that will follow this visioning process. Landscape architects Dodson & Flinker will present several design concepts to illustrate the development potential of each site.

Following the December 14^th community meeting, the project team determined that the online survey would be best utilized following the second meeting to allow the Chatham community to provide feedback directly on the concept designs. Thus, the visual preference survey will launch immediately following the February 15^th meeting. The survey will include questions about each concept design, in addition to more nuanced visual preference questions relating to architecture, landscaping, building type, and more. This will allow Dodson & Flinker to refine preferred concepts based upon community feedback received from both the December and  February meetings as well as the online survey.