Belmont’s Food Pantry On The Move; And It Needs Your Help July 30

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Photo: The new logo.

Like a friend who calls in July and August, the Belmont Food Pantry wants to know:

“Can you help them move to their new home?”

The Belmont Food Pantry is on the move, and by the end of next week – if all goes to plan – the site which serves nearly 200 residents will be up and running at its new location near Waverley Square. 

After being forced to find a new place after the Belmont School Department was forced by skyrocketing enrollment to take back the two modular rooms behind Belmont High School, Mount Hope Church at 51 Lexington St. offered approximately 1,600 sq.-ft. in its basement for the food pantry’s relocation, said long-time manager Patricia Mihelich. 
The pantry’s new home has a ramp into the building, a new lift to the basement where the bathrooms are located.
But like any new home, you have to find a way to move the contents to the new place. According to Mihelich, moving day is Saturday, July 30th starting at 8 a.m. 
“As the saying goes ‘All Hands on Deck’ is needed for this day,” she said in an email to supporters.
In addition to residents with strong backs, Mihelich will need some handy persons with experience in construction.
“The preparation of the space will take some time, so we are also working on a temporary space to go to during that time.  I am working on the solution regarding this, and everything should be finalized by Monday,” she said.

Ohlin’s Friends Head Online To Help Bakery Get Back In Business

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Photo: The GoFundMe page.

When Jacqui Davis would travel to visit her sister in Watertown, there was one mandatory stop as she passed through her former hometown of Belmont.

“How could I pass up going to Ohlin’s?” said the Burlington resident who owns Virtually Here, an online business consultancy. “It’s a staple of Cushing Square.”

For Davis, the century-old bakery located in Cushing Square was where in high school she worked behind the counter and continued coming back for, what else, the shop’s specialty.

“The donuts!” she said of the pastries that have won praise for more than 20 years. “Obviously, they are the best.” 

But Davis’ trips were suddenly ended when on March 15 – the Ides of March – an early morning explosion rocked the building and the back of the shop located at 456 Common St. closing the shop to its loyal patrons.

Since then, the landlord, the insurance company, and the town have been in discussions on the future of the site.

At the beginning of this week, co-ower Marybeth Klemm updated the store’s legion of customers with a Facebook post. She noted that the insurance would only allow the rebuilding of a retail space and if the family hoped to return to the spot, they would need to equip the space for a bakery which requires special cooking equipment, a whole lot of permits and a significant number of expensive upgrades.

“Since the building was damaged- everything must now be brought up to code. Like floors with drains etc…These are all new codes. So we now must have them, but our insurance won’t cover any upgrades,” wrote MaryBeth.

“We are incredibly nervous and stressed about the unknown,” wrote Marybeth, who owns the business with her husband, Paul.  

It was Marybeth’s message that prompted Davis into action.

This was passed around the Facebook group “You know you are from Belmont… and we decided we need to help!” said Davis in her online message.

Davis created a GoFundMe appeal on Wednesday, July 20, “to make sure Ohlin’s Bakery will be around another 100 years!” Davis said she chose $50,000 even though that figure may be on the low end of what will be needed, “but that just means we will need to exceed it,” she said.

In addition to the online fundraiser, she is tapping into her large list of clients and contracts which include local Belmont businesses to help “one of their own.”

“This is not just about another business, it’s about community,” Davis said.

After one day, the fund has raised more than $9,400 from 200 contributors as of 9 a.m., Thursday, July 21. 

“I’m as passionate about this as is Belmont,” said Davis.

Minuteman Relents on Election; Belmont To Use Usual Polling Precincts

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Photo: Voting will take place in the customary locations.

In a decision affecting an all-important vote in two months time, the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School District will allow Belmont to use its customary polling locations for the Sept. 20 election rather than a single, centralized site to determine whether the district can go ahead with the financing of a new $145 million vocational high school. 

Belmont Town Clerk Ellen Cushman told the Belmontonian that she received word of the reversal from Minuteman Regional School District Superintendent Edward Bouquillon on Friday night, July 15.

“Belmont requested that for the district-wide Minuteman election that voters were able to vote at our usual seven locations, eight precincts … and they were kind enough to allow that to occur,” said Cushman to a question on whether Minuteman had responded to her request and a letter in support from the Belmont Board of Selectmen. 

Belmont’s Selectmen were highly critical of the earlier single location decision, saying it was a deliberate attempt by Minuteman – which under state law is allowed to call for a district-wide vote if it could not convince the 16 communities Town Meetings to move forward on the $100 million bonding plan – to stifle the vote in Belmont, the only of the district municipalities whose Town Meeting members voted down the financing plan at a Special Town Meeting earlier this year. 

If the district vote passes the bonding issue, Belmont ratepayers could find themselves paying an additional maximum of $500,000 annually in capital costs in addition to the tuition to allow the roughly 30 Belmont students to attend the school in Lexington. 

The selectmen joined Cushman in hailing the change. 

“I’m thrilled to hear that [Minuteman] has allowed at least Belmont to vote in our regular precincts,” said Mark Paolillo, the board’s chair. 

“I think they heard the concerns of the Town Clerk and [the board’s] letter … because we do expect a relatively high voter turnout,” said Sami Baghdady, vice chair of the board. 

“There is nothing more discouraging to the democratic process than heavy traffic, waiting in lines and with only one polling station, it would have a big dampening effect,” he said.

While many town officials believe voter turnout of registered voters in the other 15 district communities will be in the low teens and even single digits, Cushman expects upwards of 30 percent coming out to vote. 

“The way I looked at it, it wasn’t because I supported a point of view, I just want broad representation to vote either way on this,” said Paolillo.

Earlier this month, Minuteman’s recommendation was to use only one location for a vote, which Cushman said would place a hardship on Belmont voters by causing confusion on where to place their ballot not only on Sept. 20 but in state and national elections before and after the financing polling. 

Cushman said the only location in Belmont that could accommodate up to 6,000 voters would be the Wenner Field House on the Belmont High School campus off Concord Avenue. 

With the need for added transportation, police coverage and mailings to voters, Cushman noted the total cost to the town to use one location would eventually cost Minuteman – which is paying for the election – about the same amount, about $16,000, as using the seven sites. 

With the reversal on Minuteman’s part, Belmont voters will head to their familiar polling locations on Tuesday, Sept. 20, but with one distinct difference. 

“Polls will be open from noon until 8 p.m.; we will not open at our usual 7 a.m. start,” said Cushman.

Sold In Belmont: Mansions (And A Simple Ranch) Required Millions To Buy

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Photo: A. 

A weekly recap of residential properties sold in the past seven-plus days in the “Town of Homes”:

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• 52 Grant Ave., Unit 2, Townhouse (2007). Sold: $800,000. Listed at $730,000. Living area: 1,955 sq.-ft. 5 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 2 full, 2 half baths. On the market: 100 days.

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• 635 Concord Ave., Colonial-ish (2005). Sold: $1,958,000. Listed at $2,100,000. Living area: 5,205 sq.-ft. 10 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths. On the market: 96 days.

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• 38 Audubon Ln., I have no idea (2012). Sold: $2,980,000. Listed at $3,150,000. Living area: 5,112 sq.-ft. 10 rooms, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 baths. On the market: 96 days.

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• 28 Brettwood Rd., Ranch (1953). Sold: $1,012,000. Listed at $1,295,000. Living area: 2,686 sq.-ft. 10 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. On the market: 89 days.

You remember the lyrics of the 70’s television show, “The Jeffersons.” 

“Well we’re movin’ on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.

And that’s what one Belmont couple is doing, swinging the sale of their house for one that’s on the better side of the town.

First, they had to sell the first house … for nearly $3 million.

Gah!

One thing you can say about the house at 38 Audubon Ln. (it’s a cul du sac off Concord Avenue at Mill Street) is the work of the five-year-old house is outstanding, or what the town assessing department calls “superlative” with the rare grade of A++. That should not come to a surprise since the builder/owner, John Eurdolian, is a master contractor. Just think if you were a sub on the job and had a client who knows how to hang a door better than you?

Eurdolian bought a bit of land on Audubon for $700,000 in 2010 then spent nearly $745,000 to construct the building he just sold, re-cooping his cost two-fold.

While there is no way to describe the eclectic exterior design – modern jumbled? – it’s new and big, and that’s what some rich people demand, especially those buyers who come from overseas. So it took less than 100 days to sell and at nearly half-a-million dollars over its assessed value. 

Now, the Eurdolian’s won’t be living in the Hotel Tria in Fresh Pond‎ waiting to move into their new house. In fact, they’ll be movin’ on up Belmont Hill on, oh so proper, Marsh Street. 

And similar to his former house, Eurdolian built a grand new house on Marsh, buying a fading old Colonial in 2014 that had suffered water damage. He put down $900,000 for the house, then quickly knocked it down and spent $854,000 to make a grand statement – 7,429 sq.-ft., 14 rooms, 5 beds, 5 full and 2 half baths – on a street with plenty of those. Its value today? $2,129,000. And how much do you think this would sell for? Plenty. 

Belmont Center Roadways Repaved Starting Tuesday, July 19

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Photo: Leonard Street to be paved.

Finally!

After more than a year of construction on the infrastructure and sidewalks in Belmont Center, the long-anticipated paving of Leonard Street and connecting streets will begin Tuesday, July 19 and hopefully be completed by Thursday, July 21.

Beginning Tuesday, Watertown’s Charles Contracting – the project’s general contractor – will begin milling (the process of removing at least part of the surface of a paved area the roadway surface) within the Belmont Center project limits. The hours of construction will take place between 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

There will be no parking along the affected streets while construction is underway. Belmont Center businesses will remain open with parking available in the Claflin Street Parking Lot behind Leonard Street during construction.

The paving work is one of the final segments of the $2.8 million Belmont Center Reconstruction Plan, a project whose genesis began with a report from the transportation advisory firm the BSC Group in 2010.

When the funding for the project was approved by a Special Town Meeting in Nov. 2014, it was anticipated the project would be completed by Oct. 30, 2015. 

The schedule of roads to be milled, 

Tuesday, July 19:

  • Mill the roadway surface on Channing Road (during the morning) and Moore Street (afternoon). 
  • One travel lane in one direction will be provided at all times during the milling operations. The other direction of travel will be detoured. The travel and detoured lanes will be determined based on where the milling operation is occurring.
  • There will be no parking between the hours of 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. on both sides of Channing Road, from Leonard Street to Farm Road, and Moore Street, from Pleasant Street to Leonard Street.

Wednesday July 20, and Thursday July 21:

  • Mill the roadway surface on Concord Avenue (next to the US Post Office and near the Lions Club Building) and continuing under the bridge onto Leonard Street extending to Pleasant Street.
  • There will be no parking between the hours of 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. on both sides of Concord Avenue, from the Post Office to the Lions Club Building, and both sides of Leonard Street, from under the bridge to Pleasant Street. Please note: Individual parking spaces along Concord Avenue and Leonard Street will be made available as soon as possible after the milling operation has cleared an area.
  • Two lanes of traffic will be accommodated on Concord Avenue. One travel lane providing one direction of travel will be provided at all times on Leonard Street. The other direction of travel will be detoured. The travel and detoured lanes will be determined based on where the milling operation is occurring. 

For any questions or concerns about the project please contact Robert Bosselman, resident engineer in the Office of Community Development, at 617-993-2665.

With Temps In The 90s, Belmont Light Asks Consumers to Save By Using Less

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Photo: It is going to be a scorcher.

With the high-temperature in New England today, Monday, July 18, expected to hit the low to mid-90 degrees, electrical utilities across the region – including Belmont’s Light Department – are anticipating a high electricity use day, putting a strain on the power grid.

To save energy and money by reducing electricity consumption, Belmont Light and the Woburn-based energy efficiency firm Sagewell are asking customers to turn down their electrical consumption today between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

The utility and its partner are asking Belmont residents and businesses to take at least two steps listed below to reduce their peak electricity consumption:

  • Adjust your AC a few degrees warmer and turn off the AC in rooms that are not in use. Changing the thermostat by two or three degrees makes a big difference.
  • Enjoy the sunny weather and cook outside on a grill, or visit a local Belmont restaurant for dinner
  • Don’t cook with an electric stove or oven.
  • Shift laundry and dishwasher use until after 6 p.m.
  • If you have an electric water heater, wait to bathe or use hot water until after 6 p.m.
  • Run pool pumps or use hot tubs before three p.m. or after 6 p.m.
  • Shift other electricity uses to before 3 p.m. or after 6 p.m.

“Every bit of electricity reduced during peak times will help Belmont mitigate rising electricity costs,” said a joint press release dated Sunday, July 17.

Because Belmont Light is town-owned, any savings from this program are passed onto ratepayers,” it read.

Any questions or advice on how to decrease peak energy consumption, contact Sagewell’s Belmont Light Peak Reduction Program at:
support@sagewell.com or
617-963-8141

Sold in Belmont: Clifton Street ‘Vacant Lot’ Tops $1.2M

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Photo: Ready, set, build!

You knew when Colleen Baxter O’Connell arrived at the Chenery Middle School from her home on Clifton Street on Belmont Hill.

“You’d see Colleen drive her Camero into the school’s parking lot,” said Ellen Cushman who was taught by O’Connell in the early 1970s when she was already in her 60s, who was known for her no-nonsense approach to teaching mathematics.

And her thrill for speed remained with her well into retirement.

“You didn’t start the Belmont Garden Club meetings until you heard Colleen’s driving up in her sports car,” said Cushman.

And in the past two weeks, O’Connell was remembered once again as the now vacant lot where her house once stood was purchased by a yet-to-be-named buyer for a cool $1.24 million from the Belmont resident who bought and quickly tore down what was a dilapidated Colonial two years ago.

The house – 2,642 sq.-ft., 10 rooms, 3 beds, 1.5 baths – was built in 1929 and the type of home a middle-income couple could afford in the 1950s, even with a Belmont Hill address. O’Connell spent nearly 50 years in the house, first with her husband, Harrison, and two children, and then by herself until she died in April 2004 at 99 years old.

After her death, the family attempted to make a go of the house by reportedly having renters stay in the building. But the overall condition of the house was rated by town assessors as “below average.” Yet the battered appearance didn’t appear to affect the home’s assessed value which nearly doubled from $542,000 in 1993 to $1,052,000 in 2003. 

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Finally, a decade after O’Connell’s dead, the property was sold in late 2013 to Claflin Street resident Paul Emello for $750,000. Emello then promptly took a wrecking ball to the house and placed a “for sale” sign on the street. The list price: $1.8 million. Wow, that’s chutzpah to attempt to flip a vacant lot for a million dollars.

Clifton Street is located on Belmont Hill which, it turns out, isn’t the same as Beverly Hills. A drop in price was expected, a reality set in. Within a year, the list fell to $1,349,000 and by November 2015 it took a $70,000 haircut to $1,279,000. Still nothing. Then in late June, a deal was made: step back another $40,000 and that’s that. 

So who bought it? It hasn’t been recorded at the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds. But it won’t be an empty lot for long as the land is being groomed by a well-known Belmont landscape company. 

Along Lexington Street: Some Paving, Restricting Parking and More Stop Signs

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Photo: Where all the action will be in the next weeks.

Lexington Street will be undergoing some significant changes beginning next week.

• For two days beginning on Tuesday, July 19, E.H. Perkins Construction will be paving the raised intersection on Lexington Street at the intersection of Sycamore Street.

The intersection will be closed to through traffic during the paving operation, according to a press release from Belmont town officials and Perkins, the town’s general contractor. 

Sycamore Street will remain open only to residents of the street, said the release. Detours with signage around the project work zone will be used, “but drivers and residents should expect delays and plan accordingly.”

Those with questions can go to the Pavement Management Program webpage or contact the Office of Community Development for additional information.

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• On Monday, July 11, the Belmont Board of Selectmen approved a recommendation from the Traffic Advisory Committee bringing parking restrictions on Chandler Street from the Waltham city line to Lexington Street.

Beginning in the next few weeks, there will be “no parking” 50 feet from Lexington while on the odd-numbered side of Chandler from Lexington to Waltham, there will be a special “no parking” restriction from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. in an attempt to thwarted commuters who park along the street all-day. 

• Lexington Street will soon have two new four-way stop intersections, at Beech and Burnham streets, to slow through traffic along the byway. 

Belmont Begins, Yet Again, Search to Find Source Polluting Mystic Watershed

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Photo:

Glenn Clancy may not look like Benedict Cumberbatch, but like the hugely popular sleuth the actor plays on BBC television, Belmont’s town engineer will be doing his best Sherlock Holmes as he attempts to find the source of what has been dirtying up a nearby major watershed that has been dogging the town for more than 15 years. 

“Am I confident that we are going to get it this time?” Clancy rhetorically pondered to the Belmontonian after this past Monday’s Board of Selectmen’s meeting.  

“How confident are the Red Sox when they step on the field for a ballgame? We are going in with the idea that we will get it done,” he said.

With a finite budget and state and national environmental regulatory agencies breathing down his neck, Clancy is pinning his hopes on a game of elimination to pinpoint where the worst of the contaminants are coming from and marshal his resources there. 

Belmont has been on the state’s Department of Environmental Protection going back to January 2000 of being noncompliant of acceptable water quality standards leading to pollutants entering the Mystic River Watershed, a collection of rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds that drain an area of approximately 76 square miles and 21 municipalities north of Boston.

And for the past decade, the town has sunk into the ground several million dollars to repair and replace infrastructure to improve the quality of the water entering the system. But the work so far has had little impact on several water sources within Belmont with locations such as the Little River and the Winn’s Brook receiving poor or failing mark for water quality. 

It’s not a mystery what is creating the problem, said Clancy.

“This is strictly about the sanitary sewage system mingling with our stormwater system. So in Belmont, the biggest contributors to this problem are deteriorating sewage pipes to where that sewage is leeching up and finding its way into the storm drain system,” he said. 

The other source is toilets that contractors or homeowners have placed over a storm drain pipe. “While the decaying pipes are our most important issue, we have found 10 to 15 illicit direct connections to the storm drain system that we have already mitigated,” said Clancy. “We expect to discover more with this testing.” 

Clancy, who is also the director of the Office of Community Development, told the Selectmen Monday that the $70,000 (from a total of $200,000 the town approved to seek a solution) to conduct sample testing of 15 outfalls sites to determine which of those are responsible for the majority of pollution being sent into one of the Mystic River watershed tributaries located in Belmont. 

“We’ve done [testing and remedies] two or three times in the past decade with construction work totaling $8 million and the next phase to identify specific problems,” Clancy told the Belmontonian.

“The sampling is the first step in what ultimately will be another construction process,” said Clancy. 

“Once you identify the outfall as ‘dirty,’ you then have to determine where the source of that contamination is coming from,” Clancy told the Belmontonian.

The fix has mostly been lining the deteriorated pipe which “still in a structural condition that allows us to line it with concrete,” he said. If it is too far gone, the main will need replacing. 

If the survey discovers issues with toilets or interior plumbing, “we find a way to work with the property owner to solve the problem whether that is reconnecting a pipe to the proper main or eliminating the source altogether. The conditions will usually dictate the best way to mitigate.” 

And it won’t be cheap; the town could be open to another $4 million to $6 million over several years to make the necessary repairs, according to Clancy.

Saying that he understands the frustration from residents who will end up paying for the repairs, Clancy said the repairs in the past and the future would begin to show results.

“We spent eight million [dollars] plus already, and every dollar of that eight million plus has fixed some problem. I want people to understand while we still have a problem doesn’t mean that the money that has already been spent has not been spent properly. It has fixed problems that we have identified. The challenge that we have more problems that need to be identified and mitigated,” he said.

“I could never look someone in the eye and say this is going to be the time when we get it because I understand the nature of the problem. All we can continue to do is make a good faith effort to find the sources and mitigate them,” said Clancy.