Category: Kill It With Fire

Historic Preservation of Cotuit: What’s Next?

The proposal to move the Ebenezer Crocker house at 49 Putnam Avenue to a new location has revived questions about what can be done to preserve the unique historical character of Cotuit and what regulations are now in place to protect the village’s old homes.

Here’s the bottom line:

  • The National Register of Historic Places (49 Putnam Avenue is on the register) is mainly a honorary designation and generally applies protection when federal funds, licenses, or permits are involved. None of those conditions apply to 49 Putnam.
  • If a building permit is requested from the town of Barnstable to demolish, move, or renovate a structure 75 years or older, it automatically gets referred to the town’s seven-member Historical Commission which can order an 18-month “demolition delay” during which time a way might be sought to save a threatened structure either by persuading the owner not to proceed, or to move the structure to a new location.
  • If a project involves the demolition or substantial alteration of a building listed on the National Register, then it must be referred to the Cape Cod Commission as a candidate to be reviewed and designated a “Development of Regional Impact” (DRI). The project is reviewed in light of the Regional Policy Plan, which sets out the standards for protecting historic buildings, landscapes, and archaeological resources. The Cape Cod Commission has the authority to block or modify the demolition or alteration of historic structures.
  • The strongest level of protection to preserve old houses is a Local Historic District (not to be confused with the Cotuit Historic District listed on the National Register). These are districts established under Chapter 40C of the state’s housing laws, with their own regulations and review board. They are unpopular due to their reputation of being overly strict and fussy. Cotuit attempted to create such a district in the mid 1990s but neighborhood opposition killed the plan. The Old King’s Highway District that covers Route 6A from Sandwich to Brewster, is an example of a Local Historic District. Nantucket, Beacon Hill, Concord …. are some other notable examples. There are more than 200 local historic districts across the state. If Cotuit had enacted such a district, then the 49 Putnam Avenue proposal could be denied without the involvement of the town Historical Commission or the Cape Cod Commission.

The National Register of Historic Places

First, a little history lesson into historical preservation. The Federal Historic Preservation act of 1966 was enacted when urban renewal and other federally funded projects were erasing important historic landmarks. A great example of why the act was passed was the extension of Route 18 in New Bedford in 1963 which obliterated much of that city’s historic waterfront. The Preservation Act established the National Register of Historic Places, the official federal list of “sites, buildings, structures, districts, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or great artistic value.”

There are over 1.5 million properties on the National Register. Of those, 95,000 are listed individually and the rest are contributing resources within historic districts. The National Park Service administers the register. Inclusion on the register does not guarantee protection as it places few if any restrictions on what a private property owner can do with their property, up to and including demolition.

The Massachusetts Secretary of State oversees the Massachusetts Historic Commission (MHC) which inventories historic properties within the Commonwealth and acts as the state-wide arm of the National Park Service. The MHC reviews properties submitted for inclusion on the National Register. Submissions follow an inventory format that are created by local historic commissions, historical societies, and volunteers.

Cotuit was the subject of such an intensive inventory effort in the 1980s led by the late Professor James Gould, the Town of Barnstable Historical Commission, and several volunteers who catalogued over 100 properties. That led to the creation of the Santuit and Cotuit Historic Districts, both of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

As of now, the following houses/properties in Cotuit and Santuit are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Keep in mind there are two “historic districts” — Santuit and Cotuit — that encompass a large number of historic homes. Santuit encompasses eight homes along Route 28 in the original colonial settlement; the Cotuit district includes 107 buildings, “and encompasses the areas historically known as Cotuit Port and Cotuit Highground. Boundaries were selected to encompass the areas of densest 19th century development, when this part of Cotuit assumed the leading village role from the inland area of Santuit.”

The listing for the Santuit Historic District states: “The boundaries for the Santuit Historic District include 8 buildings, 2 of which are modern and non-contributing. The boundaries were selected to encompass the remaining dwellings of the important Santuit family, the Crockers.”

Cotuit’s seven stand-alone listings on the National Register are structures that fall outside of the two districts.

Here are links to the Cotuit and Santuit Historic District listings on the National Register.

Cotuit Historic District National RegisterDownload
Santuit Historic District National Register ListingDownload

Town Regulations

The Town of Barnstable Historical Commission is a seven member board (one alternate) appointed by the Town Council. Its powers are defined by Section 241-22 of the town bylaws. Any application to demolish, modify, or renovate a historic structure (older than 75 years) is submitted by the building department to the BHC who convenes a public hearing to either grant or delay the proposed changes.

“The Historical Commission surveys and compiles a listing of all historical sites and buildings within the Town, public and private; determines the functions and structures of all historical organizations within the Town; and holds correlative seminars with historical organizations. It further determines the requirements for repair, reconstruction, and protection of historical landmarks and assists and cooperates with public commissions in the conduct of public historical events. The Historical Commission is an advisory committee of the Town.”

The town bylaws governing “Protection of Historic Properties” (Section 112) states “This article is enacted to promote the public welfare and safeguard the Town’s historical, cultural and architectural heritage by protecting historical resources that make the Town a more interesting, attractive and desirable place in which to live. This article aims to protect and preserve historic properties within the Town by encouraging their owners to seek alternatives to their demolition and by providing the Town an opportunity to work with owners of historic properties in identifying alternatives to their demolition.”

The Town Historical Commission defines a “significant building” as:

Any building or portion thereof, which is not within a regional historic district or a local historic district subject to regulation under provisions MGL c. 40C but which has been listed or is the subject of a pending application for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, or has been listed on the Massachusetts Register of Historic Places, or is over 75 years of age and which is determined by the Commission to be a significant building as provided by § 112-3D of this article, either because:

A.  It is importantly associated with one or more historic persons or events, or with the broad architectural, cultural, political, economic or social history of the Town or the Commonwealth; or

B.  It is historically or architecturally important (in terms of period, style, method of building construction, or association with a famous architect or builder) either by itself or in the context of a group of buildings.

The by-law goes on to state that if the Historical Commission determines an applicant’s notice of intent to demolish a significant building “would be detrimental to the historical, cultural or architectural heritage or resources of the Town, such building shall be considered a preferably preserved significant building” then:

Upon a determination by the Commission that the significant building, which is the subject of the application for a demolition permit, is a preferably preserved significant building, the Commission shall notify the applicant, the Building Commissioner, and the Town Clerk, and no demolition permit may be issued until 18 months after the date of such determination by the Commission is filed with the Town Clerk.

The Cape Cod Commission

The Cape Cod Commission has a mandatory “development of regional impact” (DRI) review for any proposed demolition or “substantial alteration” of a building listed in the National Register of Historic Places or the State Register of Historic Places. 49 Putnam Avenue qualifies for mandatory Commission review.

Referral to Cape Cod Commission, if necessary:

In cases where the Historical Commission finds a proposed project constitutes a “substantial alteration,” or when full demolition of an historic building is proposed, the building inspector/commissioner or other appropriate municipal agency (including the select board/town council) shall refer the project to the Cape Cod
Commission for mandatory DRI review. In these cases, the DRI review will be limited to issues related to the “cultural heritage” goal of the Regional Policy Plan (RPP).

Referring Historic Properties to the Cape Cod Commission for ReviewDownload

The Cape Cod Commission, once it takes over the review of the proposal from the town Historical Commission, can designate it a development of regional impact. The Commission’s enabling legislation grants it the following powers over a DRI:

The commission may approve, approve with conditions, or disapprove the development of regional impact. If the commission disapproves the development of regional impact no further work may be done on the development. A development of regional impact which has been approved, or approved with conditions shall be valid and effective, and municipal development permits may be issued pursuant thereto for seven years following the date of the written determination.

What’s next?

On August 19 the Town of Barnstable Historic Commission voted unanimously to impose an 18-month demolition delay on 49 Putnam Ave.

Chairman Robert Frazee noted in his time serving on the commission he could think of no project which received as many letters of opposition as 49 Putnam (39) with no indications of support.

After hearing from the applicant’s architects and taking testimony from more than a dozen concerned Cotusions, the commission voted to impose the 18-month delay and refer to the application to the Cape Cod Commission for its review as a possible Development of Regional Impact (DRI) .

The criteria for referring a project for DRI review varies, but the CCC’s regulations specifically call out as mandatory “any proposed demolition of substantial alteration of an historic structure listed with the National Register of Historic Places or the Massachusetts Register of Historic Places, outside a municipal historical district or outside the Old Kings Highway Historic District.”

Because 49 Putnam meets that criteria, the Barnstable Historic Commission was bound by law to send a mandatory DRI referral form by certified mail or hand delivery to the clerk of the Cape Cod Commission.

Once the clerk receives the referral, “the Commission may, at a meeting, accept the referral for review as a development which may have regional impacts and which presents one or more of the concerns listed in Section 12(b) of the Act. The Commission may delegate to its regulatory committee, the Executive Director, or to the Commission Staff the responsibility to meet and make a recommendation to the Commission as to whether the Commission should accept a discretionary referral.“

The Cape Cod Commission is required to conduct a public hearing within 60 days of receiving the DRI referral from the town. [As of August 25, 2025 such a hearing has not appeared on the Commission’s online calendar.] The official page for CCC meeting notices is https://www.capecodcommission.org/meeting-notices/

Written comments may be submitted by mail to the Cape Cod Commission, P.O. Box 226, 3225 Main Street, Barnstable, MA 02640 or online using the form located at https://capecodcommission.org/comment

Documents submitted to the Commission for its review of the project as potential Development of Regional Impact will be archived and available to the public.

When all is said and done, the Commission “may disapprove the development of regional impact. If the commission disapproves the development of regional impact no further work may be done on the development.”

In the future I’ll write about the effort led by the late Professor Jim Gould in the 1990s to establish a Local Historic District in Cotuit.

Lab Rats

I’m finishing Lab Rats by Dan Lyons and feeling thoroughly depressed but laughing about it. The feeling is like a go-to-bed-pull-the-shades-suck-my-thumb level of depressed while watching the Three Stooges. I was laughing before I finished the foreword.

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Lab Rats follows Lyons’ 2017 best-selling Disrupted, and as a bit of a sequel, it takes a horrifying look at the peculiar culture of contemporary companies which he experienced first hand at Hubspot, a successful Cambridge, MA marketing software company. Disrupted landed with a bang in 2017, largely because a few executives got fired or censured by Hubspot’s board of directors for some weirdness involving the FBI and an investigation by the company’s law firm amidst rumors of extortion against the publisher, Harper-Collins.* It also is a very accurate and very funny account of what it feels like to be a fifty-something disrupted by transformation and reduced to going to work at a modern company that fires people and says they were “graduated,” invites a teddy bear to attend meetings to represent the customer, and substitutes wages for benefits such as a beer garden, candy wall, ping pong tables and bean bag chairs.

Dan, who was a writer on HBO’s Silicon Valley for two seasons following his misadventure at Hubspot, is a great humorist, but also a great reporter, and his experience at Hubspot hit a chord with readers who flooded his inbox with confessions of their own workplace despair inflicted on them by incompetent managers, unscrupulous venture capitalists, and bullshit management theories that combines to make their office feel more like the Stanford prison experiment and less like the world-changing adventures the corporate mission statements, principles, values, DNA wall plaques and culture codes proclaimed they were.

So in the aftermath of Disrupted Dan went on the road and headed back to Silicon Valley, which he’s covered since the early 80s for PC Week, Forbes, Newsweek, the New York Times, Wired and GQ (and lampooned for two gloriously funny years when he anonymously gave the world The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.)

He opens with a lunch meeting somewhere in Menlo Park. He’s seated with a woman who uses Legos to train employees to reveal their secrets and fears and gel together as a “team.” After trying to hypnotize him, the Lego Lady asks him to make a duck out of the pieces. He hands her a single piece and declares that’s his duck.

From the sweatshop conditions imposed by power-crazed venture capitalists who commit smash-and-grab public offerings by taking unprofitable startups public on the strength of a business model that essentially comes down to selling dollar bills for $0.75 cents, to Orwellian companies that plant moles amongst their employees and encourage snitching while reading those employees emails and instant messages, Lab Rats is about the perversion of modern work into a series of two-year tours of duty where the rank and file are subjected to a barrage of bizarre management theories ranging from Agile and Lean Startup, to Legos and the Holacracy.

Having ended my own 3.5 year tour of duty in a software startup last March, I guess the book is picking off some scabs that I had left unscratched for the past few months while I recovered from the trauma of the open office, buzzword bingo, constant Slack interruptions, fights with the CEO over “purpose statements” and bullshit marketinglessness words like “Digital Experience.” The insanity of the modern startup, with its founders’ lemming-like drive to hustle their way to riches like their heroes Gary V., Travis Kalanick, Elon Musk, Eric Ries; the infliction of new “productivity apps” that aren’t productive at all; the constant surveys from the HR department to gauge morale; the team-building exercises, the meetings about meetings …..Dan writes in a target-rich environment tailor made for his are-you-shitting-me? sense of humor.

Goodbye to all that. All I can say in my old age is thank God I’m not 23 and saddled with a lot of college loans and dragging my butt into an office that looks like a day care center where nothing gets accomplished and the only certainty is getting fired.

I now work at a place with no instant messaging, no interruptions, no quarterly morale surveys, no ping pong, no bullshit and everyone has the sanctuary of their own office. I’ve never been happier. There are no meetings to plan meetings, no cheery emails declaring some co-worker is a “Super Star,” no reboots of the corporate strategy every quarter when the next management fad comes along to hypnotize the boss.

I’ve never been happier, but I’ll also never forget the utter despair of modern digital marketing in an industry where “culture” comes down to reducing people to disposable beings who are measured, monitored, and berated into suicidal despair.

Dan doesn’t dwell on the outrageous excesses of corporate culture emanating from the Valley. He shows some companies that actually subscribe to the old theory that “contented cows give more milk” and that employee happiness — starting with their compensation — actually makes for a better company, a true culture, and ultimately better products.

* All’s well that ends well for those Hubspot execs — the stock went public at $30 and now trades around $130 — and one wound up as CEO of another hot company.

**Dan and I were colleagues at publications ranging from our high school newspaper through The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, PC Week, and Forbes.

The Money Cannon

“Okay,” I say, “so we could even take it one step further. We build a money cannon. It’s a big cannon that shoots dollar bills. You just need a big fan, in a box, and then a tube sticking out. We mount the cannon on the back of a Hummer, with HubSpot in huge letters on both sides, and we drive around a city blowing money into the streets. Think of the disruption! People rushing into the streets, trying to grab as many dollar bills as they can. They’d be fighting over the money, like people at Walmart on Black Friday. It would be a nightmare!”

Dan Lyons Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble.

I shouldn’t be a total prick but today the Money Cannon became real. Someone finally offered me money to take a phone call.  It was an big stiff enveloped marked “DO NOT BEND” from a “predictive customer acquisition” company.  I opened it up and pulled out a single sheet of glossy goodness with an Amazon gift card stuck on it with that weird booger clue credit card companies use to stick new cards onto paper.

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The instructions told me to go online, enter a PIN number and answer a short survey to activate the card. Nowhere on the mailer did it indicate what value the card may hold, so naturally I lied on the dozen or so questions (Afghanistan, Aerospace, “I don’t know”) just to get the online equivalent of a scratch ticket.

$5 — five bucks. That was it. And the best part was the come-on at the end that challenged me to take a 30 minute phone call to bump the card up to $50. Now we’re talking.

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I  bet their predictive algorithm didn’t predict I’d give them grief for loading up the money cannon.

 

 

Some men want to see the world burn

I love Gmail because of the Exclamation Point button. This is an icon that I push a few times every day when some email marketer hounds me to “please point me to the person in your company who handles Account Based Marketing” or wants to find some time to talk about my “content management attribution challenges in the coming year.”

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I know these emails have code embedded in them that tells the sender when I’ve opened them. I know that I will never respond to them. Never take their phone call. Have no guilt over ignoring them.

But the Exclamation Point — well it’s basically the email marketing equivalent of dumping the Alien Monster out of the airlock into the vacuum of space where no one can hear them scream. Not only does a quick click of the button block the sender from ever landing in my inbox again, it reports them to some unseen power as a spammer.

Aww.Poor email marketers with their “lovable marketing content.” Try it. It’s fun.

 

Stuff worth despising….

  1. Leaf blowers. Trumpets of Satan designed to ruin an otherwise perfectly lovely fall afternoon.hqdefault
  2. Luggage with wheels: real men lug their stuff, weenies roll and block the jetway doing it.sac-laptop-trolley-puffy-monster-white
  3. Flavored coffee: raspberry-hazelnut is up there with a full diaper in my list of stenches to avoid.
  4. Un-tucked shirts in the office. (exception if the tail is pulled through the fly of one’s trousers for that “Prince Ruprecht” look)stock-photo-man-with-shirt-tail-out-zipper-13886470
  5. The words:
    1. “Really?” uttered to feign disbelief
    2. “Pivot” (except in the sentence “Perch on this and pivot“
    3. “Glisten” (up there with “throbbing”
    4. “Content” (the noun, not the adjective)
  6. Honkers: I’m mowing the effing lawn, I don’t care if you are driving past my house. You get the middle finger. That includes you Mom.