Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s latest email to residents included this news about a hotel/restaurant/housing project Mayor Setti Warren annnounced last May.
Remember the proposal for the former Newton Centre library property located at 1294 Centre Street?
Stuart Rothman, on behalf of First Cambridge Realty Trust Corporation, proposed rehabilitating the former library into a restaurant with a space for community use, building a stand-alone six-unit apartment building and, on his own property next door, developing a 55-unit extended-stay boutique hotel.Following an opportunity to share with me the complete background of the Request for Proposal (RFP) process and the specific details of the proposed redevelopment for the property – including the recent notice from EMPath that they are not able to provide the self-sufficiency program for the housing component – I made the decision to not move forward with the proposed project from First Cambridge Realty.I’ve asked the Planning Department to immediately begin exploring short and long-term options for the property. We will stay in close touch with the City Council and residents as we move forward.
Remember the proposal for the former Newton Centre library property located at 
It sounds like they are dragging their feet and she is moving forward. I like it.,
It would be great to have a library there.
It would be a great place for a new Senior Center to replace the old one that does not serve the senior community well due to the space.
Rona: We certainly need a new senior center but I don’t believe that parcel is anywhere large enough.
It’s a shame that MassChallenge was unable to locate the Newton Innovation Center there.
@Greg Reibman “We certainly need a new senior center but I don’t believe that parcel is anywhere large enough.”
I disagree with the premise that we need a single large senior center. I think each village needs a local(village based) senior center. That doesn’t preclude a large central senior center, but there must be village base centers that senior can easily access
Claire and Scott:
It certainly sounds nice to have a diffuse network of senior centers and libraries, but honestly I think it doesn’t work. The staffing and building maintenence costs are extreme, the critical mass of users isn’t there if you split up the sights, and the programming suffers as a whole. Very few communities do it successfully in this manner and only with far greater populations.
Plus, the main library is less than a mile away, and the main senior center is less than 3 miles away. Having multiple senior centers doesn’t impact many location wise, many of the senior folks don’t walk to the center, they are taken there by the Ride, drive, etc. Plus Greg is right, this site is far too small.
I appreciate that several communities have kept their village libraries alive. It’s a nice feature for a village, but with limited times they are open, limited circulation of books and limited programming, these aren’t full libraries. I view them as community reading rooms and gathering spaces. Terrific if volunteers want to maintain them, but these were originally libraries. This building was not.
I believe this is a historic building and I’m hoping it gets rehabbed as such.
All that said, I have to say this letter from Mayor Fuller is a disappointment. Not nearly enough detail in the letter for me. A hotel was a good overall use in my mind. A bit more detail would have been appreciated. I like my elected officials to “show their work” as I tell my kids. Maybe it is the right answer, but if you can’t tell me why you got there, your answer isn’t an answer.
Perhaps there were problems with the financing, or the development team. But the excuses given in the letter aren’t the full story I’m sure. This was a project the city was excited about six months ago, no?
Here is my suggestion: The city should devote a good portion of its CPA funds to a grant for redevelopment of the building. The building should be sold for a nominal sum (payable over time or with seller financing) to a developer who can’t increase its size and must maintain its historic nature. And the developer should access state and federal incentives to help with the rehab.
City gets a new tax paying building and a historic structure restored. Neighbors don’t object to a larger structure, and no additional residential units. City could negotiate that some of the space be used by nonprofits at reduced rates in exchange for CPA or seller financing.
If the city wants to keep this building for city purposes, then it should put its money where its mouth is and devote the maximum amount of CPA funds to the rehab and use it again for city offices. But letting the building fall into further disarray while we dither isn’t a great choice.
I’ve got no insider knowledge regarding this building but would welcome others thoughts. Cheers!
If the project is dead, or at least on ice, good. It raised far too many questions, and not just about this particular development:
1. A hotel, by definition, caters to nonresidents, the complete opposite of the purpose village centers have traditionally served. Doesn’t a change of vision this signifiant deserve citywide public discussion first?
2. When public property is sold or otherwise designated for private use, what does the public get out of it?
3. Is transitional housing the kind of housing that Newton needs most? And is the priciest commercial center in the city a sensible place to put it if the hope is to increase the tax base?
4. Given the traffic bottlenecks and parking issues that already exist, is Newton Centre the right place for this or any dense development?
5. Does constructing a large underground parking garage on a small lot mean blasting?
6. What does one more restaurant offer Newton Centre that the twenty or so existing ones don’t?
7. Is there any actual urban planning going on here?
If the mayor based her decision on these or other similar questions, I think she made the right choice. If it’s just a matter of the new in-crowd throwing out the old one . . . well, we’ll see.
I agree with Fig. I am sad to see this plan fall apart and would be interested in hearing more the reason behind why this occurred. It sounded very appealing to me as I felt the hotel would bring some much needed foot traffic to the small businesses on Union and in the Centre in general. Amanda you are saying that it would cater to non residents when in reality it could help pump some life into the local unique business that have been trying to exist in that area and also bring in some tax dollars to make other things feasible. Plus they were going to maintain the historic features of the building which looks like it could be really be beautiful with some tlc. The proposal also called for 6 units of affordable housing “dedicated to households seeking economic mobility and the ability to sustain independent living”. I personally found that all appealing.

Highlands Mom, perhaps you’re right. Though it seems to me that if density is unavoidable, then middle-class housing would provide a more reliable source of customers for local businesses than a shotgun marriage between a hotel and a handful of short-term subsidized units. Not to mention filling a need that many people in Newton identify as a problem–finding a place to live at a reasonable price.
@Newton Highlands Mom – from the letter, it sounds like a major problem was that EMPath decided they couldn’t provide the self-sufficiency program for the housing component. I’d be interested in knowing why that happened, but it made the stated goal of the subsidized units less feasible, which is a shame.
I thought this was a nice option and hope that we are able to make this parcel work as commercial space and not more housing. Newton is struggling to keeps its 8.7% commercial tax base as more parcels are being converted to housing. As a frequent “nonresident” at various places around the world, 80 or so night a year, this would be an ideal location for a Boston business traveller. A hotel with direct access to the city convention and business centers, several meal options and no need to rent a car or pay for parking, is hard to beat. And as a former retail owner, a new set of clients would make Newton Centre a better match for the Newbury St rents shop owners are paying.
The Newton Centre Library was built as a Library. Moreover, 2300 Newton residents provided the funds to build the Library. In January 1928, the building was complete, fitted out, and the residents handed the keys over to the city.
Fast forward almost a century, and it truly appalls me to see such a historic building so neglected.
What ever the buildings destiny holds, I hope a use can be found to honor those residents who built it, and that it goes back to being a public use.
Simon is right.
The Newton Centre Library was designed by a local Newton resident architect , James Ritchie, who lived in his own self designed home on Hancock Auenue 3 blocks from the library. It was originally designed and built as a library. He founded his own architectural practice originally on Beacon street a few doors down from the State House which is still in existence today. He was also the architect of the Police Headquarters complex in West Newton.
Sadly I fear for Simons wishes that this elegant structure goes back to public use. The cities husbandry in its use of public and school buildings , ( our city hall , new library , Angier and Zervas Schools etc.), including this one, does not give me much hope for its future in civic hands.
Fortunately , former Mayor Mann sold off a number of quality school buildings , ( Hyde, Weeks, Warren, Claflin etc. before they met the wreckers ball ), that once put into private hands have been preserved, and saved.
This library should be declared a landmark structure, saving it from further brutilization , and sold off to responsible private hands.
I love out-of-the-box thinking, and I was really intrigued by the boutique hotel proposal. It would be interesting to know exactly why Fuller ditched that idea, particularly since the best way to maximize the library site [while retaining the existing structure] would be to combine it with an abutting property…
At this point though, I’d lean toward affordable housing, in part because it’s a difficult property to develop for commercial use. It’s my oft-stated opinion that the City of Newton should have an independent goal of 12% REAL affordability, [as opposed to the illusory 10% required by 40B], and the library property could help us get there.
@Mike, if you believe that then I can’t imagine what your thoughts on the Crescent St. project that will construct 8 units of housing and enlarging the playground that abuts the site. The project will be fully funded by the city. Last apartment make up of two units at 60% AMI, two at 80% AMI, two at 120% and two at market rates. This is a terribly risky expenditure of tax payers money. The city has never developed housing.
@Howard,
Are you really suggesting the Maureen Lemieux, Lenny Gentile, and Mayor Fuller do not understand financial Risk Management? And if Josh Morse and his team can successfully build schools I’m sure an apartment complex with a playground is a drop in the ocean. In fact I’m pretty confident they could spruce up the Newton Library in no time at all.
@Simon, please look at the details of the project: budget, pro forms and city bonding, many financial (not developers) experts agree that the numbers just don’t work. Could be as high as $700,000 per unit .
I found the CPA info. It states $4,720,127 for housing costs.
Dividing by 8 gets about 590k per unit. Its more expensive than I would have liked to see. But not 700k? That said if I recall correctly it was going to cost millions to tidy up the site too.
The Newton Centre Library is far less, thats for sure!
@simon, the total project cost on the CPA site does not include the value of the land.
The proposal for the Newton Centre library site was an all or nothing deal, at least in my reading of it. Since the EMpath component didn’t work out, I would think the proposal would’nt ever. I wonder if other places that provide self-sufficient services were approached. And if not, why? Wish we didn’t have to throw out the workable part of the proposal with the part that required services.
I too liked the idea of a boutique hotel and the other uses. To use the building as a library again would not only require the city to foot the bill for the renovation but a team of community members willing to do the work to keep it running as would having a small senior center located there.
I like the idea of preserving the building but think that either a private entity or a public/private partnership of some kind would be the best way to move forward. Other cities and towns have made better use of public/private partnerships than Newton.
The Auburndale Community Library and the Waban Library Center have shown that ;public private partnerships to maintain village based libraries are totally feasible in Newton although my budget amendment to maintain the branch collections in place helped make both of these possible. Perhaps the books used for a book sale could be committed to this purpose. The rehab of the structure is the most difficult obstacle.