The Lincoln Squirrel – News, features and photos from Lincoln, Mass.

Property sales for June

  • House-1343 Hemlock Circle — Cynthia Williams, trustee to Michael Jordoff Trust and Nancy Jordoff, trustees for $534,100 (June 1)
  • 16 Bypass Rd. — Zachary Burnett to McLean Hospital Corp. for $1,024,500 (June 1)
  • 22 Bypass Rd. — Burnett Remodeling LLC to McLean Hiospital Corp. for $1,700,000 (June 1)
  • 35 Deerhaven Rd. — Mary Rurth Trubiano, trustee to David J. Jensen, trustee for $810,000 (June 2)
  • 25 Tabor Hill Rd. — Steven Wardell to Marc Czapczynski and Coren Milbury for $1,100,000 (June 7)
  • 332 Hemlock Circle, unit 332 — John Konvalinka to Steven Emmerich and Eve Horwitz for $545,000 (June 9)
  • 82 Virginia Rd., unit 205 — Judith Dolan to Andrew and Emily Pollack for $347,000 (June 9)
  • 12 Sunnyside Lane — Frederic Eppling, trustee to Robert Peattie and Adeline Kim for $675,000 (June 9)
  • 3 Blueberry Lane — Walter Ehrlich to George and Sonya Najarian for $1,487,000 (June 10)
  • 9 Hiddenwood Path — Susan Decapo to Andrew Frisch for $780,000 (June 16)
  • 85 Lexington Rd. — Cathryn Long, trustee to Jeremy Wilbur and Elaine Shapland for $1,345,000 (June 17)
  • 11 Boyce Farm Rd. — Mark Deck to Kurt MacLaurin for $1,395,000 (June 17)
  • 237 Old Concord Rd. — Henry Morgan, trustee to Robert and Elizabeth Orgel, trustees for $1,050,000 (June 17)
  • 113 South Great Rd. — Rebecca Hussey to Reyza Marouf for $999,000 (June 20)
  • 109 Old Sudbury Rd. — John Shupe to Sandys Bureau, trustee for $1,215,000 (June 27)
  • 49 Bedford Rd. — Brian Flaherty to Lara and John MacLachlan for $957,000 (June 29)

 

News acorns

Residents invited to forum/brunch on accessory apartments

The Lincoln Housing Commission invites all residents to a forum and brunch at Bemis Hall on Thursday, July 28 at 11 a.m. to participate in a discussion about developing accessory apartments in Lincoln.

The purpose of the meeting is to gather opinions about various ways to provide small or smaller units for current residents who want to stay in Lincoln. Some have houses in which they would like to remain but are larger than they need, and/or require more work than they want to continue to do.  To accomplish that goal, they would provide a small unit in their existing home at regular or subsidized rates. On the other hand, there are folks whose resources, for various reasons, are limited but who also want to remain in Lincoln and only need or can only afford smaller units.

The meeting will provide an opportunity to hear how to deal with town regulations, guidance on design and construction  issues.  Those with limited resources will hear discussions about the information they need to provide to be eligible to live in these units.

DeCordova summer activities

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum has several activities slated for the rest of the summer. For details, click on one of the events below.

Whistle Stop closes abruptly, leaving mall without a restaurant

Chairs and tables remained outside the shuttered Whistle Stop on Monday.

Chairs and tables remained outside the shuttered Whistle Stop on Monday.

The Whistle Stop restaurant has gone out of business, becoming the second Lincoln restaurant since May to close its doors.

Customers who stopped by on Monday morning were greeted with signs scrawled on small white paper bags taped to the doors saying “Closed — Thanks for the Memories” and “Closed — 08/04/04–7/16/16  — Thank You Lincoln.”

As she was leaving church on Sunday, July 17 (a day when the Whistle Stop would normally be closed), resident Sara Mattes noticed owner Brian Mehigan inside the restaurant. He told her that he was indeed closing and that it had been “a labor of love for a number of years and a lot of fun” but that he was “tired.”

Mehigan, a Stow resident, could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The Whistle Stop property, like the rest of the Mall at Lincoln Station, is owned by the Rural Land Foundation (RLF). Mehigan was “not current on his rent,” RLF Executive Director Geoff McGean said on Monday, adding that he did not know anything about his tenant’s financial situation. “We were not aware of Brian’s intention to leave until Saturday,” he said.

signSeveral weeks ago, Mehigan was served with a notice to correct sanitation code violations or be forced to close after an inspection by Assistant Public Health Director Stanley Sosnicki. Mehigan corrected the problems shortly thereafter and appeared before the Lincoln Board of Health on June 15, where board members told him he was required to take a food safety course and submit to more frequent inspections. It is not known whether this incident played any role in the Whistle Stop’s closing, however.

Mehigan bought the business in 2004 from Steve Flood, who had operated it for 12 years prior to that, McGean said. It became a social magnet for those seeking a cup of coffee, sandwich and a chat, and many of Mehigan’s regular customers helped him celebrate the fifth anniversary of his ownership in 2009. Middle-school students from the Lincoln School often walked there on Wednesdays (a half-day at school) to grab lunch, socialize and be greeted by Donk, Mehigan’s dog who hung around the outdoor tables around the restaurant.

In 2004, some Whistle Stop regulars pitched in to help a homeless family acquire and move furniture, and Mehigan contributed lunch for the gang, according to a Lincoln Journal article.

Lincoln resident Richard Card is hoping to open Blazes, a combination restaurant, cocktail bar and bookstore, in the former Aka Bistro space, but a lease agreement with RLF has not yet been finalized, Card said on Monday.

As word spread on Monday morning of the Whistle Stop’s demise, residents on the LincolnTalk email list mourned the loss and mused about the reason. Some expressed the hope that the restaurant would be replaced by a business that served high-quality coffee, even as others speculated that the South Lincoln shopping area does not attract enough customers to sustain many businesses. Over the years, the mall’s tenants have included a hardware store and a flower shop, while the red building adjacent to the railroad station once housed a pharmacy.

Minuteman project going to district-wide vote

mm1Residents of all 16 towns in the Minuteman High School district will vote at a referendum on September 20 on whether to approve its new school building after officials from Minuteman and other towns determined that the Belmont Town Meeting could not be persuaded to change its “no” vote.

Minuteman needs approval from all 16 towns by November 30 to preserve a $44 million grant from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to help pay for the $145 million project. Every town except Belmont voted either to approve funding the project or to withdraw from the district to avoid incurring the capital costs levied on member towns. Belmont’s Town Meeting voted against bonding for the project on May 4, and Minuteman officials initially hoped to persuade the town to change its mind after securing an extension from the MSBA (the original deadline was May 27).

Lincoln voted in February to withdraw from the district, but the withdrawal does not take effect until July 2017, so it is still considered a member town for purposes of the September vote. Five other towns have also elected to withdraw.

State law allows the option of a district-wide referendum if the full complement of Town Meeting approvals for a regional school project isn’t achieved. There have been at least three such votes in regional school districts since 1995, all of which resulted in approvals, according to a Minuteman statement.

Asked why Lincoln should approve a project for a district it has decided to leave, Minuteman Superintendent-Director Edward Bouquillon noted that Lincoln students will still be able to enroll as out-of-district students. He also extolled the broader advantages of “having high-quality technical and vocational education” in the area.

“The value of vocational-technical education when it comes to economic development is clear,” he said. “It’s really an opportunity to express their support, and I would ask them to do that.”

The vote will be decided by a simple majority of the 16-town vote total. Polls will be open on Tuesday, Sept. 20 from noon to 8 p.m. The election will be paid for by the Minuteman school district.

 

Summer sky (Lincoln Through the Lens)

A summer sunset sky photographed by Harold McAleer.

A summer sunset sky photographed by Harold McAleer.

Readers may submit photos for consideration for Lincoln Through the Lens by emailing them to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. If your photo is published, you’ll receive credit in the Squirrel. Photos must be taken in Lincoln and include the date, location, and names of any people who are identifiable in the photo. Previously published photos can be viewed on the Lincoln Through the Lens page of the Lincoln Squirrel.

Transfer station now accepting some commingled recyclables

recyclingResidents can now recycle paper and cardboard in the same bin with their metal and plastics after the town signed a contract with a new recycling hauler, Waste Management of Billerica, in June. Glass will still be collected at the transfer station, but it can’t be mixed with other recyclables.

Glass is heavier than other recyclables (and thus more costly to haul) while also being more difficult to separate from other materials, so it’s worth very little in today’s recycling market, as explained in this 2015 Wall Street Journal article. Waste Management charges by the ton for picking up materials from the transfer station and then pays a rebate for non-glass recyclables, so the recycling rebate and the fee for removing glass will balance out to a small net gain for the town, according to Assistant Town Administrator Mary Day.

At its facilities in Billerica and elsewhere, Waste Management separates commingled materials using machinery including suction equipment, magnets and optical detectors. One items that poses problems is plastic grocery bags, however. “They kill the machine that does the separating,” said Day, noting that residents should recycle them in bins inside supermarkets and not at the transfer station.

Town officials made the change in recycling companies because the former vendor, Integrated Paper Recyclers, was not doing the job, Day said. That company sometimes did not pick up the full containers on time, meaning that the transfer station had to either close or require residents to combine materials they had previously separated, such as putting plastics and cans in the glass container, she said.

“We had no choice because it was happening so frequently,” Day said, adding that transfer station workers were often the target of complaints from irate residents as a result of the problem. When interviewing other potential vendors, town officials were impressed by Waste Management’s “unbelievable state-of-the-art facility… we were so pleased with what they had to offer us and their responsiveness,” she said.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the transfer station will also install new bins and a larger compactor. One reason for this is the increased volume of paper and cardboard, requiring a transfer station worker to stand by almost full-time to shove down the material and run the compactor frequently to keep up.

“It has gone from way more than just paper to a lot of cardboard with everybody buying from Amazon,” Day said.

This fall, officials hope to update the procedures for recycling CRTs (cathode ray tubes such as old TVs and computer monitors) and white goods such as washing machines. “We don’t really had any hard policy and that’s one of the things that’s costing the town a lot of money,” Day said. One possibility is limiting how often residents can bring such materials. “We’ll have to see what other towns are doing that makes sense.”

News acorns

Antique auto show on Sunday

Historic New England will host its annual antique auto show at the Codman Estate on Saturday, July 17 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The show draws more than 200 classic and antique autos, trucks and motorcycles from all over New England and includes entertainment by the New Liberty Jazz Band, museum tours, a raffle, and food concessions. Rain or shine. Free for Historic New England members and children under 12, $5 for nonmembers. Registration fee for antique vehicles:$10 (passengers are free). Classic and antique cars, trucks, motorcycles, and fire engines are welcome as long as they are at least 25 years old. Entrants receive show ribbons. Please call 617-994-5900 ext. 5514 for more information. (Click here for a story and photos from the 2012 show.)

Also at the event, a representative of the U.S. Postal Service is unveiling a new postage stamp series with vintage truck images. The brief ceremony will be at 11 a.m. at the Codman Estate.

Hendricks wins deCordova prize

Barkley Hendricks, Photo Bloke, 2016, oil and acrylic on linen, 72x48.

Barkley Hendricks, Photo Bloke, 2016 (click to enlarge).

Barkley Hendricks is the 17th recipient of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s prestigious Rappaport Prize, an annual award of $25,000 given to an established contemporary artist with strong connections to New England. Known primarily as a figurative painter, Hendricks has also worked in photography throughout his nearly five-decade-long career. His work most often includes portraits of ordinary people he has encountered on the street and in his life against backgrounds of flat color.

“We are honored to award the 2016 Rappaport Prize to Barkley Hendricks,” deCordova Executive Director John B. Ravenal said in a statement. “His work is beautiful, thought-provoking and culturally relevant. His strong connection to New England as a longstanding resident of New London started while as a student at Yale and led to a nearly 40-year career as a professor at  Connecticut College.”

“A big thank-you to deCordova for this award. I feel honored to be the recipient of the Rappaport Prize. I am proud of my relationship with John Ravenal and [Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator] Jennifer Gross; deCordova is lucky to have two hip people at the lead,” Hendicks said. The public is invited to attend the Rappaport Prize Lecture with Hendricks on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 6:30 p.m. at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Admission is free.

RESIST class offered

The Lincoln Police in collaboration with Domestic Violence Services Network (DVSN) is offering a RESIST self-defense class for  female-identified high school/college-aged folks on Thursday, August 4 and 11 from 6:30-9:30 p.m. The goal of the course is to learn how to escape from an attacker by using instinct-based moves. On Day 1, we will talk about general safety and dating safety before learning and then practicing physical self-defense moves like strikes, blocks and knee strikes. For Day 2, students and instructors will don protective gear, and participants will be “attacked” using learned moves to escape. This part of the course is intense but amazing and empowering.

The class is free, but registration is required and space is limited. If you have any questions or you’d like to sign up, please email  jenasalon@gmail.com.

Gobbling something together (Lincoln Through the Lens)

Rich Rosenbaum photographed this turkey hen and chick in his back yard.

Rich Rosenbaum photographed this turkey hen and chick in his back yard.

Readers may submit photos for consideration for Lincoln Through the Lens by emailing them to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. If your photo is published, you’ll receive credit in the Squirrel. Photos must be taken in Lincoln and include the date, location, and names of any people who are identifiable in the photo. Previously published photos can be viewed on the Lincoln Through the Lens page of the Lincoln Squirrel.

Letter to the editor: McLean educational use is ‘semantic fiction’

letter

To the editor:

I am one of the many neighbors who are challenging McLean’s right to locate a treatment center on Bypass Road. Carol Kochmann’s overwrought defense of McLean Hospital’s attempt to establish a psychiatric treatment facility in a residentially zoned neighborhood completely misses the point of the community’s objections and concerns (“Feeling ‘shame’ for Lincoln,” Lincoln Squirrel, July 2, 2016).

No one in the Bypass Road neighborhood disagrees with the fact that McLean is a preeminent medical institution, with the resources and expertise necessary to treat adolescent males afflicted with borderline personality disorder. Nor does anyone dispute that McLean was instrumental in helping a member of Ms. Kochmann’s family overcome crippling anxiety and depression.

What I object to is the fact that our town’s zoning bylaw prohibits the placement of psychiatric treatment facilities in residentially zoned areas and McLean is attempting to circumvent these bylaws by mischaracterizing the nature of its facility. Notwithstanding Ms. Kochmann’s barbed critique of our motivations, I see nothing shameful in reminding the town’s boards and employees of their legal obligation to administer Lincoln’s zoning bylaw fairly and with due regard for the people who live here.

My disagreement with McLean is not about the good work that they do, but rather the rules and laws that determine where they can do it. Our zoning bylaw strictly limits the types of uses and structures that can be located in a residential district. The state statute known as the Dover Amendment allows nonprofit educational institutions an exemption from local zoning bylaws if, and only if, the proposed use is “educationally significant” and education is “the primary or dominant purpose for which the land or structures are to be used.” McLean is proposing to place in the middle of an established residential neighborhood a locked psychiatric ward where adolescent males will be administered intensive “dialectical behavior therapy” as well as “psycho-pharmaceutical treatment.”

Again, without questioning the laudable nature of this activity, the primary purpose of this use is clearly medical treatment, not education, and therefore not eligible under Lincoln’s bylaws to be sited in our residential neighborhood. If this same facility were located at McLean’s Belmont campus. there would be no question but that this use were medical or therapeutic, not educational. It is only when McLean wants to locate its new facility in a residential neighborhood that it engages in semantic fiction and characterizes the purpose of its treatment facility as primarily educational.

Finally, while Ms. Kochmann’s opinions appear to be squarely based on her daughter’s positive experience at McLean, she fails to realize that what is being proposed for the Bypass Road neighborhood is a fundamentally different program than what benefitted her daughter. McLean acknowledges that this is the first time they will attempt to treat adolescent males suffering from borderline personality disorders (BPD) in a residential setting. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, BPD is “characterized by impulsive and reckless behavior” with “high rates of co-occurring disorders including self-harm, suicidal behaviors and completed suicides.”

The facility will be fully locked, “for our safety” we are told, and no patient will be allowed outside without supervision. It is plain to see why such a program requires the security of an on-campus setting and is wholly inappropriate in a residential neighborhood. Under these circumstances, my concerns about McLean’s treatment facility are neither irrational nor selfish, and I would hope that Lincolnites like Ms. Kochmann would make an effort to understand the nature and complexities of the neighborhood’s opposition before pronouncing otherwise.

Sincerely,

Jay S. Gregory
46 Bypass Rd.

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: thanks for everyone’s help on July 4th

letter

To the editor:

The Lincoln Events Subcommittee would like to thank so many people for helping to make this year’s Fourth of July celebration truly a wonderful day! From the road race to bike parade, the main parade to the BBQ lunch put on by the Boy Scouts, the pickup soccer game to the concert and fireworks display, it was a great day for the town to come together to celebrate.

The day could not have been a success without the help of the Department of Public Works, the Lincoln Fire Department and the Lincoln Police Department. The extra time each department puts in before, during and after July 4th helps make the day run smoothly and safely, and it could not be the event it is without their help and support.

We also would like to thank Hanscom Air Force Base Defenders Club for helping to make sure that everyone who came to enjoy the fireworks was able to park and exit the event safely.

In addition to those organizations, we want to thank Amanda Fargo for organizing the bike parade, Brent Clark, Liam Spaeth and Rob Soluri for helping to provide sounds to our events, and a special thank-you to Brendan Spaeth for stepping in at the last minute when the lead guitarist of Soulidarity had to bow out with a medical emergency (he’s good now).

Finally, thank-you also to all of the wonderful volunteers who stepped in to help us throughout the day: Andy Rosenblatt, Cole Bickford, George Selsing, Lexi Fee, Katie Flanagan, Whitney Ball, Melinda Smith, Ralph Smith, Kathleen Nichols, Dilla Tingley, Fred Tingley, Felix Zhao, Roshan Kharbanda and Kyle Kennedy. We truly appreciate their help making sure that everything was set up and ready to go both for the parade and the fireworks, and for staying late after the fireworks to help clean up. They all are part of what makes Lincoln great!

Sincerely,

The Events Subcommittee: Aaron Beck, Ali Dwyer, Maggie Dwyer, Jen Flanagan, Eileen McRory, Eve Montie, Dan Pereira, Abbey Salon and Nick Virkler

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.