We are thrilled to share that Pioneer Valley Regional Ventures Center’s (PVRVC) has been awarded the Paul Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grant to support the creation of the Preservation Works in Western Mass subgrant program.
This is the fifth year of the program, honoring the late Paul Bruhn, beloved executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont for nearly 40 years. This also marks the fifth year that AHF has actively tracked the grant, working behind the scenes to bring it to Massachusetts’s rural communities that so acutely need this type of support. In our experience, successful historic preservation requires vision, patience, creativity, collaborative partnerships – and importantly, financial resources.
Time and time again, we find that in our rural communities, historic properties are typically smaller in scale, which is a challenge when paired against high construction costs. The small communities in Western Massachusetts have a limited ability to raise a grant match, placing most state grant opportunities out of reach. With limited grant and philanthropic assistance, investing in the town’s historic assets places an extraordinary financial burden on these small communities, disincentivizing them from utilizing their historic properties as a tool for cultural and economic growth.
The $750,000 grant will allow the state-designated regional planning agency to work with the Ventures Center to develop a subgrant program and select individual projects in rural communities for physical preservation projects that will contribute to economic vitality.
PVRVC’s new program will begin to close the funding gap for historic properties in rural communities and produce examples of the opportunity that exists to galvanize economic development by restoring and re-using National Register-listed community anchor buildings. The idea is to support economic development through the preservation of historic buildings in towns with fewer than 12,500 residents in Hampshire County, as well as small communities in Hampden and west central and southwest central Worcester counties.
It is the first time a Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grant has been awarded to a Massachusetts organization. We look forward to supporting this endeavor across the western part of our state!
With summer just around the corner, it’s time for an update on the Charles River Speedway!
It can be tough to point to anything anniversary-related around the Speedway, because we never had a “grand opening” moment. (Actually, we had several “grand openings”!) Part of that is because construction schedules are always tricky, but also because COVID brought big delays. The realities of small businesses going through a global pandemic translated to a very staggered start. Notch Brewing opened in July of 2021, Bellwether Salon and House of Art & Craft opened that fall, Koji Club opened in February of 2022, Super Bien in August and so on…
So, instead of focusing on one particular day, let’s say this: we are approaching a new summer season at the Charles River Speedway and we have a lot of really interesting things going on here. With a few new small businesses joining our community this spring, there is a feeling around these parts that we are entering into a new, exciting phase of vitality and creativity here at the Speedway.
Named Boston’s Best Brewery in 2022 by Boston Magazine, Notch Brewing’s Brighton taproom and biergarten is their take on a traditional Czech and German-style beer hall. Notch Brewing is well known for their classic session style beers from the Czech Republic, Germany, England, and Belgium. Notch Provisions has its own storefront facing the courtyard, and provides beer-friendly foods like sausages, cheese plates, pretzels and more.
The Speedway is lucky to be home to Master Stylist Melinda Brandt. This inclusive one-chair salon studio provides a one-on-one experience in a welcoming environment, amidst the backdrop of all the buzzing Speedway central courtyard.
Just opened! Long-time Speedway friend, collaborator, and maker of delicious things, Dan and Allie Spinale have just opened their first brick and mortar location here at The Speedway. The focus of their menu here will be on Sicilian slices and sandwiches, with inventive salads and specials coming soon.
Filled with soothing scents, beautiful hand-poured soy wax candles and aromatherapy products, this is the first permanent brick + mortar location for Steysy Clark. As well as being a resource for sustainable goods, Steysy also hosts regular workshops where participants learn to craft their own candles and soap.
THE place in Boston to enjoy all things sake. At award-winning Koji Club, guests can enjoy sake while also learning about its culture and history from industry leader and tastemaker Alyssa Mikkiko Dipasquale. A beautiful jewel box of a space, the experience here is immersive and intimate. The Koji Club was recently named to Conde Nast Traveler’s Hot List – Top 20 restaurants in the world and Esquire’s Best Bars in America, 2023.
This sparkling gem of a Latin American grocery store-meets-wine bar from the Buenas team features empanadas, sauces, and snacks galore. The food is fun and incredibly tasty, the South American natural wine list is one of a kind, and there are a ton of great food finds to bring home to keep the party going.
From Ran Duan and the award-winning team behind Blossom Bar, Baldwin Bar and Ivory Pearl, Birds of Paradise features thoughtfully-made cocktails and “airline snacks” inspired by the golden age of travel.
BWM is bringing a new concept to The Speedway this summer – an incubator shop with a rotating slate of local women-founded small businesses, makers, and artists. The Incubator Shop is open Thursday-Sunday.
Opening soon: Rite Tea & Espresso (opening June 2023)
The first dedicated bricks and mortar location for the Wicked Thrawl, which has been popping up inside The Koji Club for the past six months. Rite will feature a very special tea program, espresso drinks, pour over coffee and a really exciting rotating slate of seasonal drinks.
A former Garage building, today it is the flexible events space located within The Speedway complex. Garage B hosts weddings, corporate events and meetings, family celebrations, and frequent markets and community events.
ABOUT THE SPEEDWAY
The Speedway is a vibrant, dynamic marketplace in Brighton. Once the headquarters for the Charles River Reservation parkland, today the revitalized historic buildings and central courtyard are home to a unique collection of small businesses – including bars, restaurants, shops, a hair salon and a flexible event space.
Built between 1899 and 1940, the Charles River Speedway is considered one of DCR’s “origin properties.” Arranged around an interior courtyard, the buildings once served as police headquarters, Superintendent’s residence, horse stables, and maintenance garages for the Charles River Reservation, formerly under the authority of the Metropolitan District Commission. The complex was also a companion facility for the Speedway trotting park, a horse and bicycle racecourse that curved for a mile along present-day Soldiers Field Road.
Long underutilized, and then vacant for over a decade, the buildings fell into disrepair.
Through a unique public/private partnership called the Historic Curatorship Program, Architectural Heritage Foundation and DCR set forth on the redevelopment of the historic property in 2019, with the first tenant, Notch Brewing, opening their doors in July of 2021.
Earlier this month, the Baker-Polito Administration and state and local officials gathered in Pittsfield to announce more than $143 million in grant awards supporting 337 local economic development projects in 169 communities.
The grant awards were made through the Community One Stop for Growth, a single application portal that provides a streamlined, collaborative review process for 12 state grant programs that fund economic development projects related to community capacity building, planning and zoning, site preparation, building construction and infrastructure.
Here at AHF, we are most focused on the Underutilized Property Program (UPP). Since the program’s inception two years ago, we have worked with project partners to apply for UPP grant funding to support a range of development activity at their respective sites. This year was a big year for the program with $21,683,685 awarded to 49 projects. A big congratulations to all the awardees! See the full list here.
We are thrilled to learn that the following projects will be awarded UPP funding.
Photo by Jason Baker.
North Brookfield Townhouse, North Brookfield MA
Quick overview: The Friends of the North Brookfield Town House have been working for over a decade to preserve and repurpose the historic Town House in the center of North Brookfield, a 4,600 person rural community in Central Massachusetts. The Friends’ goal is to transform the Town House into a regional community and art center, returning it to “the center of everything.”
Funding: The town will use UPP funding to prepare advanced construction documents to address ADA accessibility and code compliance for this vacant, underutilized historic Town House property.
AHF involvement: Brainstorming sessions and support to build most competitive application possible; letter of support
Wright Building, Pittsfield MA
Quick overview: Allegrone Companies will renovate the National Register listed Wright Building, preserving and restoring its historic facade while updating its infrastructure, systems, and finishes to support new residential and retail uses. The redevelopment additionally will address a blighted adjacent property and will create a pedestrian corridor behind both buildingsThe full project will transform almost an entire city block in downtown Pittsfield.
Funding will be used for accessibility and fire/life safety, closing the gap between supportable debt, developer equity, and construction costs for this blighted and vacant block.
AHF involvement: Brainstorming sessions to determine the most competitive approach, compiling developer’s data and budgets into a compelling story and timely grant application.
Photo by Lisa Vollmer Photography
343 Main Street, Great Barrington MA
Quick overview: 343 Main Street is a historic, underutilized, and substantially vacant building owned by Alander Construction, a local full-service development company. The project is the adaptive re-use of a mostly vacant, historic, two-story, 22,000-square-foot former auto dealership,transforming it into much needed mixed income housing and two retail storefronts.
Funding will be used for Phase 2 of interior fit and finishes for tenant spaces.
AHF involvement: Strategic planning and drafting and compilation of grant application.
It’s been an exciting ride for the Charles River Speedway these past few months – first, receiving the Kuehn Award from Preservation Massachusetts, and then a Preservation Achievement Award from the Boston Preservation Alliance. The BPA has done an incredible job pulling together special films for each of the award winners this year – you can see them all here – and we absolutely love what they did to showcase The Speedway. Please take a watch, and see how far this place has come! (Plus, we adore the cameos by Kevin Martin of Notch Brewing, Alyssa DiPasquale of The Koji Club, and lots of SuperBien goodness.)
One of the best parts of the BPA Awards this year was welcoming the historic preservation community to Garage B, the events space at The Charles River Speedway. We had such a great time connecting with friends and colleagues once again – here are some of our favorites images from the night!
Photos by Hannah Spicher for the Boston Preservation Alliance.
The Boston Preservation Alliance has named six outstanding preservation projects for their 34th annual Preservation Awards – and the Charles River Speedway is one of them! AHF is incredibly honored to be part of this group of award winners.
As the BPA so eloquently described this class of award-winning projects:
The best way to preserve a space is by making it useful. This collection of six outstanding preservation projects does just that. Each one brings life to tired corners allowing a new generation of Bostonians to create memories of these historic places and spaces. Crumbling parking lots host neighborhood events. Old utility buildings foster entrepreneurship. A gutted neighborhood home is reimagined to serve as a dwelling of the 21st-century. These projects are not only useful spaces but are useful in telling the story of Boston.
Along with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, we are immensely proud to have made the Charles River Speedway useful again. We believe that the line about old utility buildings fostering entrepreneurship is about The Speedway, and it could not be more true. The Speedway’s tenants are all entrepreneurs – they are brewing beer, styling hair, making empanadas, churning ice cream, fostering community art, hand-crafting candles, perfecting hummus, and taking over the world with sake education. It is heartening to see all this creative energy taking place in the midst of a revitalized historic complex that sat vacant and unused for so many years.
We look forward to celebrating historic preservation, usefulness, and the city of Boston this fall with the rest of the awardees – and welcoming them to The Speedway and Garage B for the big event. For more information about the award winners and the Boston Preservation Awards to be held on October 22, 2022 – please visit bostonpreservation.org.
Take a look at each winner below, each project tells a great preservation story. Congratulations to all!
This Preservation Month, we want to put the spotlight on a particularly exciting project: 2 Ionic Avenue, the future home of Creative Hub Worcester.
The former Worcester Boys Club, now vacant and desperately in need of rehabilitation, is preparing for a complete transformation into the Creative Hub Community Arts Center—a dynamic space for artists, creative entrepreneurs, and community members to work, make, collaborate, perform, and attend events in a vibrant, multi-purpose environment. This project will preserve an architecturally significant building while also preserving its core use: to provide a safe place for the city’s children to grow, learn, and thrive.
Tapping into the expertise of architects from Studio Enée and Studio G, the complete restoration of the 30,000-square-foot building will include artist studios, an art gallery, a performing arts space, youth arts education programs, and two event spaces. When complete, the Creative Hub Community Arts Center will provide arts education for 250 to 350 individuals each day. The project will also include a new infant toddler and childcare facility for the Guild of St. Agnes, a longtime provider serving greater Worcester County.
AHF is providing development and project management services alongside development partner Arts & Business Council of Boston and their Creative Campus initiative. We are thrilled to support Creative Hub Worcester’s mission to provide affordable and accessible opportunities in the arts for all Worcester community members through the restoration and re-use of this historic property.
Creative Hub Worcester recently launched a new website filled with incredible historic images they found with the help of the Worcester Historical Museum. We just had to share a few here! Visit their new site to see more.
AHF is so pleased to share that Preservation Massachusetts has named The Charles River Speedway a 2022 Robert H. Kuehn award winner. This award is particularly meaningful as it recognizes extraordinary projects that meld collaborative partnerships with creative and cutting-edge ideas for the rehabilitation and active reuse of historic buildings. We could not be more thankful for our partnership with DCR and the Commonwealth, and Bob Kuehn’s legacy in historic preservation and creative adaptive reuse projects continue to inspire us today.
We are honored to be award winners this year, and we are in great company – other award winners include extraordinary examples of great historic preservation projects like the Roslindale Branch of the Boston Public Library, the Courthouse Lofts in Worcester, the Knitting Mill Apartments in Fall River, and Swartz Hall at the Harvard Divinity School. We look forward to celebrating them all on May 11 at the annual Preservation Massachusetts Preservation Awards.
But that’s not all! The Charles River Speedway has also been nominated as a People’s Preservation Choice award, and we are asking for the support of the community to help us get to the top of the list. If you know and love the revitalized Speedway, we’d love to get your vote – click here to support The Speedway today!
Among a really great list of fellow nominees (this is going to be TOUGH), we put forth that the Charles River Speedway project has connected the public to historic preservation in a truly impactful and tangible way. Anchored by a biergarten and taproom (Notch Brewing) and a host of incredibly creative and talented vendors and retailers, including Boston’s first sake bar (The Koji Club) and a new location for mixologist Ran Duan of Blossom Bar (Birds of Paradise), the Speedway welcomes all to eat, drink, shop, and connect with neighbors every day. It is a place that invites you to practice yoga in the courtyard, buy local art, catch a concert in the flexible events space in Garage B (or perhaps hold your teen’s bar mitzvah?!), get the perfect haircut, and to grab a beer with your co-worker after work – all in the midst of a redeveloped historic complex that was once home to park administration offices, horse stables, snow removal equipment, and a police station.
Built in 1899 as the headquarters for a mile-long racetrack along the Charles River, the Speedway complex is a fascinating mix of building types across a 2-acre campus in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood. Designed by William D. Austin in the Shingle Style with Colonial Revival influences, the architecture mimics the styles often found in luxurious seaside escapes like Newport, used here to reinforce the premise that outdoor recreation and the enjoyment of leisure time is meant for all. Over time, the rise of the popularity of automobiles affected the complex in various ways, ultimately the racetrack was razed mid-century to make way for Soldiers Field Road. The Speedway Headquarters buildings were used for different purposes until the 1990s, slowly falling into disuse.
Owned by the Commonwealth and part of DCR’s Historic Curatorship Program, the redevelopment of the Speedway was made possible through a public and private partnership between DCR and the nonprofit Architectural Heritage Foundation. But the successful redevelopment of the Speedway was not accomplished by AHF and DCR alone.
By all accounts, 2021 was a complicated year. While we came out of the worst of the pandemic and saw projects move forward in significant ways, there is still a sense of unease about the virus and how to operate in this ever-changing world. We have all learned to pivot again and again, to stay flexible, and to roll with the punches. But one thing is clear: we understand how AHF’s work to help communities spark economic and cultural growth is more important than ever. We are proud of what our team and our partners have accomplished this year – with grit, grace, and a lot of determination. Here are a few of our 2021 highlights.
The Speedway
2021 was the year that we took this complicated historic preservation project from a construction site to a living, breathing, revitalized destination to eat, drink and gather. Notch Brewing opened their taproom and biergarten over the summer, and this fall saw the openings of several Courtyard vendors and The Speedway’s flexible event space, Garage B. And we are just getting started: just wait until you see what 2022 will bring to The Speedway!
We were also so pleased to be a part of this video about DCR’s Historic Curatorship Program. We value our role in this important program that leverages private investment in the rehabilitation and reuse of significant historic properties, and were happy to talk about the experience on camera. Look for AHF’s Kara Anderson sharing some of her thoughts about our involvement with The Speedway! Bravo to Kevin Allen and the DCR team for putting together this important and compelling resource.
The Worcester Auditorium
As we moved ahead with one of our largest and most ambitious projects to date, the Worcester Memorial Auditorium, we took a significant leap forward: hiring Jake Sanders to be the Project Executive. The redevelopment effort, which aims to convert a five-story performance venue and memorial into an academic digital innovation lab, esports arena, and cultural center, is complex – to say the least. We needed someone on the ground that is smart, tactical, and knows Worcester through and through. With Jake, we found our ideal project executive, who is poised to lead the project into the next major phase in 2022.
Born and raised in Worcester, Jake played an integral role in the relocation of the Worcester Red Sox and the construction of Polar Park as a member of the negotiating and construction teams while employed by the City. While working for the City of Worcester, he spearheaded the redesign of the city website, created the process by which cannabis establishments would be allowed to operate, and represented the City with state and federal officials, corporate partners and community leaders to secure financial resources and strategic opportunities. You can read more about Jake and his role with the project here – but we really loved what U.S. Congressman Jim McGovern had to say about both: “The Worcester Memorial Auditorium is an architectural masterpiece, a magnificent monument to the veterans of World War I, and one of the crown jewels of our city. I’m thrilled that Jake Sanders will be leading the effort to turn this diamond in the rough into a downtown Worcester destination, and I look forward to partnering with him and his team as we bring this incredible venue back to life.”
Tax Credit and Grant Consulting
2021 was a year when we saw a lot of stuck projects get moving again. Over the years, we have learned a great deal about using historic tax credits and grants to take on “impossible” projects, and we love to bring that collected knowledge to partners across the region.
We worked with Trinity Financial to prepare Historic Tax Credit applications for the historic Marriner Mill in Lawrence, which will be kicking off construction in 2022. The project, known as Top Mill, joins a series of adaptive reuse efforts in Lawrence’s Arlington Mills Historic District, including Trinity Financial’s adjacent project at the Van Brodie Mill (now known as Arlington Point), that have revitalized vacant industrial buildings as much-needed residential space.
Our team continued to offer grant assistance and adaptive reuse guidance to projects like the Wright Building in Pittsfield, Cogswell School in Haverhill, North Brookfield Townhouse, the North Schoolhouse in Mt. Washington, and 343 Main Street, an underutilized anchor building in Great Barrington. Learn more about our current projects here.
Lastly, we harnessed the power of the Commonwealth’s new Underutilized Properties Program, assisting five applications for projects across the state. The program targets underutilized, abandoned, or vacant properties by supporting efforts that eliminate blight, increase housing production, support economic development projects, or increase the number of commercial buildings accessible to individuals with disabilities. In its first year, the program is funding 20 projects, totaling $7,516,000 in awards. More exciting information to come on these awards in 2022 – we have lots to share!
Our new branding – and our big move!
After a three-year strategic planning effort, we rebranded Architectural Heritage Foundation as AHF to reflect a shift away from historic property management to preservation-oriented development in under-resourced communities. We overhauled our website, shifted our focus, and after five decades at Old City Hall, we also moved our offices to The Speedway. The big move was partly an adaptation to the COVID economy, but primarily an effort to have a stronger presence in the communities AHF serves. Relocating to North Brighton allows AHF to strengthen its ties with the local community while emphasizing its commitment making preservation an option of “first resort” in historically under-resourced areas.
Architectural Heritage Foundation is a 501(c)3 dedicated to stimulating economic development in disinvested communities through historic preservation. Follow AHF and its projects on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
