Weston Historical Commission Declares Birch Lane Cottages Significant, Advances JST Talks

WESTON — January 22, 2019 — Weston Historical Commission declares Birch Lane workers cottages historically significant and hears warnings that a decade-long deed dispute could freeze the $9.1 to $9.4 million JST building renovation. The Commission voted unanimously to find the two circa-early-twentieth-century cottages at 216 and 218 Birch Lane architecturally intact and significant as a matched set, giving the body an advisory role in WAFI's pending friendly 40B application to replace them with two duplexes totaling six thousand square feet. Christopher Botti told members that Historic New England's restrictions had grown across three failed negotiating rounds — 2009, 2014, and 2016 — to cover all paint, all landscaping, and all future use decisions, and that the organization was pressing to extend the current 500-year easement to perpetuity while adding Massachusetts Historical Commission as a second approval authority. "The alternative is we're stuck with the status quo indefinitely," Botti said, describing a high-level meeting scheduled the following day with Historic New England's president; without a deal, the Commission said construction documents on the town-green project cannot proceed and the Fall Town Meeting funding target is at risk.