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Finding Purpose

Valley News - 7/19/2017

Not so long ago, many American communities lost historically significant buildings that had outlived their original purpose and were allowed to decay on the way to demolition. One of the encouraging trends of our times is that such buildings are now often put to new and good uses, as nonprofit organizations are currently proposing to do in Plainfield and Orford.

In Plainfield, Mountain Valley Treatment Center is hoping to move its residential treatment program for adolescents suffering from severe anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder from Haverhill to the former Home Hill Inn on River Road. The brick mansion on the 25-acre property near the Connecticut River was built in 1818 and most recently was operated as a high-end inn and restaurant before closing in 2014. Both the inn and its amenities, which include a guest cottage, garage, carriage house, tennis courts, swimming pool and horse stables, would seem well-suited to the highly structured program described last week to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, which unanimously approved a special exception allowing the use.

Mountain Valley officials went to considerable lengths to assure neighbors that the children admitted to the program are closely supervised around the clock and do not suffer from behavioral or substance abuse problems. Rather, said Carl Lovejoy, an associate executive director of Mountain Valley, they are “bright, talented and compliant” youngsters who, because of debilitating anxiety, cannot attend school. The program has treated 400 such students since it began in 2011. It is appealing to think that this lovely property could become instrumental in helping children overcome these difficulties during their 60- to 90-day stays, and we hope Mountain Valley succeeds when it goes before the Planning Board for site plan approval.

In Orford, the Selectboard voted 2-1 last week to support an application for a $500,000 federal Community Development Block Grant that could pave the way for AHEAD, a Littleton-based nonprofit, to turn the historic Orford Academy building into 10 apartments and a community space for senior citizens at a cost of $3.5 million. The three-story Federal-style building opened in 1851, and classes were last held there about 15 years ago. It is still owned by the Rivendell Interstate School District and has been used in recent years only for storage. Given that housing for the region’s rapidly aging population is badly needed and that the building’s location within walking distance of stores and restaurants has much to recommend it for senior housing, it’s hard to think of objections to this plan, although some people who attended the Selectboard meeting did.

Several people objected that because federal money is involved, Orford residents could not be given priority for apartments ahead of residents in surrounding communities, This is an understandable concern, but surely shortsighted. Old newcomers can enrich a community’s life as much as young or middle-aged ones, and, after all, everyone pays federal taxes.

Less understandable, even incomprehensible, was the objection raised by Planning Board chairman Jim McGoff, who pointed out that anti-discrimination policies mean that mentally or physically handicapped seniors might move in and questioned whether that was something the town wanted located close to nearby Rivendell Academy. Surely this is NIMBY run amok. Intergenerational contact is something to be encouraged at a time when so little of it occurs in society at large; both children and senior citizens, including disabled ones, can profit greatly from it.

Again, the proposed repurposing of this building is for a good purpose. Giving venerable school buildings new life as housing is something many communities have accomplished handsomely, and we hope that this plan comes to fruition.